ANIMAL PEOPLE is the
leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage
of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has
no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.
Demolition, eviction, & good
deeds that save animal shelters
DELHI, CANCUN, BUCHAREST, MONROE (Ct.)—Two kinds of good deeds are
the life and death of animal shelters: good deeds for animals, and good
title deeds to the land they occupy.
Rescuers
who try to do good deeds without good title deeds may find their hopes
and dreams crashing down around them, as Friendicoes SECA shelter manager
Geeta Seshamani of Delhi, India did on March 16, 2005.
Acclaimed worldwide for tsunami relief work in Tamil Nadu state and the
Andaman Islands, Friendicoes SECA “just had a large chunk of its
shelter ripped down by a demolition squad,” Seshamani e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE.
In addition to her regular workload, Seshamani for the first six weeks
of 2005 supervised operations at the Wildlife SOS sanctuary for rescued
dancing bears near Agra, while Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satnarayan
directed the three Wildlife SOS/Friendicoes SECA tsunami relief teams.
The field work left both institutions shorthanded.
Then Wildlife SOS took in 15 bear cubs after a series of raids on poachers
and traffickers in Goa and Karnataka states. Nine of the cubs were so
young that they required bottle feeding. Seshamani is the usual surrogate
mama bear in such cases.
But no situation is so hectic that it cannot get worse.
“Have not slept a wink for the last two days and nights, running
from pillar to post making petitions to all authorities,” Seshamani
continued. “Friendicoes has so little space to begin with, and this
corridor of land,” where the demolition occurred, “was the hugest
dustbin and pile of rubble you ever saw,” before Friendicoes annexed
it. The rubbish heap “had been there for 15 years while the authorities
fought over who had a a budget to clean it up,” Seshamani said. “I
asked for use of it, saying if we could clean it up, we could keep our
Animal Birth Control program post-surgery cases there. They must have
thought I was mad, and the local [municipal] engineer gave me permission.
It took us a year to make it presentable, a bit at a time,” while
a ruling by the Supreme Court of India in favor of the ABC approach and
against killing dogs resulted in the Friendicoes SECA sterilization surgery
workload doubling.
“We covered the corridor with fibreglas sheets to weatherproof it
and tiled the floor,” Seshamani recounted, “and suddenly the
shopping complex next door eyed it as valuable property, and the next
thing I knew, dogs, baby monkeys, cats and puppies were all out there
traumatized, piled up and thrown out. Someone called up Priyanka Gandhi,”
daughter of assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and
Congress Party head Sonia Gandhi, “and she at once intervened, and
the Lieutenant Governor’s office told them not to use bull dozers
on us, or touch us further. Now I am sitting in various offices applying
for formal allocation of this piece of land for the animals of Delhi,”
Sashamani finished.
Reported by local editions of the Hindustan Times and Times of India,
the Friendicoes SECA crisis may have a happy ending.
Cancun
demolition
The
outcome of a similar case involving the Asociaciòn Provida Animal,
A.C. of Cancun, Mexico, appears much more difficult to project.
“Disregarding
a commitment to relocate more than 100 dogs from the shelter, at 4:00
a.m. on February 5th the building company Opresa S.A. de C.V., which is
building a commercial site by the name of Gran Plaza, invaded and demolished
the shelter facilities while the dogs were still inside,” charged
shelter supporter Phillipe Jean Figueroa in an e-mail to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“Some were run over by heavy machinery and killed,” as attached
photos confirmed. “Many more escaped,” Figueroa continued. “The
present conditions are very bad.”
Translating Figueroa’s e-mail from the Spanish original, ANIMAL PEOPLE
promptly responded with questions to which a Marie Figueroa promised answers.
Both Phillipe Jean Figueroa and Marie Figueroa may be related to Rosalinda
Figueroa, who founded the Asociaciòn Provida Animal, A.C.
More than seven weeks later, ANIMAL PEOPLE still had no further information
from any of the Figueroas, who may have been advised to say nothing by
attorneys seeking settlement of their case.
However, Araceli Dominguez of Cancun investigated the situation for ANIMAL
PEOPLE, at request of dolphin defender Ric O’Barry, of One Voice.
Often clashing with Cancun “swim-with-dolphins” promoters, O’Barry
introduced Dominguez as “The best animal rights activist in Cancun.”
Rosalinda Figueroa, Dominguez reported, “had a refuge for the dogs
in a place that was originally outside the city, but because the city
has grown so much, the land became part of the city. Her family owns this
land, which is near where the Gran Plaza mall is to be built. As
I understand it,” Dominguez said, trying to unravel an apparently
quite tangled story, “there was a lot of misunderstanding among the
family and the people who want to build. Supposedly they were negotiating
with Rosalinda Figueroa to buy the land, and her brother sold it, but
she never knew about it, and things like that.
