Homeless in Sarasota Bradenton

HOMELESSNESS NOT IN RECESSION

E-mails to the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County are more frequent now, about 10 a day, thanks to this recession.

"We were in foreclosure and lost our home," a desperate writer explains. "The shelters are full and there's a waiting list. What do we do now?"

Most pleas come from people who recently lost their job and can't find a new one, said Rayme Nuckles, the coalition's executive director. They're new to homelessness and unfamiliar with the fragmented system strained by limited resources - especially emergency housing.

But help is on the way. Eleven social service agencies have been working on transitional housing projects; some just opened, others should open by summer. They'll add 528 emergency shelter beds in Hillsborough County, putting the total available at nearly 2,500.

"Organizations over the past year have really stepped up their efforts," Nuckles said. "They've had to."

Hillsborough has one of the highest homeless populations in the state - 9,500 counted during a 2007 census. Results from a similar count in February will be released Thursday.

The troubled economy has left a lot of people homeless for the first time, including entire families, Nuckles said. But other segments of the population are struggling, too.

The number of people recently released from hospitals with no place to go has long been a problem, he said. A $1 million recuperative care facility with 16 beds is set to open this summer at 1229 E. 131st St. A spokeswoman for Tampa Family Health Centers, which will operate the facility, said the agency is waiting for its license from the Agency for Health Care Administration.

Providing recuperative care is part of the coalition's 10-year plan to end homelessness. That plan is now in its seventh year.

Other projects that have opened or will soon include the Agency for Community Treatment Services' 14-unit permanent housing facility for chronically homeless single men, which opened last year. New Beginnings expects this month to open a transitional housing complex for 11 children aging out of foster care, and DACCO has added 18 beds to its transitional housing, with 12 for women with infants or children.

"The interesting part is that as we build it, the funding for the use of beds is diminishing," noted Mary Lynn Edwards Ulrey, chief executive officer of DACCO. "Obviously, as financial times are tougher and folks lose jobs, many more slots are needed for treatment ... yet the resources are drying up."

Her agency, like others, is applying for federal grants "as fast as we can," she said.

Another piece of the 10-year plan is the development of customer service centers, where people in need can find shelter, low-income housing and other assistance.

Nuckles hopes to fold the centers into already existing neighborhood service centers, which are county-operated agencies that can assist residents with rent and utility payments, among other needs. Dave Rogoff, director of the county's Department of Health & Social Services and a coalition board member, is behind the idea.

"We believe this is the right thing to do," he said.

The coalition will look next at using nearly $4 million in city and county dollars during the next three years to create programs for homeless prevention and "rapid re-housing" that keeps people from living on the streets.

It used to be that half of the families filing for bankruptcy did so because of some health issue that wiped them out financially, Rogoff said. As the economy worsens, those same circumstances easily can push people into homelessness.

"Now is the time to really prevent that," he said.

For information about the coalition, go to www. homelessofhc.org or call (813) 223-6115.

By SHERRI ACKERMAN Tampa Tribune May 4, 2009

To help homeless, first accurately count them:

A single mother of three rents a garage from another single mother of three living temporarily in a foreclosed home belonging to a third party. The house dweller fails to use the first woman's rent payment for the utility bill as promised and everyone is scrambling for new shelter.

It's an actual case in west Pasco with social workers now trying to assist the woman who made her rent payments in good faith. So here's a question: Are the kids considered homeless? Depends upon whom you ask.

A recently completed homeless count in Pasco County would say "no" because the youngsters had a roof over their heads on the day of the survey. Yet, the federal guidelines for serving homeless children in the public school district says "yes" because the families are doubled up in a makeshift living arrangement due to economic hardship.

Therein lies one of the problems confronting advocates, social services agencies and churches serving the homeless: counting heads. Successful passage of HB 597 in the Florida Legislature on Friday is an attempt to change that. Among the provisions of the bill is creation of a single definition of homeless to include people and families living in doubled-up homes or in motels.

The just-released results of the Pasco coalitions's count illustrates the problematic definitions. On Jan. 28, volunteers calculated 4,527 people in Pasco were homeless, an 11 percent increase over a year ago. But the same survey identified just 4 percent, or 181 people, as children. The state average is 21 percent and last year's Pasco survey calculated that 1,400 children in Pasco, or 35 percent of the total count, had no place to call home.

