Reflecting on Pleasant Hill and Planning for the Future

Hello Friends of Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing,

It is time for a major update in the life of our organization.  This will be long because it’s a personal note from me to you and I’m a talker!  Plus, I am trying to anticipate your questions.  If you want to skip to the bottom, that will work as well!

You may or may not have heard about our recent request and denial with the Pleasant Hill Board of Adjustment on June 6^th.  It is true that we have spent a lot of time under the radar for a handful of reasons. I’m not sure if that worked the way we hoped it would, but I would like to bring everyone up to speed.

While site and funding are both golden tickets, they are also a chicken-and-egg type of situation.  Why?  Well, you can’t purchase a building or land without funding, but you can’t put together your funding deck without site control and an address! We found a location in Pleasant Hill that gave us what we need most: time. 

We did some research and realized that the site hit all of the checkboxes that we were looking for in a site as well: 

• It is in Polk County.
• It is walking distance to a bus stop.
• It is walking distance to a grocery store.
• It is close to several job opportunities.
• It is close to other resources (such as pharmacy and clinic). 

We decided to investigate further: ‘What would the City of Pleasant Hill think,’ and ‘Could we fit our minimum of 100 studio apartments plus our “heart spaces” (community and supportive services spaces) on the site?’  Slingshot Architecture assured us that yes, we could fit.  And the City of Pleasant Hill welcomed a continued conversation.  So, the GDMSH Board made the decision to sign a purchase agreement for the land and keep moving forward!

Fourteen months and $156,000+ later we had made major progress on the site:

• We met with all elected officials.
• We met with the Police Chief and Fire Chief.
• We met with the business neighbors.
• We had the campus designed down to the doorknobs.
• We had applied for two multi-million-dollar funding opportunities. 

Not everything was perfect.  One, we were trying to fit a rectangle on a triangle and so we needed to move forward with city requests earlier than we would have otherwise.  Plus, we still needed to hire a civil engineer and spend some time and money on that piece of the work.  And recently there has been discussion about Pleasant Hill not being a part of DART anymore, which would have meant losing the bus stop across the street.  On top of that, we were still working on getting our funding deck together.  So, overall, we were hopeful, but several big things still needed to happen.

We went in front of the Board of Adjustment (BOA) on June 6^th with two asks:  a conditional use permit request and a setback variance request.  It was an open meeting.  There are two articles that came out regarding this meeting: 

• Here is a link to the Business Record article published before the meeting
• And the Des Moines Register article published after the meeting.

It was a public meeting, and many neighbors came out to voice their disapproval.  We had prepared a detailed presentation, and we were happy to have several letters of support and letters of need on our behalf.  Unfortunately, the BOA denied our request in a 3-2 vote.  It was devastating to be denied that permit, both to our spirit and also to the site.  The only path forward in Pleasant Hill would be to appeal against the decision to the district court or to substantially change our model.  Neither of those options feel like the next right step so we need to say goodbye to Pleasant Hill.

What does that mean for Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing?  We took a week to reflect and then we had our June Board of Directors meeting.  We took stock of what we know:

• We have more people unhoused or unstably housed than we ever have in Polk County, honestly, in the country.
• Central Iowa’s rental housing vacancy rate is lower than it has ever been.
• There is more funding in our community than we have ever seen due to Covid funding opportunities.
• Our community is on the precipice of a true housing crisis with red flashing warning lights.
• Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing does have resources to continue, although limited.
• The Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing team and board feels more supported than ever.
• We were SO close… TWICE.  And it is hard to get that close!
• So, in summary, GDMSH is more committed than we have ever been, and we are going for a round three! (You may remember our first attempt was with the Valley West Inn in West Des Moines back in 2022). 

As we think through our next steps, we need to be both urgent and intentional.  INTENTIONAL because if this is truly our last shot, we need to pick the right site, but URGENT because we also need to recognize that the time and funding are slipping away.

Thank you for everything, whether you have been with us since Day 1 or have recently tuned in… we are so thankful.  We are open to any and all ideas!

• If you have someone that you think I should meet with, I am happy to! 
• If you know of a site that might be a fit, please let me know!

We are NOT back to the beginning!  We have learned an incredible amount.  We have brought amazing people and organizations alongside us.  We CAN still do this, but it will need to be a team effort.  I plan to email much more frequently with updates large and small and likely also asks for support.  This is a proven solution with an experienced team for a documented need in our community.  Let’s make belonging, wellness, and home for everyone our community’s top priority and it will ripple out to impact the social health of all of us.

I continue to feel humbled and grateful to get to be a piece of this advocacy work.

To be continued,
Emily