The Separation of Morality and Business
Carly MacLeod
“It's just not appropriate,” uttered many prominent business owners on N. Hanover Street. They were referring to plans to build a new day center to help Carlisle's homeless, which would be located in a building behind 132 N. Hanover Street.
The plan to build a day center, which would provide necessities such as showers, an address and phone number to put on job applications, and career placement services to Carlisle's homeless, was brought before the town in mid-February. The property on N. Hanover Street was generously offered to Carlisle CARES as a potential site for the rent of $1 a year. CARES (Combined Area Resources for Emergency Shelter) is an organization that provides homeless individuals with shelter every night. Their location changes to a different host church by month, but families with children are put up in a local motel. The proposed day center would give these people a place to go during the day and provide them with the services necessary to get back on their feet. The day center, their most ambitious project to date, initially received tremendous support from the Carlisle Borough council. Soon after the project was approved however, it met substantial resistance from the local business owners.
“The day center can be, and will be, located elsewhere,” asserted David Ison, owner of the Good Life Café. Ison, who supports the idea of a day center to help with services for the homeless, feels torn because although he finds this service necessary for Carlisle to grow, “the presence of homeless people discourages retail activity.” Like several other business owners, such as the owners of JW Music, the N. Hanover Grill, and the Printed Image, Ison says that he needs to look at this “with his business cap on,” particularly since his business already gives back substantially to the Carlisle community – all of the Good Life Café's products come from local farms, and it also currently employs four homeless workers.
Many business owners are taking the “business cap” approach. It is something they use to justify the separation of the businessman from other parts of themselves. And for some, this means the separation between businessman and being a good Christian. Some owners said that they “do their part” at church, but they need to separate these aspects of their life. Chris Petsin, owner of the N. Hanover Grill, said “I have a family to feed. I am a father, a husband, and a Christian at home …sometimes you have to look at business decisions versus other decisions.”
The business decisions that appeared to concern most of the business owners are those regarding the on-going redevelopment effort on Hanover Street. Local business owners are trying to attract new retailers to fill the currently vacant buildings on the street in an attempt to bring more visitors and customers to downtown Carlisle. They are seeking to make it a tourist destination, and not a destination for the homeless as several fear it will become should the day center be passed. Justin Walters of JW Music stated that he imagined “lots of transients wandering up and down the street … I can see them spilling out of the center, onto the fronts of local businesses. They are not desirable individuals to be around.”
Not all businesses on North Hanover share this view. Representatives from Mount Fuji and Javid's restaurants said that the owners were quite impartial, and the owners of Shutterfly, a photo studio, were quite happy with the idea. Michelle Braxton, a co-owner of Shutterfly, said that her business would not be affected by the opening of a day center for the homeless: “If [the homeless] have an alternative to my porch, that's great!” Braxton also did not seem to worry about the imagined damage brought on by any local homeless. “As a business owner, I see more damage done by drunks. But you don't hear anyone saying we should close down the bars, do you?” the studio owner said.
For the businesses that are against the day center, the levels to which businesses were informed varied. While some such as Ison are working to bring together homeless individuals with concerned business men, others admitted having little to no idea about the situation in Carlisle. While CARES has sheltered over one hundred individuals in the last six months, some owners said that they don't think homelessness is a big problem. Petsin remarked, “I can't identify a large number [of homeless]… I don't think it's a big problem. The real problem is with loitering, and vagrancy. And every time you open another shelter, more come in.”
Of the businesses opposed to the day center, all of the owners simply stated that homeless individuals and thriving business activity do not mix. When asked to elaborate on this widely-accepted reason, many were unable to articulate why, or stumbled to sound politically correct. John Thompson, owner of the Printed Image, said that “the deal is very generous … but if we're trying to improve the downtown, we must be careful about adding social services there. I don't want to sound politically incorrect, but this is something more suited to be … on the fringes.” And each of these owners responded with a question along the lines of “What would you do if you were an investor or business owner, even just a customer, and you saw homeless people downtown? Would you really want to put your money into this?”
While it is easy to peg these business owners as the bad guys, as a CARES volunteer and a student in the Carlisle community I have to say that the moral responsibility does not fall solely on them. It falls on every patron of N. Hanover Street. These people opposed are reacting to what they think we, their customers, want. And they believe that by seeing a homeless individual by their business, they will lose us as customers. So we are charged to do moral evaluations of ourselves. And if we can find ourselves capable of living side by side with people all different classes, then we need to let these business owners know that they will not lose us if the homeless center is built. But if they are not willing to look beyond social politics, you can let them know that by doing exactly what they fear; bringing your business elsewhere.
In spite of this debate, CARES is continuing to push for the N. Hanover Street property, while also looking for other possible sites.
The Good Life Café is happy to host a discussion to further explore this topic. To contact owner David Ison, call 243-4968.