Christmas Day Fire Destroys Women's Shelter

Fire finishes what Hurricane Ike started.

Albany mission serves up meals, hope

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
First published in print: Friday, December 26, 2008
timesunion.com

ALBANY -- If she had the money, Diane Carroll would have joined family in Florida for Christmas. Instead, the bundled-up 61-year-old sat alone at the Capital City Rescue Mission on Thursday afternoon, scooping mashed potatoes onto a plastic fork.

"I'm kind of down low," said Carroll, who lost her job cleaning hotel rooms in October. "I didn't give my granddaughter anything for Christmas."

Carroll was among the thousands of Albany-area residents who spent Christmas at the South Pearl Street mission, enjoying gifts and food prepared by a small army of volunteers.

The nonprofit Christian organization anticipated serving up to 3,500 meals by the end of the day. To accommodate them, volunteers and staff cooked up some 960 pounds of ham, 1,350 pounds of yams, and 600 pounds of veggies.

Overseeing it all from beneath his tall white hat was executive chef Max Ansong. As workers stirred a huge vat of onions and poked timers into the honey-glazed hams, Ansong recalled his old life as a chef at the Fort Orange Club, where he prepared pts and other fine cuisine for elites like former Gov. George Pataki. The native of Ghana also worked in embassies serving heads of state.

Now he serves the homeless, the needy and the substance-addicted.

"This is something that as a Christian I know is a call from God," he said. "It's not about only telling people about Jesus. It's how you serve them."

The hundreds of volunteers served them more than food Thursday. There was worship: a chapel service and men handing out small green Bibles. The mission is an unabashedly Christian organization that takes no government money, according to its executive director, Perry Jones. It raises about $2 million a year from individuals, churches, corporations and foundations, he said.

There were toys, too. The mission's South End warehouse bustled like a Wal-Mart, with people lining up to get free Christmas presents grouped by gender and age. There were stuffed animals and some 250 basketballs.

"The needy that come to us, most of them don't have money to buy gifts this time of year," Jones said. "Especially with the economy the way it is."

Jones' group also gave away practical stuff, like socks, gloves and hats.

John Fiscarelli was especially grateful for the gloves.

"Should be warmer than these suckers," he said, pulling some ragged gray gloves from his pocket.

The disabled 57-year-old said he gets by on food stamps and soup kitchens, and by scrounging in Dumpsters. The mission offered meals to go Thursday. Fiscarelli had loaded four dinners onto his bicycle.

His next destination was home, where he planned to eat before the food got cold.

Marc Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com.

Freestore food distribution up 16 percent

Business Courier of Cincinnati

The Freestore Foodbank distributed enough emergency food boxes on Tuesday to feed 5,851 people, a 16 percent increase over a year prior.

The Over-the-Rhine pantry will continue to pass out food through Dec. 24. In all, the Foodbank will provide more than 500,000 pounds of food to about 16,000 families this holiday season.

Atlanta homeless shelter meets payment deadline

Group that runs Pine Street facility paid $8,000 on Monday

By ERIC STIRGUS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, December 22, 2008

The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless met its 5 p.m. deadline Monday to pay the city of Atlanta $8,035 to avoid havig its water service shut off.

“We are going to pay our bills,” Tony Thomas, a spokesman for the task force, said Monday afternoon.

The task force, located in a two-story brick building at the northeast corner of Peachtree and Pine streets, serves about 700 homeless people a day at its Midtown headquarters.

City officials say the $8,035 is part of an estimated $160,000 owed to Atlanta’s Watershed Management Department. Task force leaders dispute a portion of the bill and are fighting the city in court.

Task force leaders say the water bill is part of the city’s long-standing effort to get the organization out of its current location, across the street from Emory Crawford Long Hospital and near the Bank of America building. City officials and some homelessness advocates counter the task force is poorly managed and needs to accept greater responsibility for its troubles.

The task force is behind in its $6,000-a-month interest payments to two of its three lenders that loaned the organization a total of more than $4.4 million. The organization also has a federal tax lien of $66,453 for not paying payroll taxes in 2001, 2006 and 2007. Executive Director Anita Beaty said the organization is working to resolve those issues.

Thomas said the organization has received donations from across the country since its troubles with the city became public last month. He said the task force is working to rebuild its donor base, but Thomas said that will take time.

Beaty rebutted suggestions that it is fiscally irresponsible. She said the task force has spent $4 million on improvements to its cavernous headquarters.

Beaty also defended the task force against claims that it doesn’t offer enough services to help the homeless and allows dangerous men to stay there.

“It’s true. We don’t refuse anybody. We want to help these people. We don’t want anybody to die,” Beaty said, referring to Monday’s subfreezing temperatures.

The task force’s next payment to the city, $7,675.58, is due on Jan. 5.

Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless