Demolish the Wellstone Center!
We have another problem property folks. I think it should be dealt with just like all the other problem properties that commit offenses, DEMOLISH IT!
Reprinted from the Pioneer Press
Rowdy kids are too much for area
Fights, misbehavior make Neighborhood House a 'hot spot'
BY LAURA YUEN
Pioneer Press
If you build it, they will come — and they might come talking trash.
Few could have seen that cause-and-effect relationship after the gleaming new Neighborhood House facility opened in January on St. Paul's West Side.
In recent months, some parents and community leaders say they've been troubled by large groups of young people engaging in fights or intimidating behavior outside of the Paula and Sheila Wellstone Center for Community Building, a $25 million hub for Neighborhood House and city recreation programs.
"Neighborhood House saved my life, and it kills me that friends and neighbors have said, 'I wouldn't send my kids there,' " said Don Luna, a board member of the organization and police community liaison who grew up with Neighborhood House. "(Some teens) are fighting, mouthing off, standing in the middle of the streets and challenging police."
The facility became a "hot spot" for concern on summer evenings, but increased staffing and monitoring of the groups have helped quiet things down, said Bob Trammell, St. Paul's director of recreation services. The city operates two gyms through the El Rio Vista Recreation Center, which is in the same building.
In August, police made 27 visits to 179 E. Robie St., mostly in response to disturbance reports. In the past year, other calls involved suspected marijuana possession, graffiti and theft. This summer, parks and recreation officials temporarily banned seven teens from returning.
"Those type of behaviors could have happened at any of our 41 recreation centers," Trammel said. "It's more of an intimidation factor than anything else. Our challenge is to get the kids more actively involved in the activities."
Officials with Neighborhood House, the city and several other community agencies have discussed issues of safety, especially as they have related to troubling incidents in the neighborhood and throughout the city, said its president, Dan Hoxworth. He said his organization is taking the concerns seriously.
Some of those incidents had no connection to the young people who congregate outside Neighborhood House, but they added to a general uneasiness in the area. For example, one adult student in the agency's English-language learning program was assaulted after class about a month ago while waiting for a bus about a block away.
Community leaders agree that the problems associated with the youths might be an offshoot of the facility's success.
The number of young people who have registered in Neighborhood House programs has doubled since last year. More than 150 kids come to the facility each night — "a pretty phenomenal response" to the new building, Hoxworth said.
"We weren't prepared to handle the kind of numbers, or the personalities, of some of the kids," Luna said.
Although some longtime residents perceive the problems to be driven by people coming from outside the neighborhood, 75 percent to 80 percent of the youth participants are from the West Side, Hoxworth said.
A larger presence of African-American kids could have contributed to some clashes with Latino and Asian-American kids, officials said.
"I don't know if I could say these were racially motivated behaviors, but I can't say they weren't," Trammell said. "They are behaviors we experience regardless of race."
Laura Yuen can be reached at lyuen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5498.
Reprinted from the Pioneer Press
Rowdy kids are too much for area
Fights, misbehavior make Neighborhood House a 'hot spot'
BY LAURA YUEN
Pioneer Press
If you build it, they will come — and they might come talking trash.
Few could have seen that cause-and-effect relationship after the gleaming new Neighborhood House facility opened in January on St. Paul's West Side.
In recent months, some parents and community leaders say they've been troubled by large groups of young people engaging in fights or intimidating behavior outside of the Paula and Sheila Wellstone Center for Community Building, a $25 million hub for Neighborhood House and city recreation programs.
"Neighborhood House saved my life, and it kills me that friends and neighbors have said, 'I wouldn't send my kids there,' " said Don Luna, a board member of the organization and police community liaison who grew up with Neighborhood House. "(Some teens) are fighting, mouthing off, standing in the middle of the streets and challenging police."
The facility became a "hot spot" for concern on summer evenings, but increased staffing and monitoring of the groups have helped quiet things down, said Bob Trammell, St. Paul's director of recreation services. The city operates two gyms through the El Rio Vista Recreation Center, which is in the same building.
