We're going to number...
Number seven first.
MI 2024-006-946-5773 Kemble Avenue.
Craig Smith is the owner-applicant.
I'll be coming back in as a panel shortly, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith, could you please state your name and spell for the stenographer?
Craig Smith, C-R-A-I-G, S-M-I-T-H, Craig Smith.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
This applicant is for use as a personal care home with an existing structure, whereas the proposed use personal care home requires special exception approval
in the RSA-5 zoning district.
There's unanimous opposition
from Oak West Community Coalition.
And there's also a letter of support
from the state representative,
Andrea Carroll,
Xavier-
Andrea.
The principal, yep, Carroll.
And somebody named LK.
So, Mr. Smith,
we're up in the air
about what this is. Am I correct, Hillary?
Yes. No, Mr. Smith, I understand
at the time that the permit application
At the time that the permit application was filed, there was communication with the examiner about the use, and at the time it was determined to be personal care home, but I understand that since that time, there was a realization that it may not be the correct use.
was filed, there was
communication with the exam.
So maybe group living could be single room residents.
So what we're going to do today is we will hear the case and get that information.
And then I will go back to L&I and we will likely need to amend the refusal if it doesn't
appear that personal care home is the correct category.
So but we will hear that we will hear the case today and just hold if we for an amended
refusal and just voted a later date.
So you have to come back.
Thank you.
So there's two things. I actually emailed just for clarification and never heard anything back from anyone, just kind of clarifying that it's not a personal care home. It's actually a group home for foster care youth. But we never received any contact back from anyone in that office.
And then the second thing, I never received an updated summary of the RCO meeting from my RCO.
What she sent me was grossly inaccurate. It did not reflect the numbers, nor did it reflect the accurate vote.
I did ask of her to share with me what she was going to share with the board prior to doing so, and she has not.
So I did hear board member Bergman state that there was gross opposition.
That's not what was the outcome of the call that we had.
I said there was opposition from them, but we do have a letter from her that said this was the second of two meetings.
The first meeting was held on March 13th with six attendees, but due to technical difficulties, no vote was taken.
During discussion, the sentiment was to oppose the proposal.
So that's inaccurate.
And the vote wasn't taken because she scheduled the meeting for 3 o'clock p.m.
And she should have scheduled it, what I later learned, for 6 o'clock p.m.
So why don't we do this?
Why don't you start your presentation?
Absolutely.
So I am going to share my screen with you guys.
Give me one sec.
Let me pull everything up.
I'm in a meeting James, you see the green go ahead you're coming up now, I'm in a meeting.
Are you guys able to see my screen?
We see it now.
So, good morning, everyone.
My name is Dr. Craig Smith.
I'm the CEO and founder of Foster and Success Boys to Men.
We are a nonprofit organization founded back in 2016.
Our Foster and Success Residential Care Program was implemented back in May of 2025.
So this is the most recent arm to the civic engagement work that we are implementing here in the city.
The location for our Alpha House location is 5773 Kimball Avenue, Philadelphia PA, 10141.
And this is a house. This is a picture of the front of the property.
Our mission is to close the opportunity divide by improving, excuse me, the positive life outcomes of youth at promise.
We don't believe that any youth are at risk, especially with the help that we're looking to provide them through early awareness, educational mentorship, resource alignment and leadership development, all of which will be in a residential setting.
One of the things that we strive to put forth for these young people is creating a sense of normalcy for these youth who have been in foster care, some as early as age seven, seven years of age, and having a sense of normalcy being in and out of different treatment facilities and different group homes and some foster care homes is a rarity to them.
So our program model, I do have a video of the house with the walkthrough.
You'll see it is a home like setting. We keep it small.
We keep it intimate with two to three young people in our care and in our program.
I'm asking the board today for us to expand this particular location to four or five young men because we have the capacity to serve more at this location.
Like I stated, we are a 501c3 nonprofit organization that specializes in coaching, mentorship, and educational programming.
