By Phoebe King
At the community meeting, set up about two weeks after the rumors started, many people said they felt blindsided. How could an agency plop a residence of this size in their backyard without a word to anyone? Rogers Park resident Rich McMenamin asked Thresholds administrators to postpone the project and give the community time to consider its implications.
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Thresholds had first contacted 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore back in May 1996, when the agency was thinking about buying the building. To get community input, Moore invited four community leaders to tour Austin Apartments, another Thresholds building similar in size to the one on Wayne.
Meanwhile, Thresholds had applied for city funding in the form of tax credits for the Wayne Apartments project. Moore supported the proposal with a letter to the Housing Department commissioner dated October 1996. The following spring the city denied the funding request, citing, among other things, a lack of parking. (Thresholds would be approved for state funding in mid-1998.)
Dincin says the complaints in Rogers Park are typical of what he hears wherever Thresholds opens a residence, though he has heard others. In Chicago Heights, where Thresholds is planning to open a group home, residents claim the neighborhood is too dangerous for Thresholds clients. “We know that’s a lie,” he says. “We know they don’t want mental patients there.”
Opponents of the building sent a letter to the Zoning Department in November, citing the transitional nature of the housing and insufficient parking as reasons to require Thresholds to apply for a special-use permit. The complaint was referred to city lawyers for an opinion, but zoning officials say they can’t do anything before the fact. They have to assume that a building will be used for the purpose listed on the building-permit application. Only if a facility is up and running and being used for something else can the city step in. Then it could require Thresholds to get a special-use permit, which usually entails endless community meetings and an alderman’s stamp of approval.
Chiu found it interesting that many people at the meeting were unaware that Thresholds already operates five residences in Rogers Park. Although critics argue that an eight-bed group home is significantly different from a 44-unit SRO, Chiu suggests the group homes are a good example of the agency’s ability to blend into the community.
