 |
VISION: Barr leads the center’s
advocates.
Sociology Department |
even though there’s
still more than $2 million to raise for the Opportunity
Center of the Mid-Peninsula, Don Barr is convinced that
the new multiservice facility for the homeless will
open within the next two years.
“I have complete faith that those in the Palo
Alto, mid-Peninsula area who have benefited personally
or through business from the tremendous success of the
area will feel that the only thing to do is to support
this project with capital contributions,” he says.
“It will make this community what people want
this community to be.”
Barr, MS ’90, PhD ’93, an associate teaching
professor of sociology and human biology and a staff
physician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, has been
advocating for the center for more than five years.
He heads the Community Working Group, a network of local
nonprofit, government and religious bodies. The Working
Group, whose board members include linguistics professor
Tom Wasow and LaDoris Cordell, JD ’74, vice provost
and special counselor to the University president, has
soothed community objections so successfully that the
Palo Alto City Council in March unanimously approved
the $23.8 million drop-in center and its 88 units of
low-income housing.
Earlier opposition to the center, Barr says, “was
a classic story of crying NIMBY,” (not in my backyard).
“But after seven different public hearings, when
they finally called for nays, not a hand went up.”
Construction is expected to start in June on the site
at 33 Encina Avenue, a side street between the Town
and Country Shopping Center and the Palo Alto Medical
Foundation. Separate units will serve single adults
and women with children—an estimated 150 clients
per day.
“Anybody who comes in safe and sober is welcome,”
Barr says. “They can talk to people, have coffee,
take showers, wash clothes and register for medical
care, mental health services, job training, money management
and housing referral assistance.” Apartments also
will be available for 71 single adults and 18 families,
for periods of up to 24 months. “But the only
way into the housing is through registering with a professional
social case worker,” Barr adds. “This is
not a shelter.”
The center is expected to provide services that area
churches can no longer afford to maintain. And Barr
sees several roles for Stanford and its students.
“From a compassionate and from a scholarly perspective,
there’s a very real potential for the University
to be a leader in terms of understanding more about
poverty and homelessness,” he says. “And
students in service-learning projects will be able to
create information about who these people are, where
they come from, why they’re unhoused and what
happens to them over time.”
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