Everyone at first thought it was a joke.
It was the summer of 2015, and Carpenter’s Shelter was facing a big dilemma. A developer had offered to remake the Alexandria shelter, housed in an old Department of Motor Vehicles building on North
Henry Street, into a modern space that would not only have the capacity to shelter more homeless people, but also offer affordable housing. The shelter’s board of directors wanted to move forward, but it could not get past the most important issue of all: What would happen to the homeless people already there? Carpenter’s needed 18 months for the renovation. In the meantime, where would the homeless go? Where would they live?
“How about Landmark Mall,” somebody suddenly suggested at a
task-force meeting to discuss the issue, and everyone laughed at the thought of a shelter at a shopping mall.
What began as a joke, however, soon became a plan, and then a construction site and, finally, inside a vacant Macy’s, a homeless shelter, where Carpenter’s executive director Shannon Steene has his office in a corner that had until recently been home to women’s active apparel.
Inside the space, the department store feels far away, but hints are still there: the scuffed
tiles and gray carpeting, the mirrored columns, the vast parking lot, the giant sign where someone did a poor job of painting over the Macy’s name and the customers who come by every now and then looking to do some shopping but instead finding homeless people.
The idea that spurred this transformation represents a new way of thinking that is bringing together three economic phenomena: the collapse of the brick-and-mortar retail industry, the disappearance of affordable housing in
America’s boom towns, and the struggle to reduce homelessness, which remains...
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