City orders Refuge Room to quit operating
BY MICHAEL ARMSTRONG
After the Refuge Room pulled its September 2007 conditional-use permit application, City Planner Rick Abboud last week issued an enforcement order demanding it quit operating as an overnight facility. Abboud also gave the men's housing facility a chance to file another CUP or appeal the enforcement order. The Refuge Room has 30 days to respond.
Pastor Darren Williams, head of Refuge Chapel, the church that operates the facility next to the church building on Pioneer Avenue, said he had not received the enforcement order. The order was included in this week's Homer Advisory Planning Commission meeting packet. Williams said he and church elders will consider the order and discuss options.
"We're back before the starting point five years ago," Williams said.
The Refuge Room is a seven-bed overnight facility for adult men. It charges a $10 nightly fee or $300 a month. An overseer also stays at the facility. Men must be sober and not on drugs to stay there. Men who cannot afford housing can get assistance from other programs.
"If there's someone who shows up needing a place to stay and can't afford $30-$40 a night, we won't let them sleep in the cold," Williams said.
Abboud's order is the latest episode in a drama that goes back to November 2005, when Refuge Chapel applied for a CUP to operate a homeless shelter for men. Following criticism over running a homeless shelter, Refuge Chapel pulled its application in January 2006. The city then told Refuge Chapel it needed a CUP to operate as "other use" under city code. Refuge Chapel filed another CUP in September 2007 to operate as a dormitory-style housing facility. The planning commission granted that CUP. Citizen activist Frank Griswold appealed that decision to the Homer City Council, meeting as the Board of Adjustment, saying a planning staff member had a conflict of interest, and the board sent it back to the planning commission.
Last year, new city planner Rick Abboud determined Refuge Room was a rooming house and did not need a CUP. Griswold appealed that ruling, and the planning commission voted to overturn Abboud's ruling. The Board of Adjustment upheld the planning commission's decision and sent Refuge Chapel's CUP back to the commission — in effect, putting the application back where it had been in September 2007. Refuge Chapel then pulled that application.
With no CUP on file, Abboud then wrote his enforcement order.
"While I do not have recent guidance on just what the planning commission now believes the use of the Refuge Room constitutes (previously a dormitory-style housing facility for men), I can be certain that it is not a rooming house or any other outright permitted use of the Central Business District (CBD)," Abboud wrote.
Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.
