08/21/2026
This will be my last post about this, but I need to make my intention very clear.
I have been working right next to this shelter for almost two years. I am not speaking about something I heard about or something I saw once. I am speaking about what I have personally watched happen over and over again right outside my business.
I see many of the same people on the street every day, openly using drugs. I have seen fights, overdoses, a drive-by shooting, and people lose their lives. Someone died right there on the pavement beside my restaurant. And after almost two years, I am still watching many of the same people struggling in the same way.
So I have to ask: who is this situation helping?
If my own child found herself living like that, addicted, struggling and going through the same cycle every single day, I would not look at that situation and say, “Leave everything exactly as it is.” I would want somebody to step in and find a better way to help her.
That is why I cannot understand why speaking up about what is happening is being treated as being against homeless people.
I am speaking up because what is happening now is not working.
I have spoken to council. I have spoken to the mayor. I have spoken to the police chief. I have called police many times over the years. They come, deal with the immediate situation, and then shortly afterward everything starts again.
The staff at the shelter are not the people I am attacking. I have met many of them. They are good people, they come into my restaurant, and I believe many of them are doing what they can. But their hands are tied. They cannot solve addiction, serious mental health struggles, violence and everything else happening there simply by keeping a roof over someone’s head.
People need more than that. They need proper treatment, qualified support, structure, accountability and a real opportunity to get out of the situation they are in.
And I also should not have to come into work afraid.
I should not have people coming into my restaurant looking around and appearing to check where the cameras are. My customers should not have to pick up their food and then walk back to their cars looking over their shoulders and checking every few seconds to make sure their vehicle is safe.
That is not what a healthy community should feel like.
When we talk about building and running a community, every citizen should be able to feel reasonably safe the people who live here, the people who work here, the customers coming downtown, and the people staying at the shelter.
And the people at the shelter deserve better too.
They need real help. They do not need to remain trapped in the exact same situation day after day.
If we can watch someone lying on the street, completely out of it on drugs, barely aware of what is happening around them, and call that a solution, then I think we have lost sight of what compassion is supposed to mean.
To me, that is not helping someone. That is putting vulnerable people in the middle of the community, leaving them in the same cycle, and hoping for the best.
What are we supposed to do? Have businesses leave downtown one by one because customers no longer feel safe coming here? Let drug use, violence and disorder become so accepted that nobody is allowed to question it? Watch our downtown slowly become somewhere families and customers avoid?
That cannot be the solution.
And telling people like me to simply move is not a solution either. We were here before the shelter. We own this building. A restaurant cannot simply pick up its kitchen, equipment and livelihood and move down the street.
Talking about relocating the shelter is not about throwing people away. It is about forcing a much needed conversation about whether this location and this current model are actually working.
There will never be a better solution if everyone is afraid to speak.
So please understand my intention.
I am not fighting homeless people.
I am fighting for a solution that is better for the people who need help, better for the businesses trying to survive, and better for the community we all live in.
Because after almost two years of watching the same cycle repeat itself, I do not believe leaving everything exactly as it is can honestly be called compassion.
The people at the shelter deserve better. The community deserves better. And we should be able to say that without being accused of not caring.
