The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Mark Van Meter Joined Greer Achenbach Live On “The Downtown Spotlight!”

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Mark van Meter, Commanding Officer at The Salvation Army, joined Greer Achenbach live on The “The Downtown Spotlight!” The Downtown Spotlight airs live Thursday from 2:30 pm – 3:15 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Downtown Spotlight on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Good afternoon. My name is Greer Achenbach. I'm Executive Director of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown, and you are watching another episode of the Downtown Spotlight. We've got an incredibly exciting show for you today. We are going to be talking about the ways that the Charlottesville community is coming together to tackle homelessness in our community. We are joined by Major Mark Van Meter, the commanding officer for the Salvation Army. It's going to be an incredibly robust conversation.

Before we get into everything with Major Mark, I do want to give a couple of updates about what's happening downtown for the holidays with Magic on the Mall. Hopefully you have been down to check everything out. The new lights have been beautiful, magical, and we hope that you've had the chance to come and check them out with your family. We also hope that you're coming down and enjoying a delicious Peppermint Trail drink. I've got the Peppermint Trail brochure here. Stop in for a holiday cocktail, coffee, warm beverage

to warm you up on these chilly nights. Of course, there's also the very popular Elves in Seville scavenger hunt, where kids hunt for elves on the downtown mall and help Santa to save Christmas. You can pick up a Peppermint Trail brochure and an Elves in Seville brochure at Magpie Knits or JFenton2 on the downtown mall. You can also get them at some participating locations and, of course, in the CACVB mobile vans. I also want to mention that many of our retailers on the downtown mall are offering extended holiday hours. That started last Thursday, December 5th, but will continue tonight as well as next week, December 19th. So make a night of it, come down, see the lights, enjoy dinner, enjoy a peppermint trail drink, and get some of your shopping done. We hope to see you. You can

also do letters to Santa at Alakazam, which is going on throughout the holidays. I did want to make a note that the Hanukkah celebration downtown, which was previously listed as happening on December 29th, has been moved to Monday, December 30th. Don't miss that. It's always a very exciting time. And of course, come down and ride the Downtown Express. It is all decorated for the holidays. Children love it. It's a great time and activity to bring your family down here on the mall. I do want to mention that we still have two sponsorship spots available for 2025. If your business is interested in advertising on the Downtown Express, please reach out to us at info at friendsofseville.org. We also have a number of other

advertising opportunities. You can sponsor this show, the Downtown Spotlight. You can sponsor our website, www.friendsofseville.org. A number of other events and initiatives. We really appreciate all that you're doing to help us make downtown the best it can possibly be. So with all of that, I would now like to welcome Major Mark Van Meter. Thanks for joining us today. Hi, Greer. It's good seeing you. It's great to see you. So I've been really excited to talk to you. This is the show I have been looking forward to the most. Homelessness in Charlottesville has been a big topic of conversation. It is a complicated issue that we as a community want to address with compassion. So I want to start this conversation by saying I have seen and talked to a lot of people about this. We at Friends of

Charlottesville think that the Salvation Army approach is the solution right now in our community that is getting the most traction. It is incredibly well planned. The city agrees with us as well. The city manager, Sam Sanders, listed on October 21st that this was one of the major initiatives he is supporting. So we heard a talk a little bit about today about what the Salvation Army currently does, and then the new capital campaign, which is two-pronged. One, expanding the current Salvation Army high barrier shelter, and then opening a new low barrier shelter in our community. So with all that, I am going to now turn it over to you. So my first question is, can you tell me a little bit about just kind of some background information?

What is the mission and vision of the Salvation Army here in Charlottesville? The bottom line mission of the Salvation Army in Charlottesville is really encapsulated by the mission statement of the Salvation Army. And that is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to serve others without discrimination at all. We are a church, but there is a heavy emphasis on meeting the needs of individuals in the community. Having said that, in our task of meeting the needs of individuals, we don't push the church influence on individuals. And our church services, that environment is optional, just like anything else that we offer in the community. And so we really want to emphasize that because, you know, we have a firm foundation on what we do, why we do,

