Dividing downtown

Arriving at work one Monday morning, Kathleen Blanchette found remnants of a fire at the front door of Forest Funeral Home on West Railroad Avenue in downtown Shelton.

"I have installed outdoor cameras at my business at the advice of the police," Blanchette told the Shelton City Council at its Aug. 6 meeting. "I have also put in extra lighting, but I still have human feces, both front and back at different times, in the built-in planters out front. There has been soiled men's underwear, there has been used female products. I have had my windows broken."

Blanchette told the council and a packed council chamber that she is never rude to street people and when asked, lets them use her bathroom and gives them water. But she said she has been accosted and no longer feels safe parking in her alley.

"We need to protect people who need to be protected," she said. "We need to help people who need to be helped. We need to hold accountable people who need to be held accountable."

Blanchette is among the downtown Shelton business owners who say homeless people on the street are trespassing, defecating and urinating in public, leaving trash and blocking sidewalks. Some spoke during public comments at the council's Aug. 6 meeting.

Dean Jewett, who owns Radio Fryer with his wife, Jackie, said city laws and ordinances "need to be enforced unilaterally."

"We pass ordinances and laws to make sure we don't have mayhem and chaos," he said. "It's irrelevant as far as whether the people have feelings about those, or their socioeconomic status, or whether they're housed or unhoused. It doesn't matter, OK? The laws and ordinances are there for a reason."

Littering is prohibited in Shelton, but the law is not being enforced in Brewer Park, Jewett said. Obstructing sidewalks is also against the law, but people occupied the sidewalk in front of Green Diamond Resources headquarters on Third Street for 72 hours, he said.

The City Council is discussing establishing laws on shopping carts, but at a recent work study session "a lot of the stuff that I heard in there, 'Let's just pass an ordinance, people are going to have to comply with it.' Well, we all know how that goes, look at the other ordinances."

Jackie Jewett told the council she read the city's code enforcement that states it "works with residents and property owners to maintain and improve property, aesthetics, property values and community appearance. Me personally, I don't think this is happening in my situation."

Two people who work with the homeless downtown told the council they don't feel threatened.

"I understand that people say the downtown is scary," said Susan Kirchoff, founder and executive director of Shelton Youth Connection on Second Street. "I walk downtown every day by myself. I don't get scared. I meet people, I say 'hi' to them, they say 'hi' back to me. They're unhoused, they're housed. I don't look at it that way. I just say hello to them. I'm concerned that we as a community are being divided by something that we shouldn't be divided by. We should be coming together and trying to come up with a solution and that's not jailing them, it's not fining them, it's finding a way to getting them housed. They have to get housed."

Jamie Ellertsen, who works with counseling and referal services with homeless people next door to Shelton Youth Connection, said she doesn't feel threatened working downtown on Second Street.

"I will not discredit anyone's experiences in you have been accosted by someone who has been homeless," she said. "But I will say, that has never been my experience. I work sometimes until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, by myself, on Second Street, and I've never had somebody walk me to my car and I park in the alley. With that being said, I also want to agree, there is a problem in Shelton. We see it. But if there's a problem with garbage, where is the garbage coming from, a lot of it? A lot of it comes from the business owner's garbage cans that refuse to lock those garbage cans. Why can't people lock their garbage cans? We do. And I work with homeless every single day."

Ellertsen added, "I get it. Brewer Park, that's not a great place for people to be, it doesn't look appealing. But when people are at camps and they get moved out of camps, they move to the city. And then they get moved out of the city, it's back into the county and it's back and forth. I'm not justifying behaviors, but statistically speaking, why do homeless individuals congregate together? For safety."

Ellertsen said the city needs to form a public safety committee that would include first responders, law enforcement and homeless people "so that we can hear and come up with solutions together, as a team, not point fingers, our houseless is frustrated too."

Former Shelton City Council member Kathy McDowell recommended that the city host a town hall meeting.

"I think a town hall meeting is very important, and I hope you'll put your heads together and get one planned for maybe in the fall. That we can all get together and talk things out and have new ideas and old ideas."

The Journal asked downtown Shelton business owners to share their experience.

2nd Street Design Studio owner Holly Cahoon said she is "hopeful" the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling camping bans on public property are legal will spur Shelton to clean up downtown. Cahoon's three-generation business has seen many changes in 51-years at its location on Second Street.