Like I say, we are a 501c3 nonprofit organization that specializes in coaching, mentorship.
This particular residential care program is a 24-hour trauma-informed community-based residential program for youth involved in welfare services between the ages of 13 and 18.
These are not adjudicated youth.
These are not bad kids, as someone had mentioned before.
These are young people who need a home, who need some structure, who need some consistency, and who ultimately need some love and help from individuals who are well-trained in this particular work and have an extensive background to really help them manifest their dreams to become a part of reality.
We are licensed through the Office of Children and Youth Services. We bear an L38 license, so we are not operating out of compliance. We are in compliance with the state.
In terms of a program overview, and we'll move this over, shared rooms, home-cooked meals, varying levels of assistance with daily living.
We have a pre-supervised independent living curriculum where we are teaching these young men life skills, skills that's going to help them navigate life once they're aged out at 18.
They can actually stay with us until they're 21 years of age, but the plan is for the young people who have the academic potential and promise to age out of 18 and go on to some type of post-secondary program, preferably a residential program.
We provide the custodial care.
We're teaching on laundry and housekeeping.
We are certified to manage medication, transportation to and from outside activities such as college and professional sporting events.
We have unique skill building programs.
We have our Emergent Leaders of Tomorrow Rites of Passage program, our entrepreneurship program, our financial literacy program, and a few other programs that we offer in-house in addition to the community-based initiatives that we also offer as well.
Some of our program highlights, you can see right to our left, that picture is two of our youth currently in our care who participate in the Junior Barbara Academy with P. Michael.
He received a lot of grant money from the city of Philadelphia, so his work is recognized throughout the city.
They actually have a program this evening from six to eight on Wednesdays, and they also have programming on Sundays.
but we have post-secondary prep. My background is in higher education. I have a master's in
clinical psychology, a doctorate in ed leadership and management from Drexel. I served as a guidance
counselor, college admissions counselor. So pretty much all of the work that we're tying into how
we're helping to shape the lives of these young men at Promise, I have over 20 years of experience
working in this arena. Just found that housing insecurity was always a challenge for persistence
and retention, oftentimes with our young people. So we just added this group home model. If they're
with us 24-7 and they're under our care, the likelihood that they will fall through the cracks
or slip through the cracks diminishes. We have a work readiness program. We provide trauma-informed
services, our rights of passage program, that 15 by 18. So there's 15 core things that we believe
that the young people should know before they hit age of 18. So we're constantly teaching them and
coaching them on those particular things, how to change a tire, how to change oil, how to manage a
bank account, how to write a check, how to fill out an envelope, right? We have our health and
wellness regimen. A lot of these young men have come to us with high A1Cs, pre-diabetic. So our
health and wellness regimen has got our one kid who's 16, 275 pounds. We got him down to 260
and his A1C went from a 6.3 to a 5.9.
So we're getting him in the right direction
through diet and exercise
in our partnership with the YMCA.
Service learning activities.
We do weekly community service
with the shared food program
where they're packing boxes three hours a week,
helping out in the community that way.
And also cleaning the block.
We have a lot of elderly folk in the neighborhood
who don't have the ability to sweep up the leaves and to get the trash out front of the
houses.
So my young people are seen doing that, found doing that as well.
There's a lot of partners in the work that we work closely with.
SARE Health Center, also the Strawberry Mansion Health Center number 12, has been a huge help
to us, helping us to navigate and stay compliant with ensuring that the kids are receiving
within the first 30 days of being placed with us, their physicals, their shots are being updated,
any forms that they need. Also with management, I mentioned the Junior Barber Academy. We have
Black Men Hill. We have therapy sessions through them. Each of the young men come with their own
Each of the young men come with their own respective therapists based off of where they're
respective therapists based off of where they're placed.
placed.
And then we also have group therapy by a licensed counselor that comes in on Sundays.
And then we have yoga, in-house yoga on Mondays as well.