but the emphasis then is who we do it with. And so we're real proud of that, and that's what we drive for. The Salvation Army in Charlottesville is a great, and I truly mean that, it's a great arm of what the Salvation Army does. We are very involved in different areas of service in the community, and I'm a pretty catalytic individual. I like to look down the road at what we can be doing, what we should be doing. And my wife, who partners with me in this, really is the person who gets in the weeds and works out details. So I get to dream. She gets to make the

product happen. Yeah. So that's part of what we do and that's why we're here. And we're just looking forward to bringing this project to completion in a couple of years. So I think the first thing you said is a really important distinction. The religious affiliation of the Salvation Army is something that many people probably know you for, but that was something I was struck by when I came to tour, is that it is not in any way pushed on any individual that's engaging with the Salvation Army in any way, that you are here to serve everybody without judgment. Yeah, just to that point, and I think it's important to note,

maybe not in this community specifically, but you have a lot of hospitals that are ran by the Catholic Church or the Baptist denomination. And so there are denominations that extend themselves into the community with service, and they do it with a compassion for individuals, but also a passion for their calling as Christians. So can you tell me and our viewers at home a bit about the Salvation Army's current operation? There's so much more going on there than I was previously aware of. We are in the midst of Christmas right now, and Christmas is a very, very busy time for us. One, we begin our Christmas planning around April of each year, and we start ordering all of our printed materials and talk about our projects that we're going to

be working on at Christmastime. So my staff only gets a couple months break from all this. You know, we have to make sure that our bells and kettles and software and all that stuff is prepped and ready to go. So right now we have just over a thousand kids enrolled for our Angel Tree program, and individuals can go to various stores, Walmarts in Rutgersville here in Charlottesville, and they can receive those little angels off of the Christmas tree and purchase gifts for kids. Children will, their parents will come through our distribution on the 20th. And last year, being our first one here in Charlottesville, I was just really struck by the number of very kind-hearted people who were giving, but also the individuals who were coming to receive those toys.

I think this year we need to plan on having a couple boxes of Kleenexes at our warehouse because they were well-received. But every day we continue our service at 207 Ridge Street by serving individuals in our shelter. We have a 50-bed- plus shelter for men and women. There's about 28 beds for men, and then the balance are for ladies in the community, 22, 24 beds. During the wintertime, we are the overflow for Patcham. So it is worth saying that we run probably about 115% capacity during the wintertime as individuals try to get off the streets. We do have our feeding program. We serve approximately 50,000 meals annually out of our little kitchen at the Salvation Army.

We run a social service program each month providing gift of warmth for individuals who need help with their utilities. Families come in and they just were not able to afford new coats for the kids or whatever. We use our thrift store as a resource for that. Last month we gave out over $1,000 worth of merchandise out of our thrift store for individuals in the community. So it is a very robust place and very active daily, but it's a good work we do. I was privileged to come and tour with you a couple of months ago. I was struck by the amount of volunteer management you all do to serve food to the community every day.

That was a big thing, as well as kind of some of the ancillary things. Like you sort of touched on this, but your rent and utility assistance, personal hygiene closet. I forget exactly what the term was. That's right, hygiene. Just these are resources that the community needs that you're providing. So thank you for all of that. Yeah, many of us forget about those little things.

We have a very benevolent company here in town that resources us with merchandise that they are not able to sell. And so most of the time we even have dog and cat food that we can provide to families. So, again, just a lot of different nuances of what we do daily. So kind of at that point, let's talk about the Center for Hope capital campaign. What are the reasons for expansion from what you're currently doing? Sure. So let me just give a little bit of the history. This project was originally started, the conversation, around 2017.

The officer that was here, Jim Shields, they did the various studies that the Salvation Army required, feasibility, need studies, planning studies. And then they were moved to a new appointment. Then the officer that came in was planning on moving the project forward, but then COVID hit. And so that was a big pause in this project. My wife and I were actually up in Northern West Virginia, and we had requested to go back towards the Kentucky, Tennessee area for our last 10 years or so of Salvation Army work. And our divisional commander reached out to us and said, I'd like to take you out for dinner. And so we went and sat and talked, and he said, I've got a major project that I would like you guys to grab hold of and see what we can do with it. And at that time, they still were not talking about

Charlottesville, but we started to pin it down. And so we moved here June of 23. so just last June, and the capital campaign was started, but we needed to really bring some new life to it. And so I brought on a new team of professionals to help me with it. And we relaunched off the project in January of this year. In addition, you know, I've made a firm commitment to my advisory board, to the community leaders, and to my divisional headquarters that we will get this project done. It has to be completed under my leadership here. So the Center of Hope project will result in a $28 million capital campaign in the community. $28 million, and that builds the building. It provides an endowment and gets us set up for the future of what we do at the Salvation Army.