All indications are the number of children was undercounted this year. Pasco School District social workers report helping more than 1,800 homeless children with enrollment this school year, including providing assistance obtaining supplies, clothing and transportation. Many of the children reside in doubled-up households or in motels.

Extrapolation of the district numbers with the Jan. 28 single-day count would push the county's homeless population to more than 6,100 people, or a nearly 50 percent increase over a year ago. It's an eye-opening jump attributable to a recession, high unemployment and increasing foreclosures. Nearly two-thirds of Pasco's 5,000 foreclosure cases involved primary residences.

Why does it matter? Because the community, as it maps a 10-year plan to assist the homeless, needs an accurate accounting of the far-reaching problem. Too often the public perception of Pasco's homeless is defined by a rousted encampment in the woods or a panhandler seeking beer money on a street corner. Children are an afterthought.

Ignoring the problem is unrealistic. It's too expensive and results in higher hospitalization and public safety costs to the public and diminished educational opportunities for children. Multiple studies show the annual cost of feeding, incarcerating and proving health care to a chronically homeless person is tens of thousands of dollars higher than a comprehensive assistance program. Just think of the public safety costs accumulated this week when Pasco deputies evicted a homeless encampment from private property in Hudson and investigated a stabbing involving a homeless suspect in Land O'Lakes.

While advocates continue devising the 10-year plan for homeless intervention, one church in Holiday isn't waiting for the written document. The Community United Methodist Church, where the Rev. Dan Campbell doubles as pastor and president of the Homeless Coalition of Pasco, is closing in June. It will reopen as a Joining Hands Community Mission Inc., a one-stop resource center and shelter to help homeless families with public assistance, employment searches and other tasks.

It's a commendable mission. The unprecedented and much-needed community effort in west Pasco will allow people to progress from an emergency shelter to transitional housing to a permanent home — the true aim of any homeless program.

An editorial from the St. Petesburg Times Published Saturday, May 2, 2009

$65M will help keep roofs over Floridians' heads:

Florida is about to get $65 million for homeless-prevention programs — money that advocates say is desperately needed to help keep the recently unemployed from winding up in shelters.

The federal government is expected to announce today the guidelines on how the funding will be used. Orange County will receive more than $2.5 million, and the city of Orlando will get about $921,000.

"In the past, the hardest dollar to find has been emergency-assistance money to get somebody over a crisis," said Tom Pierce, executive director of the state's Office on Homelessness, part of the Florida Department of Children and Families. "There's a potential in here to provide rent assistance for several months to a family that needs it, particularly if they've lost a job."

It's a strategy that advocates for the homeless have urged for years: Instead of waiting until a family has lost everything and is out on the streets, why not spend money earlier to keep things from reaching that point?

The funds, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by President Barack Obama in February, will be for renters who are behind on rent or utility payments and those recently evicted. Homeowners facing foreclosure will be helped under other programs.

During the 2007-08 fiscal year, nearly 170,000 Florida households were evicted by court order. Pierce said many were the result of a bank foreclosing on a property and then evicting the people living there — even if they had been paying rent all along.

"If it's a landlord-owned property ... most often the tenant only finds out about the foreclosure when the sheriff's office shows up to escort the family from the premises," Pierce said. "Those are the horror stories we're hearing."

The prevention funds could help such families cover the first and last months' rent and a deposit on another house or apartment. It likely will be another month before the funds are available, Pierce said.

Kate Santich

Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

published March 19, 2009

New report find Florida one of the worst states for growing problem: homeless children

Like many girls her age, 4-year-old Aliyah Newton lies down to sleep every night with a hopeful refrain.

"Good night, mommy," she says after her hair is combed and "America's Next Top Model" is over. "See you in the morning for work!"

Aliyah's mom, Lisa Simmons, hasn't had a job or a home in eight months. The mother and daughter are living in a homeless shelter in Tampa, part of a growing Florida phenomenon of homeless families.

"I try not to deceive her but I don't want to pressure her," said Simmons, 38. "She thinks I'm going to work. And that's a job. Looking for a job is truly a job."

Aliyah is one of nearly 50,000 homeless girls and boys across Florida, one of the highest rates in the country, according to a new study by the National Center on Family Homelessness. Forty-two percent are younger than 6.

And the problem is worsening with the sagging economy, according to the report and social service experts.

The report blames Florida's high cost of living, unemployment and lack of affordable housing. And because the young and homeless generally have more health problems and less education, many of them could remain that way for the rest of their lives.