In August, police made 27 visits to 179 E. Robie St., mostly in response to disturbance reports. In the past year, other calls involved suspected marijuana possession, graffiti and theft. This summer, parks and recreation officials temporarily banned seven teens from returning.
"Those type of behaviors could have happened at any of our 41 recreation centers," Trammel said. "It's more of an intimidation factor than anything else. Our challenge is to get the kids more actively involved in the activities."
Officials with Neighborhood House, the city and several other community agencies have discussed issues of safety, especially as they have related to troubling incidents in the neighborhood and throughout the city, said its president, Dan Hoxworth. He said his organization is taking the concerns seriously.
Some of those incidents had no connection to the young people who congregate outside Neighborhood House, but they added to a general uneasiness in the area. For example, one adult student in the agency's English-language learning program was assaulted after class about a month ago while waiting for a bus about a block away.
Community leaders agree that the problems associated with the youths might be an offshoot of the facility's success.
The number of young people who have registered in Neighborhood House programs has doubled since last year. More than 150 kids come to the facility each night — "a pretty phenomenal response" to the new building, Hoxworth said.
"We weren't prepared to handle the kind of numbers, or the personalities, of some of the kids," Luna said.
Although some longtime residents perceive the problems to be driven by people coming from outside the neighborhood, 75 percent to 80 percent of the youth participants are from the West Side, Hoxworth said.
A larger presence of African-American kids could have contributed to some clashes with Latino and Asian-American kids, officials said.
"I don't know if I could say these were racially motivated behaviors, but I can't say they weren't," Trammell said. "They are behaviors we experience regardless of race."
Laura Yuen can be reached at lyuen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5498.
posted by Bob at Saturday, October 21, 2006
13 Comments:
And when these kids grow up and try to rent and continue these problems, they will be creating problems for other buildings (and more people)! Then they will bring "racially motivated behavior" upon themselves if they rent within the city of st.paul and they won't be treated as poor disadvantaged juveniles, they will be treated as criminals and forced to move out or be arrested and then in our everso fickle court system, set free the next day. Oh, by the way is this really what they need? I say need because I'm sure most of them are at ages where a job would benefit and suit them more than a place to hang out at taxpayer's expense. Why do we do that to our kids? Why do we keep dumbing down our kids by giving them the impression that they have to do nothing and still be handed things without having to work for them. These kids need to be rounded up and put on a volunteer team to help the elderly with their properties, next they should be handed a broom and scrub bucket and put to work to keep that facility cleaned. St.Paul clean up your act and cut out the crap. Let the honest, law-abiding citizens live their lives without your involvement because in my eyes you have no righteous judgement or sense about how to run anything except a galloping tab on vacant housing.
Come on, there not going to tear the Wellstone Center down. This is a government building-it doesn't have to follow the same rules as the rest of us home/property owners in St Paul. I've got a good idea, why don't they just staff a few St Paul Police officers there on the taxpayers dollar like they do at other city government properties. This should solve the problem right? This place would have to have several murders in order to get the attention of Code Enforcement/City of St Paul. And only then they may decide to issue orders. If you are not part of this sick circle of government types, you are not going to be a happy St Paul resident.
Of course it won't get torn down! I'm thinking Bob has some sarcasm going on here in his heading. But really, police the building? Why should taxpayers pay for it? Of course it won't get torn because the city doesn't have sound judgment for anything it does!
Having it standing doesn't solve the problem of the kid's (who will soon be adults) behavior! Why should there be a building like this that draws attention and invitation to come hang out there? Why I'll bet that most kids go there expecting and even looking forward to the enjoyment that the place has to offer in fighting and to have a place to drink, do drugs and party down. Once again we think the solution is to call the police in to fix everything and not take steps to really solve the problem. Not that we ever could. 100 years ago kids were given 2 option contribute to society, go to school and get educated for a job and help at home and stay out of trouble; Or get out and see what it's like to take care of yourself. So when these kids are out there as adults by the year 2010, they will either be locked up, again at taxpayers' expense or on the streets causing trouble and collecting welfare! Brialliance!!
