Homeless at the End

On January 2, 2015, the Deseret News published an article, “Homeless hospice group seeks cleaning help,” a call for volunteers to help clean our future buildings — the old Roman Catholic convent and adjacent Guadalupe School. ​The article generated a good turnout of volunteers, and we spent a full Saturday working on the buildings and grounds.

 

The convent, which had previously served as a domestic violence shelter for women, was a two-story house with ten bedrooms upstairs and two offices, a dining room, a living room, a kitchen, and a laundry room downstairs. Beyond a small back patio, another building housed a medium-sized room and a one-car garage. Because the convent lacked an elevator and a fire suppression system, it couldn't be used as a residence; therefore, we planned to use it for our offices and storage.

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The school building was built in the 1950s as the Bishop Glass School. For a decade or so, it served as a police precinct, then it became the Guadalupe School until a new school was constructed. The first floor had a reception desk, several small offices, a large dining room, a kitchen and pantry, and a multi-purpose room, which we planned to use as a dormitory for our future residents. The second floor had six large classrooms, a hallway lined with storage closets, and the girls' and boys' restrooms. The school didn’t have an elevator, but the stairs were wide enough to help people ascend to the showers on the second floor. We had plans to install a stair chair lift.

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January 10, 2015, was my first day as the Executive Director of The INN Between. I reported to my new office, located in the living room of the convent, with the priorities of preparing the buildings, fundraising, and obtaining a certificate of occupancy so we could open the doors.  As a single mother, I'd drop my two tweens off at school, head to the convent, and then pick the kids up when the after-school programs were over. We often headed back to the convent after dinner, and they got used to hanging out, doing homework, and helping me.

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Due to a lack of funding, we hadn't yet signed a lease on the buildings; however, Deacon George Reade, who oversaw church property, gave me a set of keys and essentially gave me free rein to make changes as needed. I’d share ideas for painting and such, and he'd smile and say, “That sounds great.”

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Two neighborhood women, parishioners at St. Patrick’s Church next door, started stopping by every day after work to deep clean the convent. They scrubbed the enamel stove with a metal scrubber, which I thought would ruin it, but it made the stove shine like new. Room by room, they removed the metal blinds from the windows, soaked them in a bathtub full of soapy water, and scrubbed them clean. Their attention to detail transformed the space.

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Another neighbor, Kathleen Maka, offered to clean the school's linoleum floors. It was labor-intensive work, but she and her daughters made them shine like new. A friend, Rich Sartor, volunteered to repair the holes in the convent's entryway walls. Neighbor Larry Martinez, who tended the grounds, started clearing out weeds and trimming bushes.

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Soon, more neighbors and community members became involved, and donations of toiletries, clothing, toilet paper, and other essential items began to pour in. A few women took the lead in organizing these items in the small building behind the convent, which we called the “Glass Room” due to its bank of glass windows. With its Noah's Ark mural on one wall, the glass room presumably served as a nursery.

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In the meantime, I was submitting grant after grant to raise enough money to start hiring staff. On January 20th, Dan Adams of CIT Bank presented me with a "big check" in the amount of $20,000. Dan not only played a pivotal role in encouraging me, but he also connected me with charitable giving officers at other banks, who showed keen interest in our project. As our first major grant, this funding allowed us to sign a month-to-month lease for the buildings, and I was confident that more funding would follow. 

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My next order of business was getting a business license. In my naivety, I thought I could simply march down to City Hall, fill out some paperwork, and then open for business. 

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Boy, was I ever wrong!

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When I arrived at City Hall, the Planning Department staff were stumped. They had never encountered a program like The INN Between and didn't know quite how to proceed. The first complication was that SLC didn’t issue business licenses to nonprofits; however, I needed a business license for zoning and health department licensing. Then, we had to comply with zoning restrictions and the International Building Code (IBC); however, the buildings lacked the proper fire suppression systems for residential use and hadn’t been retrofitted for earthquakes, among other issues. 

 

At the State level, the main obstacle was obtaining a license from the Utah Department of Health. This was the first time the Department had encountered such a program. No license category existed, and creating a new one required legislative action that could take years to implement.

 

Fortunately, local architect and developer Ken Millo showed up at the school door one day, offering to lend a hand. I had no idea that I needed an architect's help, but Ken reassured me that his expertise was exactly what I needed. To this day, one of the first pieces of advice I give to individuals interested in pursuing this work is to find a volunteer architect to help navigate the complex zoning issues.

 

Ken and I started meeting daily to address the obstacles. He helped me craft a program description for the city planners, who then informed me that our program could fit within the “Eleemosynary Facility” land use definition, which in SLC is defined as a nonprofit that provides temporary housing for individuals undergoing medical treatment. The use had been created decades prior for the Ronald McDonald House.

 

Next, Ken and I had to tackle the lack of a Department of Health licensing category. After several meetings, their leadership said that we could operate the program without a license, provided we didn’t offer any hands-on assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs), such as bathing, walking, transferring from a bed to a wheelchair, showering, and dressing. It also meant that we weren’t allowed to accept clients who were already bedridden, even though most clients would eventually become bedridden as their disease progressed. Everyone involved recognized that it was much better for these folks to go through the final stages of life in a bed rather than on the streets. 

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With these issues resolved, it seemed like we were on track to open the doors quickly. Then a neighbor stopped by to show me a flyer he'd found taped to his front door. 

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