"We had a beautiful park across the street from us. Lots of people used it. The businesspeople used it for lunch," Cahoon told the Journal, speaking about Post Office Park.

Now the homeless urinate and defecate in the park, she said. "No one wants to go out there and eat." The gazebo is gone because people were using it as a bedroom and a living room, she said.

"As a town, we have to decide what we want our downtown to look like. Do we want to be a hub for homeless and provide kitchens and bathrooms and showering? What do we want? We need viable businesses that pay taxes," she said.

Cahoon, like other downtown business owners, is frustrated. "We call the cops constantly because I feel we need a report of everything."

Cahoon wants to document the problems. Her picture window has been broken, her front door smashed and her lobby and computers vandalized, she said. "We're constantly picking up clothes, blankets, food."

Cahoon and her employees also clean up drug paraphernalia and human waste around the salon. Garbage cans are stuffed and the city doesn't pick them up, she said. Paying for locks on her own garbage cans costs her additional fees each month.

"People poop and pee in my planters ... I have to power wash around my business more often because they're peeing on my brick wall," she said.

Recently, a man parked his "ratty" car in front of her business for weeks, taking up customer parking, she said. He was eventually arrested after he climbed up on her awning. He went to jail, but the car remained. Cahoon said she called police three or four times and was told the city no longer has a parking officer.

"They just basically said there's nothing we can do about it."

Then she tried asking code enforcement for help. "They basically just laughed in my face."

A call to the police chief finally got the vehicle moved. "He knows me. I think he's fantastic," Cahoon said of Shelton Police Chief Chris Kostad.

She said the chief found the car didn't belong to the man jailed and police contacted the owner to get the vehicle moved.

"We lost parking for two weeks and they just kind of laughed in our faces until the police chief had to get to the bottom of it. I think that's wrong," Cahoon said.

Despite the problems, Cahoon said she doesn't feel unsafe downtown. "I don't take stupid chances," she said.

Some of her customers and potential customers are wary of the area, though. "A lot of people have that perception," Cahoon said. "Downtown is unsafe so they won't come anymore. Of course it affects my business."

Letting people sleep on public property, in private businesses' doorways, allowing the mentally ill and addicts to have rein of downtown "is not compassion. You can't leave them to lay in the gutter," Cahoon said.

She said her salon gives free haircuts to the homeless and she is not without compassion. But it's time for the city to "put its foot down," she said.

Many residents feel the same way as Cahoon, she said, but they are afraid to speak up because they don't want to be judged as uncaring. "So they keep their mouths shut. But we have to make a stand for our downtown and our town."

Mark Mottet, who owns Mottet Fine Jewelry and Design store on Railroad Avenue with his wife, Pepper, used one word to describe downtown Shelton's crime and homeless problem: "Crummy."

Mottet told the Journal he recently chased away someone urinating in his storefront flowerpot.

"There's a few who walk around holding conversations with trees, books, walls ... with machetes and big bat-sized sticks in their hands."

Mottet said his wife loves dragons, so the store has several dragon pieces for sale, including big ones in the window. People who are "not all together with it or under the influence" talk to the dragons and once his security camera caught a person kissing them through the window.

"They make our customers uncomfortable," he said.

Mottet's jewelry store, specializing in repairs, restoration and custom design, can't afford to lose customers. "Our doors are open and we're scraping by thanks to inflation," he said. "It's terribly tight."

The downtown Shelton environment has been "psychologically affecting our customers. They don't want to come in," Mottet said.

"We have several that will call us when they're coming in and they'll park in the parking lot ... and we'll escort them in and out," he said.

Mottet said he was homeless at one point in his life and that 97% of homeless are "trying to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, get a hand up instead of a handout."

In Shelton, it's the 3% who are visible, he said. "And we see them constantly."

Mottet said he can call law enforcement about people "shooting up in the alley" and it can take them half an hour to respond.

"I get it. I was a 911 dispatcher. I know how things can get busy," he said. "There's not much we can do. There's not much law enforcement can do."

He said it's frustrating not just for downtown business owners but for people who were raised to "be responsible for their actions."

"We don't hold people accountable enough for their actions," he said.

Mottet said there is no clear answer to Shelton's downtown crime and homeless problem.

"If you do one thing, you're going to get a ton of negative feedback," he said.

"We've got to come up with some sort of plan."