“Finally the mall developers told her that they were going to breach
the wall of the refuge if Rosalinda Figueroa did not leave. They were
talking about giving her money and another piece of land, and they were
in this discussion when the company that was contracted to build the mall
arrived and smashed the walls,” Dominguez summarized.
“Rosalinda Figueroa tried to stop it. Allegedly the bulldozer driver
said that he was going to kill her, and she said, ‘Do it, because
I am not going to move.’ The police took the driver to jail. They
released him two days later,” Dominguez said. “The goverment
is not doing anything.
“I can understand that there were many misunderstandings with the
money, the land and whatever,” Dominguez opined, “but this was
not the right way to solve the problem. There were 185 dogs at the shelter
that Rosalinda Figueroa took from the streets. Some were puppies. Some
were sick. She fed them and took care of them. Ten dogs were killed and
23 disappeared. Rosalinda Figueroa still has 153, but without walls it
is very difficult for her to handle them, and she does not want to move
to any other place until this problem is over with.
“Rosalinda Figueroa is fighting this with lawyers, asking a judge
to make justice. We will have to wait to see what is going to happen,”
Dominguez concluded.
K9
Friends
Bulldozers
didn’t come crashing through the walls of K9 Friends’ shelter
in Al Barsha, Dubai, but a 90-day eviction notice delivered in February
comparably shocked the founders and volunteers. With 87 dogs on hand,
and nowhere else to go, they needed to rehome almost a dog a day.
This was not necessarily impossible for K9 Friends—just difficult.
Founded in 1987 as a dog club, K9 Friends branched into rescue fostering
the following year. K9 Friends rehomed more than 3,000 dogs during the
next 11 years. The organization then rented a warehouse in Al Barsha,
renovated it as a shelter, and rehomed another 1,000 dogs in four years.
Along the way, K9 Friends also inspired formation of a parallel society,
Feline Friends, to rescue, foster, and rehome cats.
Operating on a budget of $109,000 in 2004, raised mostly from the Dubai
expatriate community, K9 Friends has been perhaps the most successful
dog rehoming project between western Europe and Hong Kong.
Yet through mid-March it had not found other rented premises it could
afford, and had appealed to Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed, seeking donated
space.
Rental properties are scarce in Dubai to begin with. Sites suitable for
kennel use are scarcer still, and the situation may be compounded by prejudice
against dogs and resentment of expatriates accentuated by the U.S. presence
in Iraq.
Fundatia
Daisy Hope
A
similar catastrophe recently befell the Fundatia Daisy Hope, of Bucharest,
Romania, profiled by ANIMAL PEOPLE in June 2004. Cofounders Aura Maratas
and Daniela Ristea barely knew each other before starting the outdoor
shelter in March 2001, after then-Bucharest mayor Traian Basescu threatened
to start massacring street dogs. Ristea leased to the Fundatia Daisy Hope
her third of a lot that she and her siblings had recently inherited, zoned
for light industrial use. Maratas, who with her husband started a business
that exports furniture and imports sugar, furnished most of the necessary
cash and management knowhow.
The Fundatia Daisy Hope was one of only two animal shelters to get started
in inner Bucharest before stricter enforcement of zoning laws forced other
shelter operators to set up beyond the highway that rings the developed
suburbs.
The other inner Bucharest shelter, started at about the same time, located
a block away on the same street, is the Asociatia Prietenii Animalelor
Romania, also known as Adapostul Christi and Tierschutz Christi.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE reported after viewing both shelters, they could scarcely
have been more different. The Fundatia Daisy Hope was bright, open, friendly
toward neighbors, welcoming to visitors, and quick to present financial
details to potential donors. Tierschutz Christi, admitting no visitors,
was a high-security prison for dogs, accused by neighbors of making dogs
into sausage. It was among the Romanian shelters in whose name German
fundraiser Wolfgang Ullrich, 60, embezzled as much as $45 million. Convicted
in Munich in April 2003 of stealing $28 million, Ullrich is now serving
a 12-year prison term.
Also in 2003, Maratas obtained a copy of an appeal issued by the German
organization Tierschutzverein fur den Kreis Kleve E.V. on behalf of Tierschutz
Christi that used photos of the Fundatia Daisy Hope.
Straightening out the ensuing donor confusion over whose shelter was which
was a minor irritant compared to the division of outlook that developed
between Maratas and Ristea. The first priority for Ristea, as the dog
massacres continued, was to take as many dogs off the streets as possible.
Maratas preferred to emphasize outreach sterilization and quality care
for “only” 230 dogs at a time, in order to show visitors how
dogs should be kept. Ristea, apparently pressured by siblings who want
to sell the site, also wanted the Fundatia Daisy Hope to buy the land,
including her siblings’ shares. Maratas liked the idea in principle,
but saw other priorities.