It is "brilliance" because in 2010 the politicians will then have a lot more problems to tackle, more staff to hire, more new jail facilities, courts, cops, social workers, and last but not least, they have to keep the people who maufacture the bulldozers employed or they wouldn't be able to keep up with tearing down the houses these people will live in.
Oh and I forgot....Kathy lantry will not be able to recieve any more complaints in her office, and without her made up complaints and someone to screw over for it, she would be the same old nothing that she is now, but without the phoney front to pretend she is important.
Kathy Lantry is a big time property manager, don't forget about that. She uses her "property manager" title to make people thing she knows what she is talking about when it comes to these landlord issues.
What she doesn't tell people is that she was a manager at a apartment complex that does not have the same problems that the single family and duplex properties have renting to the poorest of the poor. She knows how to manage a building that rents to people who work jobs, have money and credit and don't give her the trouble the smaller landlords face. Those 2 types of rental business are completely different and have nothing at all to do with each other.
Lantry was not the owner, she was just hired help with a glorified title. She never had to make a decision with her own money and income on the line, and she never had to eat hot dogs for a month as a result of a bad decision. She got paid wether things went well or not.
Kathy Lantry has been around for years now with her anti landlord message. Just ask yourself....are you better off now as a result of Lantry's policies and hatred toward landlords?
Is the city better off? You be the judge, take a drive through the east side and north end and see if they look better. Are you safer with big mouth Kathy? Look at the crime reports on the police department web site, see what they say. Better yet, go on down on Payne Ave at any time of the day or night and see if you feel safe getting out of your car. Wanna raise your kids in a safe neighborhood? Take em to Kathy's east side and drop em off at the playground to play for a while...NOT!!! But wait.....Kathy is going to save the city once again. Now the council is going to have tighter and more stringent regulations for rental properties as a result of the high forclosure rate and all the vacant homes littered around her and Bostrom's ward. I have some news for you Lantry and Bostrom....the reason most of those landlords walked away from those properties is because of your corruption and nazi tactics in your inspections department. You wanna make more regulations, go ahead, you will only compound the problem again. Many people told you years ago about what the outcome of your policies would be and you wouldn't listen. I'm betting that your are stupid enough to repeat the same mistake again! It's time for you to go Kathy....and take that decrepid old Bostrom with you , he looks and talks as if he is ready for a nursing home somewhere.
I believe in your blog and most of your arguments, but back off on Kathey Lantry. I have voted for her every election. She does make a difference. She keeps my kids safe. They cannot buy loosies any longer. What do you have to say about that Mr. Know-it-all?
What else you got to sing the praises on her? What else has she done? I'd like to keep hearing on what she votes on, recommends and comments that she makes as far as people's property rights. She keeps loosies out of your child's hands! Wanna know what she kept out of my child's future?!!!
Here's a story of a West St. Paul homeless homeowner:
Okay what solutions can any of you think of for her? I'm thinking turning her house into a halfway house with her as a tenant and getting a live-in treatment worker; getting her to clean up her act; maybe getting the management skills needed; maybe training for a job and owning the halfway house. What else. I know you can do a better job than the city council did!
Alice in no man's land
West St. Paul officials have taken unusual steps to rid the city of a nuisance: They seek a one-year order barring a resident from her home, which police say is used as a flophouse.
BY BRIAN BONNER
Pioneer Press
CRAIG BORCK, Pioneer Press
Alice Krengel stands in the spot where she sleeps on a mat on the floor in the Dorothy Day Center. Despite owning her own home in West St. Paul, Alice Krengel is homeless. Years of alchoholism and problem police calls to her house have exhausted the city's patience.
More photosAlice Krengel, West St. Paul's No. 1 public nuisance, is living on the streets again — for the third time in six years.
