A friend of mine, Bob Chalfant, responded to my last week’s article about establishing a program similar to the highly successful Harlem Children’s Zone right here in Cleveland thusly:
“I’m seeing your vision of the Wilson School, or any of the soon-to-close schools being re-purposed to apartments and school as you described. My experience tells me that a location with a predominance of single women always attracts a large number of single men. This happens from puberty to grave and is a human survival trait: nothing we can do about it. It starts in summer camp, runs through high school and college, and continues until we die. Why else would a bar have “Ladies Night”? Why do strip clubs exist?
In my neighborhood we have Park Place, an apartment building that caters to single mothers with Section 8 housing benefits. When the sun goes down the dogs come howling. On more than one occasion there have been gun battles in the parking lot.
Given what we know, how can we structure a housing / schooling / adult learning dream to be successful? There has to be a way.
With all the experience that CMHA has, can someone there provide some guidance on what to do and not do? Does Case Western’s Mandel School of Applied Social Science http://msass.case.edu/ have anything to tell us? There must be a dozen overlapping city, county, state, federal and NGO (non-gov’t organizations) agencies with some experience in this. How can they all fail?”
Bob’s concerns are legitimate. However, I can point to two facilities I’m aware of which house women, and neither of them experience a problem with unwanted males prowling the periphery — day or night. One is Hitchcock House on Ansel Road which houses recovering female addicts and allows their children to stay on-site with them; and the other is the Women’s Shelter on Payne Avenue.
To my knowledge there has never been a problem with men prowling about on Ansel Road, but about a year after the Woman’s Shelter opened I kept seeing guys congregating across the street, and they clearly were up to no good.
Since soon-to-retire Cleveland Police Captain Joe Sadie and I were among the first people to set foot in the Payne Avenue shelter (we took over a couple of truck loads of toys from his Cops & Kids Program for the children of the residents) I had a special affinity for the place, even though I have nothing to do with its operation. But what I did do was to call Captain Sadie and inform him of the nascent problem … which was soon solved by a strong police presence. The dudes were told in no uncertain terms that they were not going to be allowed to hang out there. Period.
The thing is, cops can’t be everywhere, but targeted places, like Park Place that Bob spoke of can be made safe and secure. And it’s really not all that hard … and it won’t be for a location like Wilson School.
You see, Wilson School is in my ‘hood … it’s in Hough. And while the thugs still act out on occasion, trust me, there are enough grown men in my neighborhood who are ready, willing and able to protect young mothers and children. Of course we might have to threaten to kick a little butt if the thug element doesn’t get the message, but if we can’t do that, then what kind of men are we? We’ll stop it before it gets started.
The persons who really need their butts kicked are the ones who put together the Park Place housing and then failed to anticipate (and then nip in the bud) any acting out by young males. All too often programs are half-heartedly thrown together, and then when they fail, arms-length liberals throw their hands up in the air and say, “See no matter what you do you just can’t help those folks.”
When the Cleveland Children’s Zone is built (not if, but when) rest assured that we will make it a success … we know how. But building the head of steam that will be required to make the dream a reality is going to take some heavy lifting.
The Department of Children and Family Services is set to closely examine its reunification policies: Are children being given back to unfit parents too soon? In light of the recent deaths and abuses to children, the only answer to that question is an unequivocal “yes.” The next line of inquiry will undoubtedly be “then what should we do about it?”
The answer to that one, unfortunately, will be (but not in these exact words) to “continue to nibble around the edges of the problem.” Have the caseworkers take harder looks, put more training in place before abusive mothers get their kids back, etc., etc., etc. But none of the answers will go to the heart of the problem: Even with the best of counseling many of these mothers will still not be fit parents — they simply were too ill-raised themselves for part-time, twice or thrice a week parenting classes to do much good.
Anyone who saw the film “Precious” got a glimpse of how the “game” sometimes goes: When the social worker is in the house (or the parent is in a class) even dysfunctional mothers know how to display proper behavior and give the answers the social worker wants to hear … but, in too many cases (just like in the film), the minute the authority figure is gone and they are out from under the microscope, too many parents revert back to their old behaviors. Why? They’re too far gone … they simply don’t know any better.
That’s why the only real answer is to teach these parents with marginal — or no — skills the proper way right from the beginning; from proper prenatal care onward. It’s working in Harlem New York, it’s being proposed in 20 other cities across the country, why not here in Cuyahoga County? Next week I’ll start answering that question … but it’s not a pretty answer.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.