Newspaper Page Text
®
Homeless in Augusta
Local businessman works to provide solution to lingering problem of homelessness.
By Rhonda Jones
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
Tuesday afternoon, Butch Gal
lop, a local businessman, had to
condemn a house, the home of a
couple and their seven kids, age
13 and under. By his account,
the place was falling down
around the family, with giant
holes in the walls.
“Asbestos had ate up the wood
ing,” he said, and littered the
inside of the house, where rats
“as big as cats” ran through it.
According to Mr. Gallop, who
has just been elected president
of the Augusta Task Force for
the Homeless, the Housing and
Urban Development representa
tive who had accompanied him
demanded that the family be tak
en to livable quarters immedi
ately.
“Whereis your emergency shel
ter?” she asked. Mr. Gallop had
to tell her that the city of Augus
ta doesn’t actually have a shel
ter, other than the overnight
keeps like the one provided by
the Salvation Army, where the
Black market grows in state
From page one
Georgia is also a leader in the
concentration of black markets.
According to the study, the mar
ket share (or concentration)
claimed by black consumers has
important marketing implica
tions because the higher the
market share of black purchas
For the dail ind
or us, the daily grin
[ J
comes three times a day.
. sho?
o
77 e
/by o . over
lEr, (it n
? fregy you €
% 2 07, edt )
at g /r 2 01///// : Hnt\ i) \\ o nd
’ By, / o 0 ne oW &
“ots of | of the
7
_ 7t ad 0
- st 1 all ot f
[he il U Once g \\mllml_ e
e 80, ' Classte . jomato 50
S [”[//.//\/ . . | l)H'| o D
SO thor ) ¥ € //’/[/u/ e gronnt hoppe d
ieres ahwg,, / 7 i R 14 Vs lea® & [l onion fnely chol
VS ple g L W T R O 5 ! aall ontofa g
! ,”»] ogo aroyy, / 0,, i, ‘5':?.5”%1 A f bre ud u‘um|’ eLy
- ¢ e s ; o . soft bree
. o e, Wi b | cup SO .
Wheneye, 2 ; 2 tershire SUils
vey You 5 i Sl P, g i | T i, o 2 [sp WOIES
T omedn W P : T I egg, slightly beate™ ‘
2 - : ‘ R Yo G e
20t SO muce s e B e onrlicsalt tsp ]
C/I //1(1/ i ‘ ~# ; 5 ; : :/% 7 ] tsp dned thyme leaves ® ]
winds up sitting arous, T B - ol , o Dioioh Skt
I 9 around. 2* 2 . _ I tsp dry mustard ®| [0 paclked brown suga
As a result, we'll put the Publix meat grinders ke : , ; :
/ % s Hcatuyen to 350° Mi i of the tomato sauce with
‘ / i
7 )1r paces three :
[hmugh i ) : . : brown s;3 and mistar o) /
/ :::,' : - e el aside
P jve times a day, ; ' g 3
four and fir : C 4 ) HCa,. .
4 Wt gy ien
i Y, A il v HiLxn //H i
if tl t's I{7hat 1t lakßS- i . gerd - wroughly by
I_{l wt e . : Drvide nto 14
E 7 AL "l ST
0J- i e "3,
Jay is not unheard f F s 1), loaves, eqe
: ten times a aay Iy o v g ‘Ches thi, /]
0 ) 7 7 . P Place
Even bs()l“tL ) - P ¢ N
_ can ")(l o ’ / ,S}lrp,,(/ il " open o, o
Ay W o R Boy, Mg pay,
« the only W& ; el 1 E r Pof loay,
ftst 4 meat we S k. p &, Peke 4
0 £ y A JUice 710 4+
1 {h(,’ gr(flfn "35‘ d,afd's i /% ;" r Tun “/M// ; ”/”/”/l‘,
Ct’fi aim o agn . g P /’//1///),_
1o L At TR ; " coo;
) oW e . T . “Ing
wp ¥ T PR b .
... 0 M R ; &
-t W I b 4 alvg,’
ARy istt he heS L g i (o'lle(; "oy g
ause ¥ yof ™ T . s o,
pec e T . i . i Noy U
100 as 5 O - y SUPEM’ S3@ ’r
you' . ;f' M"’fk[g . ér,
s T , .
At ww) 5 ik V.
The o : Y
men have to be separated from
the women and the children.
Mr. Gallop is planning to
change that.
One of the projects he intends
to take on as head of the Task
Force for the Homeless is turn
ing Bethel AME Church on
D’Antignac Street and James
Brown Blvd. into Bethel Out
reach Center, Inc., a place for
homeless people to once again
become productive members of
society.