The city says Krengel has been using her home for years as a flophouse for criminals, drunks and drug users. Police went to her house 41 times this year alone. Deciding enough was enough, the city forced Krengel out on Aug. 7 and boarded up the home.
Her status as a homeless woman who owns her own home makes her an anomaly. But her alcoholism, which she admits, and possible mental illness, which she disputes, make her more typical of Minnesota's chronic homeless.
City officials are fed up after having spent hundreds of hours and thousands of taxpayer dollars responding to problems at 823 Allen Ave. Her neighbors and relatives are just as exasperated.
City Attorney Kori Land went to court last Tuesday to ask that Krengel be barred from her own home for a year for habitually violating the state's public nuisance law.
Krengel, 55, has been on the streets almost three months, after a temporary court order in the city's favor. She is guilty of trespassing if she sets foot on her property without police escort or permission.
District Judge Leslie Metzen is expected to rule on the proposed one-year expulsion in November. The judge will decide how much nuisance a city is forced to tolerate from one household and how far officials can go in separating someone from his or her property.
"This is the first time I've heard of somebody who is homeless and has a house," said Laura Kadwell, the state's director for ending long-term homelessness. "It sounds to me like somebody should be advocating for her and looking at mental health and chemical dependency issues."
Land said the city has simply run out of options. "The city's resources have been expended over the last six years to the point of exhaustion," she said.
Land said officials would rather take the responsibility for ensuring the security of Krengel's vacant house than continually respond to problems when she and her guests stay there.
The city's goal in removing Krengel from her house, Land said, is to "break the cycle" and force her to disassociate from troubling acquaintances who use her and her house, with or without her permission.
The one-year ban is an unusual remedy, Land said, but justified by Krengel's inability to control what happens on her property.
"My hope is that she will get help in that year," Land said. "Believe me, I am looking for any creative solution I can find. The city wants to get to the heart of the problem so it doesn't continue a year from now."
SEES HERSELF AS A VICTIM
Krengel showed up for Tuesday's court hearing wearing dark blue shorts and a blue tie-dye T-shirt. She carried her ever-present drink tumbler that she regularly refills with Diet Pepsi.
When she's sober, Krengel can be well-spoken and outgoing. When she's drunk, she is known to be foul-mouthed and capable of violent outbursts.
In January 2003, Krengel pleaded guilty to hitting a tenant over the head with a frying pan, an assault she still denies.
While West St. Paul is in the heart of the metropolitan area, the St. Paul suburb of 20,000 residents has intimate features of small-town life. Officials have come to know Krengel well.
As a rookie police officer in 1988, part of Police Chief Bud Shaver's orientation tour included a stop at Krengel's house. Eighteen years later, veterans still tell rookies "they'll meet Alice quite frequently during their shifts," Shaver said.
Outside of her official duties, Land has had pleasant conversations with Krengel at St. Matthew's Catholic Church on St. Paul's West Side, where the attorney has served meals to the homeless.
"Actually, I feel bad for Alice," Land said.
But Krengel sees none of the concern and compassion.
She sees herself as the victim of a conspiracy between city officials and Metzen, the judge. She said police are picking on her while ignoring more serious crimes taking place in the neighborhood.
Their goal, she said, is to seize her two-story, four-bedroom house and subdivide her large lot for a new house and extra tax revenue. The officials are seeking to accomplish their mission, Krengel said, by keeping her out of her home long enough for her to fall behind on bills.
"I would rather have had 30 days in jail instead of this," Krengel said. "It's inhumane. We don't treat dogs like this."
Krengel's lawyer, Julia Althoff, is asking Metzen to let Krengel return home.
SIMILAR ORDERS TWICE BEFORE
A.
lthoff said conditions at the house have improved since Krengel entered into an agreement with the city on Aug. 22, 2005, to stay sober, not permit alcohol in the house and allow police officers inside for random inspections.
"She said it would get better, and it got better," Althoff said.