It will result in the 207 Ridge Street property totally being demolished, and that whole property will be leveled, and we will build a new four-story, 47,000 square foot facility. It will double our shelter capacity and more than double our current dining capacity. We will go from 50 current beds in the shelter to just over 100 beds. There will be specific rooms set aside, bunk rooms, if you will, that will be specific rooms set aside, bunk rooms, if you will, that will be designated for isolation rooms should there be COVID or flu epidemics

that we have to deal with, but also for our LGBTQ transgender friends. And so we're really looking at a full scope of services as we provide sheltering. The new dining facility will seat 120 individuals, and I suspect we will go from the 50,000 meals that we currently serve to north of 80,000 meals within the first 18 months or so of opening the project. It will also include seven new transitional apartments for families, and these apartments are designated for individuals

who will come in under a program that we call Pathway of Hope. And Pathway of Hope begins working with the families, and we talk to them about the hurdles and barriers that are keeping them in the cycle of poverty. And so specifically, we want families with children so that we can work with not only mom and dad, but also the children to help them see that they can get out of this cycle of poverty that the family is in. Those will be somewhat long-term apartments for the families because we want to see them transition to full stability in the community. So it's very robust. It's a beautiful building that's been designed by Mitchell Matthews, our architect, and it's going to set well in the mid-downtown area and just look very nice for the community.

It is beautiful. For those of you that haven't seen it, I would encourage you to do a little research and see the building because it architecturally is beautiful and perfect for that area of town. So the expansion, you had data to show that you were having a wait list to say that there was just as, for as many people as you could serve, there was just as many that you were not able to. Is that correct? That's correct. And that's the reason why the expansion is needed. It's not just that we want a new building, but the homelessness in the community, we're all seeing the impact of it.

And so having the beds available for individuals is very important. And these are beds that will most certainly be utilized on a very regular basis. This is all very exciting. So the Salvation Army in Charlottesville right now is what is known as a high barrier shelter. Can you explain to our viewers what that means and why this type of shelter is important? Yep. So there's been some confusion about why some people can't come into our shelter and it just needs to be clearly stated that the current 207 Ridge Street property has transitional apartments that up until last fall, we had individuals staying in the apartments. We started rotating people out, and as they left, we just closed down the apartments in preparation for the demolition and capital project.

So that meant we had children on the property. And so the shelter had to be high barrier so that we could do background checks, sex registry checks, test for alcohol and drugs, and make sure that we were providing a safe, secure environment for children and families on that property. So currently, it still functions as a high barrier shelter. And I was telling you before we started the show that one of the things that we have done with this current program, typically individuals come into these shelters and they're with us for about 21 days and then they have to rotate out for 60 to 90 days. We created a program where we would allow individuals to come in for 21 days, and during that 21 days, if they will engage with our case management team and set three goals and

start working towards those goals in that 21 days, they can then obtain another 21 days, another three set of goals, another 21 days. So we're talking about individuals, because of life's circumstances, they've lost their social security card, they've lost their state ID cards, they've lost connection with their families, they don't have a place to lay their heads to even start going to a job. And so this program in the high barrier shelter now allows individuals to come in and begin to stabilize themselves. And they don't have to worry about in 21 days I have to leave here and do this all over again. So now we are seeing between 8 and 10 individuals monthly leaving our shelter.

