Amarillo shares plan for its Transformation Park to address homelessness

At its last meeting, the Amarillo City Council was given the city’s plan to address its homeless population in the form of a cabin community that would be a private-public partnership designed to create better outcomes to get people off the streets and into a shelter.

The project, now known as Transformation Park, will be a nonprofit that provides temporary housing to those experiencing homelessness and gives them access to community services to get them into more stable living situations. This community will partner with the city, area churches and local businesses to address Amarillo's homelessness issue.

To fund this project, Transformation Park will receive American Rescue Act funding along with a $500,000 donation from Hillside Christian Church and a $1 million gift from Joe and Laura Street of Street Toyota. Transformation Park will be built adjacent to the new multimodal transit center at Sixth Avenue and South Bowie Street to give those in the community better access to transportation services.

More:Amarillo explores new solution for homeless in pallet shelter community

“I drive around that facility that is now just a bunch of grass and dirt, and I envision what it can be and what it can do for the homeless of the community,” Joe Street said. "This is just a win for everybody, but it's really a win for the homeless in our community.”

Joe Street said that he is honored to be a part of this project that could do a lot to help transform the lives of the homeless. He has been on the Guyon Saunders Resource Board for more than 20 years and is a former president of the United Way in Amarillo.

“It has always been my wish to do something significant for the homeless population that would make an impact for a lot of people for the community as a whole,” Joe Street said. “I am just really proud of the private businesses coming together with the city of Amarillo and area churches to do something that is going to make a lot of difference in people’s lives.”

He said he was really pleased with how this project has expanded to bring meaningful change and options for the homeless population.

Chair of the Transformation Park board Tommy Politz, a pastor at Hillside Christian Church, spoke about his group’s commitment to the project. Politz has been on the board for about a year, and his role is to help empower the executive director of the Transformation Park to make the project run smoothly.

He said for him, it was his personal convictions as a Christian that had him wanting to get involved in this project.

“We at Hillside Christian Church are very committed to our missional aspect to this community,” Politz said. “I just see it as a privilege that we get to do this as a community, serving people we love, because the homeless are our community. They are not some add-on, and I think sometimes people forget that they are our community, and we are their community. We are all neighbors.”

“One of the things that has been vitally important has been members of our board going to visit other communities to get a vision of what we want to do operationally here, to be able to help the homeless,” Politz added.

Politz said that he and his church were involved in the process due to their community service experience.

Mark Zimmerman of Hillside Christian Church was chosen to be the first executive director of Transformation Park. Zimmerman said he has been a pastor for more than 30 years and said he wants to be a part of the long-term success of this project.

He said that after initially being lukewarm on the project when offered the chance at the position, God really weighed on his mind to lead the center.

“I have sensed some restlessness over the past few years about what was next in my life, and I feel like this project was meant to be for me from God,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman said that his experience as the operations and development pastor with Hillside would be beneficial, since he has regularly overseen large projects and budgets with the church and has had reliable results dealing with contractors to get these projects done.

“The majority of our community has never experienced homelessness, as neither have I, but we can still have compassion for that person," Zimmerman said. “When you look in their eyes, they are children of God too, and He has asked us to serve and take care of the least fortunate. We all have a part to play in that.”

Jason Riddlespurger, director of community development for Amarillo, spoke about the goal and scope of the project. He said that the hope is to break ground on the project in the spring of 2023.

At the last winter Point In Time count, there were 539 people without homes in Amarillo and 368 without shelter.

“That is way too many people living on the streets, not living where they should have to lay their heads," Riddlespurger said. “This is really going to fill a gap that we have not had for a long time.”

Riddlespurger said that the project would have its shelters provided by a company called Pallet, which bills itself as a leader in rapid-response shelter villages that combines the dignity of personal space with the healing of the community.

He wanted to emphasize that while the company calls itself Pallet, these shelters are cabins that can be put together quickly and panels can be replaced with ease. Designed to have a durability of 10 years and be resistant to mold, rot, and pests, these shelters can be easily cleaned as one resident moves out and another moves in. The name of the company has more to do with the ability to move all of its parts easily and have the parts stored on a pallet to build these shelters.

Riddlespurger said that he wants to make sure this project is done right from the beginning, and he is confident that this plan is workable to achieve its goals. He said one of the things that this project is trying to eliminate barriers is getting people off the street and meeting their needs to transition them to getting housing.

“We’re working with them to transition them into actual, permanent housing, because it’s difficult to go from homelessness into permanent housing,” Riddlespurger continued. “We have seen people that struggle mightily with that, and we do not want that. We want them to be successful.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo shares plan for its Transformation Park