We have the YMCA team leadership program.
My young men participate two Saturdays out of the month in the Philadelphia Police Explorers
program with the 35th District.
I mentioned the food chair program.
And then we have our sister partner catered to you, Youth Haven, where they house females, where that's where they're receiving some of the financial literacy, the tutoring and some of the grooming stuff.
So these are just some of the partners that we partner with to keep these young men busy.
The key to our program is just just for a point of information, what we're here for today is the use of the property.
So I think you need to start showing the property, what it's like inside and things like that and how you intend.
Sure. Absolutely. So that's just the overall program. So all of this is what's happening inside of the house.
Yep. I have a video, so I'll I'll retrieve the video. Let me stop sharing this and then I will share the video of the home.
Can you guys see this? What we did and it just went off. It's black right now.
You might want to talk like as it goes through how many bedrooms do you have? Where are the rooms where they would all join together?
things like that. Yeah. So this video is a full walkthrough of the property. So it'll actually
show the rooms as well. There's three bedrooms in this property. Actually, I'm going to mute this.
I don't know how to mute the video, but we have the capacity. That's the office space downstairs.
There's three bedrooms upstairs. One could be used as a single room, and then the other two
can be used as double beds. So right now in this stage, as this is now bedroom number one. So this
is a one-bed room because we moved the office down to the basement that we saw.
Compliance requires that each single room
needs to be 70 square feet, so that passes that. This is the second bed room.
That's about 175, 190 square feet where two young
men can be housed in that particular room.
this is the bathroom
how many bathrooms it's two full bathrooms in the house but this is the bathroom that's used
specifically for the young men that door is permanently locked so it's not a entrance or
exit and then this is the front bedroom here that houses two young men each have their own closets
somebody with them 24 hours a day
mr smith somebody's there 24 hours a day yes we have 24 hours staffing the young men are never in
the community without us. Otherwise, they're at a structured event and activity. They don't get
free reign to walk to the stores or none of that. They're literally under supervision 24-7.
You move the staff office down to the basement? Is that what you're saying?
Yes. Yeah.
All right. Anything else you want to add?
That's pretty much where we are. We currently have the capacity for
three. We're currently licensed for three. We have the capacity to serve up to five young men
in the home. So what we're asking of the board is for the board to allow us
the permission to expand our reach and expand the work that we're doing.
One of the last things in terms of the impact of the work that we're having on the young men,
I have a young man who actually just tried to bring me something now. We're a huge advocate
for these young men. They've been overlooked. I have a young man in my care who's 16 years of age
who came to me not being able to read at all. At all. He's currently reading on a third grade
reading level, and he's been with me since June 1st. So we do an intensive work with these young
men because we're able to literally change their lives by fostering their success. And that's what
the whole heart is behind the work that we're doing uh as i stated on our co call they can
As I stated on RCO call, they can contact the police. The police have never been called to the home. There was a question during that first meeting about if it would tear down the property value. The home, in question, has appraised two years ago for over $300,000. So, if anything, my beautiful home that I've trusted and lent to the group home to do this meaningful work.
contact the police the police have
Are you supported by the neighbors on either side?
Absolutely, I am.
All right. Questions from the board.
You said you currently have three of kids there now.
Yeah, we call them scholars. Yes.
OK, three. OK. And the goal is to have five.
Yes, sir. You said that's what the state will allow.
That's the. In that space, the house only have capacity for five.
Okay, for five.
The state allows us to operate with three without change in zone, and more than three, we have to come and go through this process.
But because we have the capacity for five, I'm looking for five.
We probably will only do four in that space, but things are subject to change.
You never know.
So I would much rather be in a position to offer this service and resource to more young people than less.
Right.
Right. So, but the state said that the building as it stands right now and as configured can only have five.
Well, can only have three. Otherwise, I go through this rezoning process.
No, no, no. Regardless of the zoning process.
Oh, yes.
State requirements, the max is five.