That's nearly 100 people annually leaving our shelter, stabilized with jobs, getting apartments, reconnecting with family, and becoming, you know, beneficiaries of the community assets that are around us. So that's what the high barrier shelter is. And that really has been the catalyst for, I think, where we want to begin the next phase of our discussion. Right. Yeah. So, and, and, but I wanted to make sure we touched on that because I think that's such a strategic piece of, of what you're doing is that you're, you're helping people work towards ending the cycle of homelessness and, and to be housed and employed. Yeah, absolutely. Homelessness can just become a revolving door and people just

don't know how to get out of it. And what we've done is we've, we've, you know, I would say almost literally we've put our foot in the door and, and have told people, you don't have to continue this. We can help you. And so we're creating opportunities for individuals to really gain a new step forward in their life here in the community. It's amazing. Thank you for all this good work. So you're right, that does sort of lead me to my next question. One of the challenges we have in Charlottesville is we don't have what's known as a low barrier shelter. We have a day shelter and we have a high barrier shelter, which

we've been talking about. But without a low barrier shelter, there is a hole in the sort of continuum of care we have for homelessness here in Charlottesville. But that's about to change. So tell us a little bit about the plans for a low barrier shelter here in Charlottesville. Sure. So again, my wife and I moved here June of 23. And immediately, we were seeing in the media the tent encampments and the conversations about how to best serve the homeless in the community. So we moved in and we started figuring out where the closest dry cleaners was and pizza places and all that,

but at the same time we were observing what was going on in the media. So as we started getting into the fall, and I do want to mention our partner agencies, you mentioned the Havens Day Shelter. Patcham does an awesome job with the Winter Free Shelter, and we are a partner with them. But there is this gap of where do people go to even begin, you know, having a safe, secure, warm environment to be in each night. There are a number of homeless people that want to be homeless. They just want to be. They like that lifestyle. But there's a larger number of people who are caught in a gap and they don't know how to get out.

So we went through the summer months and right around October of last year, I reached out to our city manager, Sam Sanders, and I just asked him if I could buy coffee. And so we met and we talked and I told Sam, I think that we have an option or at least something that we can add to the narrative and help out with this crisis that's in the community. Our thrift store property is located at 604 Cherry Ave. And I was going to be using that building as a temporary facility during the construction of the Ridge Street property. But as I look at the services we provide and the services that are provided in the community,

it made no sense for us to try to create a shelter on the other side of town or far away. We're doing the majority of the feeding programs in the community for this population are case management. And so I really wanted to be able to see these individuals in a close proximity so that we could build bridges and help these individuals get out of this cycle. So in my conversation with Sam, I suggested that we look at using the 604 Chery Ave property as a new permanent low barrier shelter.

And because we have so much going on at the Salvation Army in this new program expansion that we're doing, I didn't necessarily want to take over the low barrier shelter. So we have reached out to a number of partner agencies and just said, why don't we work on this as an alliance and that we each do what we do best in this alliance and we serve the community through the use of this building. So there are appropriate conversations going on with boards and looking at finances and all that. But in the end, the hope is that we will create what we are going to formally call the Cherry Avenue Alliance Shelter. And it will be owned and ran by the Salvation Army, but these other partner agencies will come in and help run the programs.

In the end, for me, if our partner agencies are not able to come on for whatever reason, we will open a shelter. We will get the funding together and staff it. We already know the policies and procedures for these type shelters. We run them all over the country. And so there's a wealth of knowledge bank that I can draw from to get a low barrier shelter open for the community. A couple of things I did want to point out that you said, it was because I think they're really smart and strategic. One, the two shelters are very close together.

They are. So just for those of you, maybe I'll have a map in front of you, but the Ridge Street location where the Salvation Army currently is and the New Cherry Avenue site are just a couple of blocks. Correct. A very easy walk. where the Salvation Army currently is and the new Cherry Avenue site are just a couple of blocks, a very easy walk. So the guests that will be coming to the new Cherry Avenue Alliance can very easily come to get their meals at Ridge Street, as I understand it. Correct. Yeah, the Cherry Ave property will have a serving kitchen, but not necessarily a prep kitchen, because we do want to draw those individuals into the feeding program

that we're building out on Ridge Street. So that's intentional. There will be a small kitchen in there, a residential stove, refrigerator, but it would not be designed to prepare food down there per se. The other thing that's important to me for having the cherry-aff property for the shelter, my case management staff can then quickly access individuals and begin building those bridges with them and say to them, look, maybe you need to get into one of our alcohol rehab centers that the Salvation Army has, or you go to another agency's rehab program. And once you can get over that hurdle, we can bring you into the high barrier shelter and really work with you to get you off the streets. And so it is very intentional.