In late 2004 Maratas and Ristea finally split. Maratas in mid-February
expected to have to leave the property immediately, but on March 12 e-mailed,
“I solved my problem with the land until the end of the rental period
in September 2006. In the meantime I will buy some land,” outside
the ring highway, “and next year I will move the shelter step by
step.”
Ce-Ce
& Friends
The
Friendicoes SECA and Asociaciòn Provida Animal, A.C. partial demolitions
were extreme examples of a pattern of failure to secure title deeds and
zoning permits that ANIMAL PEOPLE has identified as responsible for more
shelter closures than the combined totals resulting from fundraising failures,
criminal mismanagement such as embezzling, deaths of founders, fires,
and natural disasters.
The
K9 Friends and Fundatia Daisy Hope episodes, though occurring abroad,
exemplify how the pattern often plays out in the U.S.—and is playing
out now for small shelters from the Ce-Ce & Friends Humane Society
in Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Sylvester Foundation of O’ahu, Hawaii.
“Ce-Ce & Friends Humane Society has negotiated a settlement with
landlord Antonio Bandis that will allow the animal shelter to stay at
its present site until June,” Jenn Abelson of the Boston Globe reported
on February 6. “Bandis sent an eviction notice to the volunteers
at the no-kill feline shelter, ordering them to leave by the end of January.”
The shelter has occupied the site on a month-to-month basis since 1998.
Ce-Ce & Friends treasurer Karen Barrett told Abelson that Bandis had
refused to provide a lease.
Bandis lives in a house behind the shelter, and has a rental apartment
above it. He told Abelson that previous tenants have complained about
the presence of the shelter, which houses approximately 30 cats at a time,
adopting out 50 per year—including one cat placed with a former upstairs
tenant, according to Barrett.
“We don’t want to stay where we are not wanted, but we need
more time to find a new place,” volunteer Jeannie Allan told Abelson.
“We’re just having no luck.”
Paying rent of about $700 a month now, Ce-Ce & Friends hopes to find
new space for approximately $1,000 a month, but is finding that suitable
locations start around $1,500 a month, board president Peggy Wright told
Abelson.
Recounted Abelson, “The search began in October 2004, after Bandis
told them that the shelter had to vacate.”
“He swore he would never do that,” claimed treasurer Karin Barrett.
Bandis said he warned Ce-Ce & Friends in April 2004 that it would
have to move when he finished renovating the upstairs apartment.
Sylvester
Foundation
The
Hawaii Department of Land & Natural Resources on March 1 evicted the
Sylvester Foundation no-kill shelter from a leased 20-acre site near Waimanalu.
“The lease expired on August 9, 2004, but the agency gave the group
until December 17 to vacate the property and find a new home for its 300
animals,” Honolulu Advertiser Windward O’ahu writer Eloise Aguiar
recounted.
Sylvester Foundation director Candy Lake told Aguiar that about 30 Department
of Land & Natural Resources personnel, police and others gave her
10 minutes to vacate the site at 9:30 a.m. on March 1, after earlier serving
notice that she would subject to eviction at any time after 6:30 a.m.
“They wouldn’t let me go back and get my cats,” Lake claimed.
“And they dumped my mongoose because I didn’t have my permit
in hand.”
“Lake said she was able to remove all the remaining dogs,” Aguiar
wrote, “but about 25 cats remained. Although she was not allowed
on the property, she was able to send a friend to try to capture the cats,
she said. Nine dogs were placed in kennels, the cats will stay at a ranch
in Waimanalo, and the chickens were moved to another ranch, she said.”
The Department of Land & Natural Resources gave Lake at least four
extensions of the original deadline to vacate, but lost patience when
she turned down an 11.9-acre site the agency offered as unsuitable and
too costly to develop, and claimed that bad luck and broken promises by
supporters had interfered with other moving plans.
The Sylvester Foundation lost the lease to the 20-acre site at public
auction in June 2004. The wnning bid was submitted by the nursery firm
Landscape Hawaii.
Animal
Adoption Network
Animal
Adoption Network founder Fred Acker, of Monroe, Connecticut, expected
to avoid the problems associated with not owning a shelter property outright.
Acker in 1999 bought a 3.6-acre former farmstead in one of the neighborhoods
where ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1991-1992 tested neuter/return feral cat control.
The Town of Monroe Animal Care & Control mini-shelter is just a few
blocks away.
Converting the barn and outbuildings to house about 30 cats and 50 dogs
at a time seemed logical. The facilities apparently once included a breeding
or boarding kennel—but that was decades ago, before the last working
farms in Monroe were subdivided.
If Acker had moved into a vacant former supermarket about a mile to the
north, he could have renovated to state-of-the-art adoption shelter standards,
including glass-fronted soundproofed dog runs, comfortable in all weather,
undetectable by the neighbors from sounds and smells.
