SHELTER FOR HOMELESS MEN OPENS

A sobering light-filled facility has replaced a dark intoxicating
dance club near Shelby Drive and Millbranch. And about 50 government
and community officials came out last week for a nonalcoholic
celebration. The Cocaine and Alcohol Awareness Program Inc., a
nonprofit behavioral health agency, had a ribbon-cutting program at
its new transitional supportive housing facility for homeless men, at
1725 Pinebrook.The agency's executive director, Albert Richardson,
said the facility can house up to 40 clients, whom it will begin
accepting this week.

It will offer alcohol and drug dependency rehabilitation, relapse
prevention, parenting, domestic violence counseling, job readiness
counseling and anger management to nonveteran males.

Clients can live there for up to a year and participate in a two-year
aftercare plan.

Yvonne Leander, area coordinator for the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development, said the facility fills a need in homeless housing.

"Many men that are homeless today have special needs or face extreme
personal circumstances that propel them in and out of homelessness.
Others have lost their support network of family and friends or lack
basic job skills.

"But what they have in common is when there's no room in the homeless
shelter, or when the temporary housing runs out, many have no place to
go."

Richardson said the federal department awarded the project about
$500,000. The city's division of Housing and Community Development
awarded the project about $135,000.

The agency spent about $500,000 to buy and fix up the
10,125-square-foot building, which it began renovating in March 2000.

It was vacant for almost two years after it housed nightclubs
Sherrod's and Prentiss on the Hill, the site of a few shootings.

"You remember when fellows was shooting . . . and drinking," state
Sen. Roscoe Dixon (D-Memphis) said. "With all the problems this place
used to have, I don't see why we can't see it as a blessing. There
will be no alcohol here."

Among its five sites, the agency, founded in 1989, has a residential
program for homeless veterans at 3375 Winbrook.

The agency's first residential site at 1347 Ferguson is for alcohol-
and drug-dependent men and women.

It also has a corrections program for nonviolent female offenders at
3835 Lamar.

The agency's original site at 1656 Lamar has outpatient chemical
dependency treatment and counseling services, as well as a literacy
and DUI program.