It's a good model, I believe, that will allow people to have hope for their future and not just remain in this vicious cycle. Another thing that you said that I think is really smart is this idea that it's a coalition. It is an alliance between several providers. I think there is sometimes a lack of information or a misinformation out there about the reputation of each of these places. And so you can't have that misinformation about what the Salvation Army does or whoever it might be does when you're all working there together. The major providers for homelessness in this community I've had coffee with, and I've sat down with them, and they are being invited to the table

and invited to be part of this solution, a larger, you know, perspective and a larger scope of services. One of the things that we are looking at for the Cherry Ave property is not only just an overnight shelter, but potentially a day shelter as well. Because we don't, we want to prevent individuals from having to traverse back and forth across the community looking for an office or their next meal or whatever it might be. There will be nine offices in the Chery Ave property along with 50-bed shelter. And the shelter will be 365 days. It will be an overnight shelter. And if we can get a day shelter on the property, then those individuals don't even have to leave the property other than coming for food services.

When we move back into the Ridge Street property post-construction, those nine offices will be down there left unattended, basically. And it is at that point that the offices can be used by Social Security or Medicaid, Medicare, UVA Health, whatever, and they can come in and have day offices in that facility. If the alliance agrees and decides that we don't need those day offices, then those can all be removed and we build out to a hundred bed shelter down there. Okay. So that was my next question. A hundred, a hundred beds is the goal for the, for the low barrier shelter. If those offices would not be needed. Okay. And what's the original with the offices? It's 50 beds. Okay.

50 beds in the low barrier shelter, and then the high barrier shelter is going to be 100 beds? Correct. All right. So we've got 150 beds kind of in that general area. It seems like you kind of anticipated my next question, but what sort of wraparound services will be provided at these two shelters. That's really where my social service director and case management staff gets involved because they need to begin building those bridges to the other agencies and inviting them in. But there is absolutely no reason why other agencies can't come in, even using those offices as day offices or, if it's justified,

more of a permanent office for the benefit of our friends in the community. The Salvation Army, by offering up the Cheryoff property, we are making a $4 million investment initially because of the value of that land. Our thrift store that is currently there is revenue generating in that they support their own operations, but we draw over about $180,000 annually from our thrift store to the command office for our programs, our services. So by moving our store off of the property, we automatically take a bit of a hit, but this makes sense and it's the right decision that benefits the community. And so we'll go through a little bit of a struggle repositioning, standing up our

store, you know, in another part of the community, but this is going to benefit a great number of people. And do you know where the store is going to relocate it to? Well, we're looking at properties out on 29, and I would certainly be open to Pantops. Our advisory board has a couple of realtors on the board, and in fact, I had a conversation with one of them today talking about properties. We need about 13,000 to 15,000 square feet, and that is for our store, our sorting, our ragging for trucks to get in and out, you know, all of that. So it's got to be the right property, location, location, and we'll make it happen. If anybody knows of that property out there, please let us know in support of the Salvation Army, because obviously they've, he's answering all these questions. They've got an incredibly robust plan.

You mentioned one thing, too, and I had been curious about this. You talked about alcohol specifically, but does the Salvation Army get involved in sort of mental health issues or substance abuse issues? You work with partners in the community. Yeah. I mean, there are agencies that do that a lot better than we do. My shelter staff on a regular basis, they have people in their offices who, you know, talk about wanting to get off of drugs or out of alcohol or, you know, dealing with some kind of mental health issues.

And my staff has been advised and directed to, you know, reach out to the various agencies in the community that best serve in those areas. The Salvation Army, though we don't have it here in Charlottesville, we have what's called our ARCs, adult rehab centers. My sister and brother-in-law ran an ARC in Indiana. They had 300 beds. And so if an individual comes in and alcohol is their issue or drugs are their issues, we have facilities that we can rapidly get people into and help them begin their recovery process. An individual can still come to our shelter with alcohol or drugs in their system. But while they are with us, we test and we'd like for those numbers to continue downward.

