City Council to decide homeless shelter issue w/ Joplin Fire Department inspection and Joplin Heath Department notice of violations

By Greg Grisolano

ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com

The Joplin City Council is expected to make a decision tonight on whether to allow City of Refuge to continue to operate its homeless shelter.

More than 40 homeless people are staying at the shelter, which is located in an old cold-storage warehouse at 502 E. Seventh St., just south of the Seventh Street viaduct. The organization also provides drug and alcohol recovery, ministry services, and a food pantry out of that location.

But even if the council goes against an advisory board’s recommendation and grants a rezoning request in favor of the shelter operation, the leader of the organization, Dan Anderson, said over the weekend that he might have to move his ministry anyway.

He said he does not want to continue to invest in a building that the ministry does not own.

“I see no sense in continuing to upgrade, spending money and volunteers’ time on a facility we can’t keep,” Anderson said.

But just what the obstacle is to the ministry proceeding with its plan to purchase the building could not be ascertained by the Globe over the weekend.

Anderson said Saturday that the owner of the building, Gary Garvin, recently suggested that the building was no longer for sale.

Garvin told the Globe that he did make a comment recently about not wanting to sell, but that “I was just kind of trying to kid around a little bit.”

“Yeah, I’d be willing to sell,” he said in a phone interview Saturday night. “The figure in my mind is closer to $175,000, but I don’t have the papers at home.”

Anderson said City of Refuge has had a month-to-month lease agreement with Garvin since moving into the building in February 2007. He said the terms of the lease include $1,150 a month in rent for the building. Garvin said he pays for the maintenance of the existing heating and air-conditioning units, and the roof, as stipulated in the lease.

Anderson said he inquired about purchasing the building about three months into the lease. He said Garvin offered to sell it to him for $165,000 cash or to finance the building for 20 years and sell it for $175,000.

Anderson said he “never had any thought about moving” before Garvin’s comment about not wanting to sell.

“We’d be happy to stay there if he’d sell,” he said, adding that the neighborhood has a history of homeless habitation. “This is just the ideal location for us.”