Due to a reporting error, this story incorrectly stated the Town Council’s reaction to the shelter guidelines. The council received the guidelines and referred them to the town manager and attorney. This article has been updated to reflect these changes. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

The Chapel Hill Town Council declined the shelter guidelines that resulted from a year’s worth of revisions at Wednesday’s meeting.

Citing vague definitions and insufficient numerical data, the guidelines were referred to the town manager and attorney.

Residents and council members expressed concern that there was no regulation for proximity to schools and parks. If built within 1,000 feet of a school or a park, law stipulates registered sex offenders cannot use these services.

Chapel Hill resident Tim CoyneSmith said he didn’t think a facility with public funding should be built in a location where it cannot serve all of the public.

CoyneSmith is a public opponent of a possible relocation of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service’s Community House men’s shelter to the Homestead Road area.

“Some of these people may be very much in need, and yet we’re spending all this money, and they’re being left out,” he said.

Council members repeatedly asked for specific data, including the size of the county’s homeless population, which the planning board could not produce.

“To get an actual number is a very difficult task because someone who is homeless today is not necessarily homeless tomorrow,” council member Penny Rich said.

In the planning board’s presentation, proximity was the defining characteristic in what makes a shelter site desirable or undesirable.

A desirable location is one within one-quarter mile of public services like transportation, food banks and employment centers, board chairman Mike Collins said.

Undesirable sites are close to residential areas, adult entertainment facilities and bars or liquor stores, the guidelines stated.

“The location should have more desirables than undesirables,” Collins said.

Collins, who presented the new guidelines, recommended the council employ an impartial outside consultant to create the guidelines.

The council first suggested the planning board create shelter guidelines as a reaction to a special-use permit application from the IFC to relocate its Community House men’s shelter farther from the downtown area.

The shelter is currently located in a town-owned building on Rosemary Street.

Chris Moran, the IFC’s executive director, said he was not surprised the guidelines didn’t pass.

“It’s a hard decision, and they need time to mull it over and decide what’s best,” he said.

The status of the IFC’s application was not discussed at the meeting and is set for council review on March 21.

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