I'm continually impressed by how organized you are and how you have thought of everything. I think that's really impressive. One of the things I said to you earlier is when you live in this pocket every day, you really are looking for the best way to serve people. And, you know, Greer, before returning back to the Salvation Army five years ago as my career choice, I had a robust career. And I just see the best investment of my life serving other people and allowing them to use the services that we have to stand on our shoulders and get a better position in life. And so we wake up every day, every day, looking to figure out how we can best serve individuals that come to us. Well, thank you, of course, for doing that work in our community. One thing I'm particularly struck by is that you're thinking of kind of the best solution

for the community as a whole, which we certainly appreciate. One, I know that the city has been very supportive of this campaign and is in favor of everything that you're doing. What are some ways the city can support and encourage the unhoused population to use these

services. So we have, you mentioned before that there, there will be people that do not want to be sheltered, that prefer the lifestyle that want to be, um, that want to continue to live outside. You cannot force people into shelters. Um, it would not be wise to force people into shelters. Um, but what I have told the city council, what I told our city manager, we will do our job and then the city leaders can do their job.

And if that's ordinances or laws that prevent panhandling or sleeping in public spaces, they have to make those decisions. But we have to give the city, and I say that not only the city officials, but also people in the community, we have to give them the ability to be able to say, you have an option. And the Alliance down on Cherry Ave is a great place for you to go and to, again, find a good, warm, safe environment and, you know, begin finding some stability. And when is all this set to be in place? So we're talking about a day shelter, a low barrier shelter, and a high barrier shelter.

Yep. So I mentioned the $28 million for the Center of Hope project. The Chery Ave property renovation is an additional $3 million. So in total, my team is raising $31 million here in this community. We're super, super pleased. We've started talking to a lot of our stakeholders, people interested in this. We currently have $6 million committed to the capital campaign. There's an additional $2 million that has been spoken towards that we're waiting on a pledge card. The city council considers a recommendation from our city manager this coming Monday night for a $5.25 million gift to this project, $4 million to the Center of Hope,

and $1.25 million to the Cherry Ave Alliance project. And then we're just constantly talking to individuals in the community that want to buy into this as a solution. Well, that sort of brings me to my next question is, I know there are viewers at home that are very interested in what you're doing here. How can they support this campaign? You know, I'm always surprised by individuals who decide on their own that they want to leave a legacy. And whether it's something that's recognized on a building or they just simply know that they have done something to impact other people. I had a gentleman, we were at our Christmas warehouse Monday, I guess, Tuesday,

and the gentleman just walked in and handed me a significant check and said, I want to help kids in the community. So if an individual wants to be part of this particular project, the Center of Hope project, they can call my office at 434-295-4058, 434-295-4058. It's the Salvation Army office. And ask to speak to either myself, Major Mark, or Jim Pataglia is our development director. And we will help individuals. We have some folks that are in the process of gifting us stocks and various assets. We have a gentleman who is looking at completing his will and leaving a substantial amount of money

that will allow us to do the Pathway of Hope program and other programs in our facility. And so you, people are getting creative on their own about how they want to be involved with this. But now's the time, now's the opportunity, and we really want to be able to step up and say, as a community, we have done something to resolve a pressing issue in our area. So there you have it. If you want your money to go towards a very pressing and important need in our community, this is certainly an impactful place to donate. We would encourage you all to do so as you are able. Of course, there's also ways to physically volunteer with the Salvation Army, whether that's through helping feed people or ring bells or some of the many

volunteer opportunities at your soup kitchen. As well as, of course, sharing this. If you're not in a position to donate this year or in the near future, maybe you know somebody who is and who would be passionate about this work. Please make sure that you're connecting them with the Salvation Army, either through us here at Friends of Seville, or I'm sure they can find it all on your website. Absolutely. Yep. Call my office and I'll buy coffee for anybody.

I hope you have been as inspired as I have been while talking to Major Mark. Please feel free, of course, to follow up with any questions. This is such an important need in our community. Is there anything else we need to know about the campaign today? We're on track. We will get this done. I'm just a believer that this is the right project, the right time, in the right community. This is just a great community that wants to

respond. And so right now what we're doing is connecting the dots. And I believe that God has given us every penny that we need for this project. Now it's my job to get the money out of people's pockets. So we'll get it there. There you's my job to get the money out of people's pockets. So we'll get it there. There you go. Well, thank you again for bringing your skill set here to Charlottesville. I appreciate it. I know that it will be very impactful. And thank you for joining us today.

Tune in next time. We will be back in January for more of the downtown spotlight. Thank you so much.