Krengel, acknowledging that she has trouble controlling who comes and goes from her house, said she sought restraining orders to prevent four men from coming onto her property.
But West St. Paul officials told Metzen that Krengel has repeatedly violated terms of the August 2005 agreement.
In the last six years, police have documented 180 trips to Krengel's house. Responding officers have measured blood-alcohol levels of 0.30 percent or higher in men at the home. Officers have gotten infested with fleas while inspecting the home.
Neighbors living on each side of Krengel's home told Metzen they are relieved to have her gone.
Tim Stiles started keeping a written log in recent years but didn't call police about minor incidents, such as public urination and loud arguments. "It was a revolving door as far as tenants," Stiles said.
Another neighbor, Mike Frame, said the men who hung out at Krengel's house were mainly concerned with "drinking, arguing and partying."
The city has gotten court orders to kick Krengel out of her house twice before, in 2000 and 2003. Inspectors both times declared the home unfit for human habitation, mainly because of unsanitary conditions. Krengel said they caught her both times on bad housekeeping days.
She was out of her house for about a year the first time and re-entered after a childhood acquaintance who owns a small construction company fixed the problems. She was out for about three months the second time.
Also in 2000, Dakota County social workers found her to be an unfit mother and removed the youngest two of her three children, sons who are now 20 and 15. Her oldest child, a daughter now 31, left home in 1993 at age 18. The subject of her children brings Krengel to tears.
Krengel traces her problems to early childhood and blames her adoptive parents for favoring her three adopted sisters. She said she is an outcast from her family, which includes an elderly mother in Eagan.
'OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY'
Two of Krengel's relatives are not necessarily opposed to what West St. Paul is doing, as long as the judge or someone else orders her to submit to inpatient chemical-dependency treatment and undergo a mental health evaluation.
Krengel's younger sister, Diane Krengel Reinhardt, 53, of Langdon, N.D., and Krengel's daughter, Angela Hall, of Burnsville, came to Tuesday's court hearing.
"I don't think kicking her out for a year is going to solve anything unless she has six months of inpatient treatment followed by six months in the halfway house," Hall said. "Her reality is different from normal reality."
"By taking her out of the house, we're not tackling the issue," Krengel Reinhardt said. "We need to get her into a safe environment."
Hall said she never had a mother-daughter relationship with Krengel. At age 12, Hall started calling her Alice, rather than mom. Once she moved out, she "pretty much never looked back," Hall said.
Krengel never married, Hall said, and the three siblings each have different fathers. After her two brothers were removed, Hall said Krengel — who's always had trouble getting and keeping jobs — lost her welfare checks and turned to boarders as a source of income.
"I don't know what went wrong. It's pretty bad when your mom's at the bottom of society. It hurts," Hall said. "She has given up a lot for alcohol. She gave up her children for alcohol. She's given up herself as a person for alcohol."
Shortly after the hearing, Krengel expressed anguish over the fate of her beloved cats, which she has been unable to locate for many days. "This is probably tearing me apart more than any other factor …," she wrote in a fax to the Pioneer Press.
The sentiment doesn't surprise her sister. "She cares more about her cats than her kids," Krengel Reinhardt said.
Contrary to her sister's claims of growing up in an abusive family, Krengel Reinhardt said "we all were treated extremely well by our family, including Alice, who was spoiled rotten." Their father, who died in 1995, paid off Krengel's mortgage in 1991.
Krengel Reinhardt said her older sister showed early promise, but also the same traits that seem to have blossomed into mental illness: an inability to comprehend the consequences of her actions and denial of reality.
"Nothing has ever been her fault her whole life," Krengel Reinhardt said. "That goes back to baseball games" when she refused to acknowledge being out on a play.
At Krengel's best, she was physically attractive and "a brilliant, top-notch, straight-A student without opening a book," Krengel Reinhardt said. The sister traced the start of Krengel's descent into drinking to her college days in Bozeman, Mont.
After the court hearing, Krengel Reinhardt offered to take her sister back to North Dakota with her. But Krengel spurned the invitation.
