Is there a right or wrong place to put a homeless shelter in a community?

That's the question the Traverse City Housing and Building Committee – a subcommittee of the TC Planning Commission – is attempting to answer on the heels of a proposal by Safe Harbor of Grand Traverse to convert a city-owned warehouse into an emergency shelter. The committee, which met for the first time Monday, has been tasked with reviewing the city's zoning policy regulating homeless and transitional housing facilities to determine where and how they should operate in city limits.

Though many residents agree such facilities provide a community service, they are often divided on where they should be located – particularly when it comes to residential neighborhoods. Committee member Jody Bergman says the complaints she received about Safe Harbor's proposal primarily focused on homeless individuals “coming and going” through neighborhoods to access the organization.

“(The issue was with) homeless people passing (residents') houses or interacting with their children,” Bergman says.

City Planning Director Russ Soyring says there are often multiple schools of thought when it comes to zoning potentially contentious businesses. “You can either have a concentration of them all in one area,” he says, using adult-oriented businesses as an example, “or you can spread them out to the farther reaches of the community. Those are two different approaches to consider.”

The city's current transitional housing code, which is over two decades old and the closest thing the city has to zoning regulations for shelters, restricts organizations to a maximum of 30 beds and requires they have on-premises programs to “place residents into permanent housing.” Safe Harbor proposes to serve between 80-100 guests nightly at the Wellington location and focuses mostly on providing short-term emergency shelter from the cold.

“These (current zoning) standards wouldn't allow this type of facility,” Bergman says of the proposal, noting that “emergency shelters” possibly should be an entirely different zoning category than “transitional housing.” She adds: “We need to look at if we can (amend) these guidelines...or if we should create a new set of definitions and rules” for facilities like that proposed by Safe Harbor.

Committee members, who will reconvene March 31 to review a potential new zoning draft compiled by Soyring based on this week's discussion, are also considering questions such as which city zoning districts are appropriate for shelters, whether there should be a minimum or maximum facility size and how many shelters should be allowed in city limits. When finished, the group will send a proposed zoning code to the Planning Commission for review, which will then forward it on to the City Commission for final approval.

The process could last until later this spring or early summer.

Meanwhile, Safe Harbor officials proceeded last week with submitting a formal proposal to the city for use of the 9,600 square-foot Wellington Street building. The request officially asks the city for a ten-year lease with an option to renew for an additional five years, first right of refusal to purchase the building if it goes on the market and the continuation of a monthly rental of $1.

The proposal shows a listed annual $387,000 building budget and provides alternative budgets showing rent ranging from the requested $12 a year up to $5,000 a year. In the proposal, Safe Harbor officials said they “would also entertain other lease or sale arrangements that might be requested by city staff or city commissioners.”