The program, he said, will re
volve around the notion that a
person becomes homeless for a
reason: alcohol and drug addic
tion, inadequate job skills, sud
den job loss, physical or mental
illness. His program calls for
bringing people into the Center
for assessment to find out why
they are homeless, and provid
ing them with semi-permanent
shelter while they are partici
pants. The next stepis to provide
help for their problems, be that
medical care orjob training. Com
pletion of the program, he said,
will take about six months.
After attending a meeting of
the Richmond County Board of
ers, the lower the cost of reach
ing potential buyers. The more
diffuse the market, the more diffi
cult it is to target the black con
sumer, although selective media
and zip code mailings can lower
the unit cost of reaching individu
als. The 10 states (including the
Districtof Columbia)with the larg
est shares of total buying power
that is black are the District of
Columbia, Mississippi, Maryland,
Local News
The Task Force for
eslimates that there
are 5,000 “hard-core”
Estimatesof the
whohaveno
move from place to
high. =~
Commissioners the same day he
condemned the house, Mr. Gal
lop was optimistic about his abil
ity to fund the project. “It looks
very favorable that the County
commissioners will assist us with
the program.” He doesn’t know
how much he might be able to get
from the County, but said both
the state and city have approved
specific amounts, S3O thousand
South Carolina, Louisiana, Geor
gia, Alabama, North Carolina,
Virginia, and New York.
Black Buying Power in
Georgia Soars
Black consumers control one
of every six dollars spent in the
state of Georgia. Dr. Jeffrey M.
Humphreys, the author of the
report, points out that, for many
of Georgia’s businesses, the abil
and sls thousand, respectively.
When asked if the city’s finan
cial straits worried him at all, he
said he had already received a
letter of approval and a contract
for the funding. “We could start
drawing from that money if we
wanted to now.”
So far, he plans to start reno
vating the church in October or
November, and says the Center
should be open for business
around April or May.
This is good news for everyone
in the Augusta/Richmond Coun
ty area, he said, because anyone
could become homeless through
the right turn of events. “If you
didn’t get paid in two weeks —
two major checks,” he said, “you
could find yourself homeless.”
The Task Force for the Home
less estimates that there are
5,000 “hard-core” homeless in
Augusta. Estimates of the “mov
ing homeless” — who have no
permanent home but move from
place to place (family, friends,
sometimes shelters) — are ap
proximately 10,000.
Every day, he said, they re
ceive about five calls from the
newly homeless.
|
ity to capture black spending can |
make the difference between |
success and failure. i
By 1996 Georgia’s black buy- |
ing power is expected to equal
$23.0 billion, or 16.2 percent of
the state’s total buying power of
$142.1 billion. Statewide black 5
buying power in 1996 will sur- |
pass the comparable 1990 total |
by $7.7 billion, an increase of |
49.9 percent. |
AUGUSTA FOCUS
Business League
-exec happy with
new direction
B In effort to forge
partnerships with
total community,
League won’t dwell on
minority status.
Rhonda Y. Maree
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
Although promotion of minor
ity business remains the prima
ry focus for the CSRA Business
League, the organization is re
thinking its total mission
“While it’s still one of our main
concerns, it’s not our only con
cern,” said Kelley McKie, CSRA
Business League director.
“Our total mission is to en
hance the entire community,
hopefully through minority busi
ness,” Ms. McKie said.
But the word “minority” has
such a narrow connotation for
many people, so words such as
“small,” “disadvantaged” and
“underutilized” are more appro
priate, she said.
“We're at a point now where
we have to re-address how we're
going to target the community,
and we're doing that by creating
different partnerships in the
community that will make peo
ple see the CSRA Business
League in a different light —
that we're not just minority busi
ness anymore,” she said.
Partnerships with organiza
tions such as Golden Harvest
Food Bank and Project Success
August 17, 1995
Teow oS
o
e O b
P {
BUSINESS LEADER Kelly McKie
are key to the Business League’s
more creative approach to get
the entire community involved
in its mission.
But minority business will not
suffer during this restructuring,
as it is the focal point of the
Augusta Minority Business De
velopment Center, which is a
subsidiary of the Business
League.
Ms. McKie said confusion aris
es over the difference between
the Business League and
AMBDC. The Business League
is a trade organization with no
employees, only a board of direc
tors. This same board, however,
hasoverseen the AMBDC for the
past 14 years through a contrac
tual agreement with the Depart
ment of Commerce.
“We're two totally different
entities,” Ms. McKie said. “We're
just under one roof, and the staff
here for the Center does a lot of
See BUSINESS LEAGUE, page 10
3