While Krengel admits that her neighborhood is not the best place for her, with the temptations of Marty's Bar and 40 Acres Liquor Store less than a block away, she won't consider selling the house where she's lived since 1987. It's worth an estimated $183,000.
"I'll die fighting for what I believe in most," Krengel said. "That is my house."
In my opinion the first concern of the city should be the well being of people. By making someone homeless it does not address the issue at all, if anything it will worsen the problem at several locations instead of one. The city needs to learn how to deal with the problem, it might be costly but the longterm effect and the outcome are what needs to be looked at. With proper longterm treatment, professional help with the possible mental illness issues and some real support to make an individual feel like they can become and be accepted as part of the community has a great effect on the outcome. You don't take everything thats means something to a person that has an addiction and expect them to seek treatment, you are going to get the adverse an addict is going to turn to more of the only thing they know to cover up their real pain and feelings. There is no reason the city should come in with their code compliance tactics to make it impossible for a homeowner keep their home. The future of these forms of tactics are showing; look at the list of vacant buildings and the high rate of speeed it is increasing, along with that list also comes a longer list of homelessness because each of these buildings had more than one person residing in them. The future: Somebodies going to have to pay for these people to live, the taxpayers. Wouldn't the future be a much better picture if the city were to take the tax dollars and rehabilitate people into becoming productive tax paying citizens?? You must also remember most of these people also have children that suffer the consequences as well. These children need their parents to be just that parents, the children are the future of the city, what roads do you think they are going to follow? Stable housing is very important all around and what I see the city doing is disrupting the main ingrediant for a successfull community.
Nancy(formerly of St.Paul)
Most of these people that the city has all of these problems with are mentally ill, alcoholics or drug addicts or all three.
I'm not sure about mental illness, but being an alcoholic or a drug addict is a sickness and considered a disablitiy, and thus the city is discriminating against another protected class of people once again, and someone should sue them again just as the landlords have sued for violating the rights of a different protected class of people. I think these lawsuits with the landlords are just the tip of the iceberg. When they win, and they will win, that will send a clear signal to all "ambulance chasing" Attorneys that there is money to be made and there's going to be a blizzard of these kinds of lawsuits. I wonder when the city is going to wise up? One would think that they would change their behavior when they are being sued for something, but no, not these guys. They not only refuse to do any investigations of the people involved or re-assign people, they continue to go on with business as usual, and now it appears they are willing to even willing to increase the civil right violations by going after another protected class of people.
Joe Souchery has a story in todays paper titled "The offended are now offensive," and in that story he makes the following comment:
"We elect people that get so heavily involved in promoting victim constituencies that it will come back to haunt them some day"
I think that statement speaks volumes about the current city council in St. Paul. In looking at a past posting it has made me realize that this these Council people have not done much of anything for the common good of anything. Everything they do nad say is devisive and pandering to some perceived victim somewhere. Their job should be to grease the tracks so people can get along and have a life and make investments in the city and cultivate business opportunitites, but this Council only seems to know how to punish people and beat them up with an iron fist. They remind me of the bullies on the playground during grade schol.
Hey 11:23 its not Lantrys job to keep your children safe and loosies out of their hands.Its people like you who think its the governments job to raise and protect peoples kids.Its yours the parents job to do that.its time society starts holding idividuals responsible for their actions.
So in a nut shell 11:23 its you who needs to protect and keep you children safe.
Hi All,
For those of you who haven't caught on, this post was shocking sarcasm.
Of coarse I don't want the Wellstone Center demolished!
However, I don't want affordable housing demolished either over behavioral problems.
I don't want legitimate business held responsible for others behaviors.The sale of LOOSIES should not be an issue.
I want people arrested for the crimes they commit and innocent people left to live their lives without undo responsibilities of law enforcement put upon their shoulders. Law enforcement is the governments responsibility not average citizens.It's time we quit holding innocent people responsible for others mistakes.
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