A Mission for Lisa Marie
Graceland-funded transitional homes are where her heart is
By Michael Lollar (The Commercial Appeal)
Just as Elvis Presley and his family once found refuge in public housing, 11 Memphis families facing homelessness will find sanctuary this week with the opening of Presley Place.
Lisa Marie Presley will cut the ribbon at 10 a.m. today on the 12-unit apartment complex, which she says has became a mission for her. In a rare interview, Presley told The Commercial Appeal that her decision to fund Presley Place was more than paying homage to her father.
"I wouldn't be there if my heart wasn't in it. It helps keep my sanity. Giving back is a check for me. The one thing that helps keep me sane and happy is to help others. Nothing disgusts me more than people who do BS publicity for something they don't really believe in."
Presley, of Los Angeles, chairman of the board and owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), donated $1.3 million to the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA) to build Presley Place as part of its Estival Communities, a transitional housing program to help the homeless help themselves. Part of the EPE commitment is to provide operating costs for the property for at least the first five years.
"It isn't just putting a roof over their heads for awhile. These people actually want to change their lives. They can be stabilized for a certain amount of time. It's not a situation where you're just supporting bad behavior or unproductive behavior," said Presley.
She, her son and daughter broke ground for Presley Place at 701 St. Paul in June 2000, when the address was a scrubby vacant lot across the street from W. Alonzo Locke Elementary School. Just down the street from the Foote and Cleaborn Homes public housing developments, the neighborhood was the "poorest" in the city in them1990 Census, with incomes averaging less than $5,000 a year, said Meghan Altimore, MIFA's program executive for housing.
The first tenants of Presley Place have been approved, including four mothers escaping domestic abuse and seven families facing evictions due to layoffs or other economic calamities, Altimore said.
The other unit will be occupied by resident manager Alicia Delvridge, a single mother who spent a year in another Estival Communities property after she and her daughter left a relationship she describes as abusive.
Delvridge, an employment counselor, says she specifically applied to be resident manager at Presley Place because she wants to work with families coming into the program for the first time. "I know the fear they are facing and the sense of the unknown. They need encouragement to get their lives back on track."
MIFA already operates 65 units of transitional housing, which give families a year and help to get GEDs, diplomas, or jobs. They also concentrate on getting out of debt and saving money. Families must attend regular "life skills" classes.
Presley said that year gives families time to address fundamental issues in their lives. "Poverty, drug abuse - that stuff gets me. I think the root causes are education and lack of it. Surprising numbers of people, even in their 70s, don't know how to read. They don't get educated in areas they need, including crime and drug use."
As a mother, Presley, 33, is especially happy to be part of a safety net for children. "The children are very protected" in the MIFA properties, she said.
Presley Place is next door to the new Les Passees Center for Children and Families, which is scheduled to be completed in about a month. It will include an Elvis Presley Music Room where children will be able to take music lessons on instruments at the center. Gibson Guitars in Nashville has donated some instruments, and Mickey Butler, general manager of Gibson's Memphis plant, said last week that he plans to donate instruments to the project.
Presley Place also has a touch of Graceland: The facade of the laundry building is intended to resemble the King's former home.
Elvis Presley Enterprises CEO Jack Soden said Lisa Marie Presley has been involved with the homeless through EPE's behind-the-scenes work with Goodwill Homes.
"That moved me beyond belief. It kind of got the ball rolling, and I said what else could we do?" she said.
Soden said EPE and Graceland were familiar with MIFA, trusted the agency's management skills and decided to fund Presley Place through MIFA "rather than try to reinvent the wheel."
Altimore said Lisa Marie and her mother, Priscilla Presley, each visited Estival Communities properties to research the program before making the commitment. "Both tours were very in-depth. There were a lot of questions and a really serious buy-in to the whole concept of what we are doing. You can tell a person's interest by the questions they ask, and they were very detailed.
"Lisa wanted to know, for instance, if someone had a felony conviction, what we could do to help them." (MIFA requires a conviction be more than five years old before someone can move in.)
Presley said her visits were scheduled when residents were attending classes and their children were in day care. "I would walk through their homes, and I could see how well organized they were. It showed me how hard they were trying. You could tell by the care they took with their homes."
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