OneHeart lease review draws praise and criticism

RAPID CITY – Rapid City Council decided to issue a notice of non-renewal for One Heart, under the lease’s automatic renewal clause.

Ward 1 Council Member Stephen Tamang had made the request for discussion and possible direction on whether the City Council should issue a notice of non-renewal under the automatic renewal provision of the lease with OneHeart to preserve the City’s contractual rights prior to expiration of the initial lease term at the end of this year. The discussion was also to facilitate discussions regarding the long-term use of the property and buildings, and consider potential amendments or clarifications to the existing lease with OneHeart.

OneHeart describes itself as a transformative, sober-living campus designed to help individuals overcome crises, addiction, and homelessness to achieve self-sufficiency. It provides transitional housing, mental health counseling, job training, and educational services through a partnership-based referral model.

There were many employees, board members, business and city leaders who spoke in support of the nonprofit. There were numerous graduates and current attendees of OneHeart who spoke about the invaluable assistance they received. One graduate of the program Kyle Fast Horse said that he had a housing crisis and OneHeart helped him restructure his life and rebuild bonds with family.

Heidi Hillendbrand, daughter of Ray Hillenbrand and President of Dakota Charitable Foundation, asked council members to honor the intent of her father’s philanthropy when he donated the building to the city. “My dad, Ray Hillenbrand, went to considerable lengths to make sure that his campus was purchased and gifted to the city for the OneHeart vision, and I think there’s a lot of missing information. Maybe that information doesn’t make it out to the public.” She said that OneHeart is fulfilling its mission and that it’s operating at capacity.

One of the long-standing contentious issues is that participants must be at least 18 years old, have maintained sobriety for at least 90 days, and be referred by a partner agency.

Brandon Ferguson, from Silence Rapid City, spoke at the Legal and Finance committee meeting where he said his group focuses on Native-on-Native violence with an emphasis on child sexual assault. He criticized the effectiveness of current programs. He said more programs are created to fill the gaps instead of addressing the root of the problem, sexual assault.

“Four out of five youth are sexually assaulted before they turn twelve.” He cited suicide rates and the number of missing, all which remain at high levels. He questioned why those statistics never improve, despite many programs in existence, including OneHeart, and suggested that homelessness in Rapid City is a business. He said the OneHeart director and staff are guaranteed positions because of Rapid City’s homelessness. “If we solve a problem with homelessness in Rapid City, we’re going to lose so many programs.” He said tens of millions of dollars are raised in the name of Native American homelessness. He noted the recent Point In Time (PIT) Count, a federally funded yearly count of people experiencing homelessness. “The Count shows that there’s only 440 homeless, and that chronic homeless is less than 200 on the street.”

Ferguson said that after he spoke at the Legal and Finance Committee meeting he was contacted by more than one hundred community members many of whom shared their concerns over the extreme views expressed by the One Heart CEO and Executive Director in a book she self-published in 2008. Charity Doyle has served as Executive Director since the project’s early development in 2018. Ferguson said that Doyle is not an elected official and quoted words from the book. Mayor Jason Salamun asked Ferguson to stop talking about a private citizen.

Ferguson asked the city council to at least examine if the organization is aligning with its promised goal. “It’s nothing against OneHeart personally. It’s questioning whether or not this program that initially came to this circle when it first started, if they are aligning with what they had promised that they were going to accomplish in these last five years.” He said the organization brings in millions of dollars “off of servicing 50 people a year.”

Tamang said there is no reason to be afraid of a lease renewal of a city-owned asset and that it happens on a regular basis. “The reason why OneHeart is unique is because it interacts with many other agencies and organizations that depend on them for an outflow track for supportive housing. It is our biggest effective asset for supportive housing.” He described council members as collectively passionate about the agencies, relationships, and people that utilize OneHeart, and agreed that results have been good. “But we have an obligation of a city-owned asset to understand those processes, to try to improve them or to understand them.” He said it would be inappropriate for the council to renew a lease without first investigating it. He said that the “allergic reaction” was unnecessary. “The only thing this item does was to remove an auto renew for an evaluation, a relatively common governance item. I brought it forward because it was a necessary thing to do. It’s not comfortable to do it. I knew it wouldn’t be comfortable to do it.” He said he has had good conversations with board members and promised that they would find a “better place for OneHeart in the future.”

Council member Bill Evans from Ward 2 said council members are subject to a lot of comments. “Things get legs that actually have no basis. And in fact a lot of people get self-righteous and accuse us of cahoots, and we’ve heard it from both sides tonight.” He quoted Exodus about bearing false witness. “People run with these rumors and create a false narrative.” He explained the review of a renewal process is standard practice. A long-time music teacher Evans said teachers get evaluated “at every turn. You don’t complain about that. You know it’s part of the process. I don’t see this at all as being destructive to the cause of the mission of OneHeart, which we all think is great, but I think it’s important we have transparency in government and shine the light on anything that is endorsed as a non-profit so that people know what the real mission is and how it works.”

(Contact Marnie Cook cookm8715@gmail.com)

The post OneHeart lease review draws praise and criticism first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

Visit Original Source