COVINGTON, Ky. — Aaron Wolpert moved to Covington's west side with his family nine years ago. With a few abandoned homes here and there, the neighborhood was on the up-and-up, but recently, Wolpert said that progress has been sullied by an uptick of inappropriate activity.
"It's all new," he said. "None of us felt concerned or unsafe walking in the cemetery until about a year and a half ago."
That's the same time the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky opened the doors to its new facility on West 13th Street right across from Linden Grove Cemetery.
Wolpert said in the months following, he and other neighbors have noticed trash littering their streets and piles of beer cans in the cemetery and in Orchard Park, conspicuous sexual activity in the cemetery, jugs of urine left on porches, human feces desecrating graves, crowds of people lining West 13th Street sidewalks and illegally occupying an adjoining vacant building.
He said neighbors had to call non-emergency dispatch for a welfare check on a person passed out and unattended outside the shelter's front door for almost an hour.
Other neighbors — particularly women — have noted incidents in which they feared for their safety.
"In March of this year, while jogging in the cemetery, a man dressed in a black hoodie and jeans and a surgical mask started following me," Nicole Erwin said. "I called the cops because the behavior was unnerving and scary. At a later date, I along with my neighbor, saw the same person going into the shelter, which I also reported to the police."
But Erwin said nothing ever came of that report.
"After reporting my incident, I was told that the shelter had denied any responsibility because the police couldn’t identify the man on the property, so it wasn’t their problem," Erwin said. "However, it is clear in the code that this is in fact their problem. Only it’s people in the neighborhood who are being left to deal with it."
Both Erwin and Wolpert said they believe the shelter is responsible for multiple city code violations due to "mismanagement" of the property and the people they serve.
In early August, Wolpert filed eight complaints through the city code enforcement’s online portal, compiling his concerns and those of his fellow concerned residents.
The ordinance in question is outlined in Title XI, Chapter 124. Passed by the Covington Board of Commissioners three years ago, the legislation was drafted to ensure that every shelter in Covington serves its clients effectively and, in turn, doesn't transfer undue burden onto its neighbors or onto Covington's first responders.
"Our concern is that we're not sure that the emergency shelter is fulfilling those obligations under the ordinance," Erwin said.
Erwin said the shelter's executive director has shown up to several neighborhood meetings, but she never felt like her concerns were taken seriously. She said when she missed one of those meetings, she even wrote a letter to the director, which also went ignored.
"It had my phone number and email for follow up and I didn't hear anything," Erwin said. "There were other issues that we had noticed, for instance, suitcases and luggage being dropped off, mostly at the cemetery. We addressed this also through email and were kind of met with, again, just kind of ho-hum response."
"We pointed out pretty obvious drug dealing activity, the shelter's response was that, 'Well, we knew the situation we were getting into' as if drug activity was already a massive problem in our neighborhood and I can say, since I've lived here, that's not the case," Wolpert said.
He and Erwin took their concerns to the city at the start of the month. They spoke before the mayor and board of commissioners asking them to enforce city code in a way that "strikes a balance between the dignity and needs of the unhoused on the one hand, and the rights and security of Covington homeowners and renters on the other."
WCPO reached out to the shelter about the complaints Tuesday and a spokesperson vowed ESNKY has a "spotless record when it comes to code violations."
Libby Coulton said if neighbors felt ignored in the past, that wasn't their intention.
"If that meeting went that way, we will do our best to make this Thursday's meeting different," she said.
The shelter always strives to be a great neighbor and some neighbors even have the executive director's personal cell phone number, Coulton said.
"We are held to a higher standard when it comes to cleanliness and safety," Coulton said. "That's because Kenton County is our landlord and we have to go through and annual permitting process to get our permit to operate and we always meet or exceed the standard in that permitting process."
Coulton said the shelter received their renewed license just before she spoke with us.
But Erwin said her experience has proved the shelter's inability to communicate candidly and accept accountability for the people who use their services. The shelter regularly houses registered sex offenders, including some who have abused young children and there are school aged children who reside in multiple residences within a two block radius of the shelter, she said.
"We have always had an open door policy and we have reached out to those who have expressed these concerns in the past frequently," Coulton said. "Our residents have to sign a code of conduct when they come to us and we expect them to adhere to it and that code of conduct is intended to show them and tell them what it means to be a good citizen within the facility and outside of the facility."
In addition to the code violations that residents have witnessed outside the shelter, the group of concerned neighbors is also asking the City to look into the 'behind the scenes' requirements of the ordinance that they can't track, like the shelter's obligations to fulfill all mandatory state database reporting, specifically within the Kentucky Homelessness Management Information System.
Wolpert said it was revealed at the commissioners' meeting that ESNKY does not provide that information, though Coulton said that's not true.
"We actually are complying," she said. "We did get confirmation of that just yesterday from the city and obviously we wouldn't receive our permit if we were outside of any type of requirement."
Erwin and Wolpert said they would like the ESNKY board to account for funds being allocated while operating out of a Kenton County-owned building that relies heavily upon city resources. According to public recordsin 2022 ESNKY collected donations that more than tripled its annual expenses and currently reports $5.5 million in assets. During this same time, grants and contributions increased by over 90% while program services decreased by more than 25%.
They're not finding fault with the very real and apparent issues of homelessness or housing insecurities in the region, Wolpert said.
"I think on the surface level this can appear to be community members upset that there's a shelter in the backyard. This is not a case of NIMBYISM (Not In My Backyard mentality)," said Erwin. "It's us trying to bring attention to the people organizations that they want to share in this responsibility but then not fully meeting those expectations."
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