Instead, Acker ended up with a more picturesque location that was conceptually
obsolete 50 years before it opened. Neighbors irate about constant barking
sued him. His legal fees exceeded $100,000, he told Monroe Courier editor
Karen Kovacs Dydzuhn. The Monroe Planning & Zoning Commission ordered
Acker to keep the dogs indoors from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., and warned
him against keeping dogs in a trailer on the property and an unheated
greenhouse.
Finally, in early 2005, Monroe police seized 11 dogs from the trailer
and greenhouse, and hit Acker with 84 cruelty charges. Police chief John
Salvatore told the Courier “that the conditions went beyond messy
cages. He said some of the animals were living in unheated buildings,
some without water or with frozen water,” Dydzuhn wrote.
Acker had strong defenders, Dydzuhn noted, including American SPCA board
member Reenie Brown and local veterinarian David Basak-Smith.
Acker may beat the cruelty charges, but with foreclosure looming, after
years of substantial operating losses, he announced in early February
2005 that the Animal Adoption Network shelter will close as soon as he
can relocate all the animals, and that he has put the $1.25 million property
up for sale.
Mass neglect allegations are the only cause of shelter failure more common
than lack of papers securing a shelter site.
Often lack of a clear title deed or a zoning permit is also the factor
that flushes hoarding cases into the open.
Hoarders frequently claim to operate shelters, but—unlike Acker and
the Animal Adoption Network—usually have not actually incorporated
nonprofit, and have not sought permits to house large numbers of animals.
Legitimate shelters whose land use is threatened have usually followed
the steps required to operate, but in their eagerness to get started,
have tried to operate on rented, leased, or conditionally “donated”
property—like K9 Friends, the Fundatia Daisy Hope, Ce-Ce & Friends,
and the Sylvester Foundation. They learn too late that property they do
not own can be yanked away from them whenever the landlords or donors
change their minds about harboring animals instead pursuing more lucrative
or less problematic uses.
Then, desperate to relocate with large numbers of animals, and caught
without collateral for a mortgage, they repeat the mistake by moving to
another rented, leased, or conditionally donated site.
In addition, legitimate shelters founded by inexperienced people are often
situated in anticipation of securing zoning variances or reviving old
land uses that are then thwarted, like Acker’s hopes, by neighborhood
opposition.
Zoning variances may be promised by public officials who underestimate
such issues as barking dogs, increased traffic, increased sewer and water
use, and the potential cost to a municipality of issuing a variance that
results in a lawsuit.
Reviving a former “agricultural” land use in a newly gentrified
neighborhood, as Acker tried to do, may be exactly what the neighbors
say they want, to preserve green space, but they are more likely to have
in mind a Christmas tree farm, a pumpkin patch, or a horse pasture than
a rescue operation that recycles facilities left by a long defunct puppy
mill.
When the permits to operate are delayed, denied, or amended in ways that
restrict the ability of a shelter to function, the shelter itself becomes
vulnerable to lawsuit. Typically the neighbors trying to force it out
have much deeper pockets than the young nonprofit organization trying
to set up shop—again as Acker learned.
A
shelter is a business
Set
up shop? That represents another closely related problem. Founders of
nonprofit animal shelters often fail to recognize that being nonprofit
does not exempt them from the site requirements that must be met by for-profit
businesses.
Compliance can require the addition of parking for disabled people and
wheelchair ramps, for example, plus fire escape routes that the disabled
can use—and that can make prohibitive the cost of renovating older
buildings into animal shelters, even when the buildings and land are “free.”
In
one Vermont case that ANIMAL PEOPLE reported about some years ago, an
invalid donated a Victorian house to her local humane society because
she could no longer get around in it, then conditionally left her estate
to the humane society several years later to help cover the crippling
expense of making the house properly accessible. The chief condition was
that the house had to be used as an animal shelter.
By the time the directors finished fending off relatives who contested
the will, they realized that the humane society would be far ahead if
they simply sold the house and used the proceeds to buy land and build
from scratch. As judges eventually informed them, the will did not allow
this.
Nearly bankrupted by the cost of complying with all legal requirements,
the humane society finally opened the shelter eight years after the property
was donated—and the volunteer staff almost immediately realized it
was far too small.
When ANIMAL PEOPLE first mentioned the case, directors of two other Vermont
humane societies, in a state which then had only nine, called to say that
their organizations had gone through similar events in trying to convert
bequests of homes into viable shelters. Some callers wondered if we had
mislocated or written about a composite of cases that occurred in other
New England states.
The case we wrote about exemplified not an exceptional well-intentioned
catastrophe but a syndrome. We only heard about the examples in which
the shelter caught in the syndrome survived. If shelters folded, there
was no one to receive ANIMAL PEOPLE, read the article, and telephone.
—Merritt Clifton
