Joe Tarr
Phalen Pierson sits in front of Madison's City-County Building, where he's slept off and on for a dozen years. A joint city-county building will vote next week on whether to ban people from loitering there.
For close to a dozen years, Phalen Pierson has called the City-County Building “home.”
“It was five or six of us that started sleeping up here, and then it just got bigger,” Pierson says. “On average, there’s 18 to 25 people. If it rains, it can be almost 30 people up here.”
But the City-County Liaison Committee may vote at its Monday night meeting to evict the people who have been sleeping here, because of concerns of violence and public health.
The committee is made up of representatives of both Dane County and Madison, which share use of the building.
“There are serious health concerns. There have been many, many concerns from people who work in the building about health and substance abuse,” says Ald. Mark Clear, who sits on the committee. “Incidents have turned increasingly violent. Using the outside of this building as a shelter has never worked, but it has gotten significantly worse.”
Pierson understands why some people don’t like that the building at 210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. has become a de facto shelter for the homeless. He says many people sleeping here drink. And although he feels safe, he did witness an Aug. 11 fight in front of the Municipal Building across the street between two men that led to minor stab wounds.
“There are arguments and stuff, but I try to avoid it,” says the 55-year-old. “Pretty much I mind my own business. I’ll speak to people. I like to read.” He gets most of his books from the city’s numerous Little Free Libraries. He’s currently in the middle of James Lee Burke’s Swan Peak.
While the front stoop of the City-County Building might be a sanctuary for Pierson, it’s become a hazard for Kelly McConnell, who works in the Municipal Court on the building’s second floor.
“It causes problems in the area daily. I was listening to the police scanner just yesterday morning and there was a drug deal taking place on the grass down in front of the building,” McConnell says. “They have children with them down there. There are paramedic calls daily. It’s creating a real dangerous environment.”
As a court clerk, McConnell sometimes sees these same people in municipal court on charges. “We know a lot of the people out there and they’re not very nice people,” she says. “I avoid the area.”
“We have one woman who was living here for years; she’s been banned from the building because she was washing her undergarments in the drinking fountain on the first floor,” she says. “The bathrooms downstairs are pretty disgusting. Employees don’t like to use the bathrooms around here.”
Joel DeSpain, a spokesman for the Madison Police Department, does not have statistics on how often police are called to deal with situations here.
“If it doesn’t rise to the level of something I’d report for any other neighborhood, I don’t put [out a press release],” he says. “If it’s a stabbing or a sexual assault, I will. If it’s two guys fighting and no serious injuries, I don’t.”
While Clear supports the move, he does not want to see it happen immediately and would like time to make sure services are offered to the people who will be displaced.
In part to prepare for the move, the maximum stay at the single men’s and women’s emergency shelters has been increased from 60 to 90 days, starting Sept. 1.
While the extra days are nice, it’s not a solution, homeless advocate Brenda Konkel says. If someone starts accumulating days in November, they won’t have enough to get through the winter.
Konkel says that while some agencies claim they’ve offered services to people staying at the building, many of the people say they haven’t been helped. “I expect people to show up and say ‘we provide services,’” Konkel says. “It will be the homeless people’s word versus agencies’ words.”
“We’re talking about people with mental illnesses; things are hard to remember, it’s traumatic being out on the street, and it’s really difficult to understand what the real situation is out there,” she says. “I don’t think either side is totally right, but the truth must be somewhere in the middle. I’d like to get down to why these folks have been sleeping there for so long and not gotten into housing.”
Pierson says he’s been offered services, but help has yet to arrive. People from the Community Development Authority, which operates the city’s public housing, have put him on the waiting list for an apartment, he says. “They told me it would be a while, and if housing came up, they’d call me.”
The City-County Liaison Committee has contemplated banning people from sleeping outside the building before, but didn’t have enough votes. This time, Konkel worries, the committee may have them.
She fears it will simply make it harder to find the people who need help.
“There’s safety in numbers up there,” she says. “If you’re sleeping by yourself in a bush, hiding from everybody, that’s more dangerous.”
The potential ban, along with Mayor Paul Soglin’s recent proposal to limit how long people can sit on benches, is taking a toll.
“There’s a general feeling of being under attack, and many of the people who are homeless really are under attack,” she says. “It’s traumatizing them.”
In the event the committee votes to ban people from sleeping in front of the building, Pierson has thought about his options. “I would probably go sleep by First United Methodist Church or Bethel [both on Wisconsin Avenue]. Maybe I’d go down by Monona Drive, the lake or something. They don’t start giving days at the shelter until the first of November. Those days get used up pretty quickly, and the next thing you know, it’s March and it’s still cold outside.”