"Most people think they are the welfare babies. But no, they're not," said Metropolitan Ministries residential services director Jay Molina. "The face of homelessness is changing rapidly."

In five years, the number of homeless children has increased 30 percent to about 1 million nationwide, said Barbara Duffield of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.

For years, programs designed to combat homelessness focused on the most obvious group -- "street people," said National Center on Family Homelessness president Ellen Bassuk.

"Policies focused on chronically homeless singles," Bassuk said. "The families on the street were largely ignored."

Yet their swelling numbers, and the disadvantages these "invisible" children face without a stable home life, are hard to overlook, Duffield said.

Homeless children face higher rates of health and emotional problems than most kids their age. They typically achieve lower levels of education and income. Nearly 1 in 5 children in Florida is uninsured -- more than double the national average. And the state fails to prioritize homeless children when distributing child care vouchers, according to the report.

Advocacy groups say a lack of affordable housing is the main driver of family homelessness -- an issue many across Florida know all too well.

Housing is considered affordable, Weikel said, if monthly payments stay under 30 percent of household income. Renters would need to make $17 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in Hillsborough County -- prohibitively expensive for parents earning minimum wage.

So homeless families often sleep in their cars, the streets or at local aid agencies, such as Metropolitan Ministries, where Simmons sought shelter. It houses 85 children in dorm-style quarters. Forty families, including 74 children, are on a waiting list.

It doesn't take much for family teetering on the edge of poverty to wind up homeless, experts say. "For families in this situation, even a seemingly minor event can trigger a catastrophic outcome, pushing a family onto the streets," this week's report said.

Homeless or not, Aliyah is still a little girl. So she makes new friends at the shelter and learns to tie her glittery shoelaces, even as her mom gets up each day to look for work.

The former Florida Power & Light customer service employee was laid off about a year ago and moved here from West Palm Beach in search of a job. She thought the job market would be better here and hopes the hours she has spent tweaking resumes, phoning temp agencies and agonizing over her career will land her a job in the near future.

But after half a year of frustrations and dead ends, Simmons said she sometimes needs reminders of what she's working toward: a home for her and her little girl.

"I have those breakdown moments where it seems like nothing's working and no matter what I do, all my striving and effort seems to be, like, for nothing," she said.

Next to her, Aliyah sings to herself and plays with the badge that gets them into their room.

"But I know it's for something."

By Drew Harwell, St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer

Published Friday, March 13, 2009

Solutions That Work

Homelessness and hopelessness are often closely allied. And the despair reaches past the men, women and children who don't have a roof to call their own. It impacts business owners who worry that visible vagrancy will hurt their chances of bringing customers to their door. It falls heavily on city officials who struggle with conflicting emotions of compassion and concern for public safety.

Too many cities let that despondency discourage them from action -- or adopt cruelly punitive "get tough" policies in the vain hope of pushing the problem out of town. But some local leaders are looking past that knee-jerk reaction, seeking ways to lift people off the streets.

Daytona Beach can be proud of one such program. Downtown Streets offers homeless men food and shelter in exchange for a promise of sobriety, and work picking up cans and bottles around the Beach Street area. The program -- a brainchild of City Commissioner Rick Shiver, sponsored by the city and the Salvation Army, is modeled after a successful pilot in Palo Alto, Calif. That city's "Streets Team" now holds contracts for maintaining several city parks and other sites -- and puts a heavy focus on helping its clients transition into full-time employment with the potential to support themselves and live independently.

It's worth noting that many of the homeless people in Volusia and Flagler counties already work -- which is why an annual 24-hour homeless survey set to begin Thursday at noon will visit local day-labor facilities early Friday morning.

The difference in the Palo Alto program is that it focuses on finding sustainable employment, and moving people into permanent housing. As of April, 250 people had gone through the Palo Alto program and 42 had gone on to find jobs outside the program. Daytona Beach -- which paid the California city $2,500 for the right to use its model -- should take the same focus if its efforts are to succeed.

Daytona Beach is not the only local government taking a creative approach toward homelessness. Deltona recently held a forum focusing on the needs of homeless people in that city, and opened a "one-stop shop" social-services center aimed at connecting people with services they need, including drug counseling and food stamps.

There's no magic spell to end homelessness in Volusia or Flagler counties, and tough economic times mean that the need for help will be even greater than a year ago. But local officials deserve credit for seeking compassionate, common-sense solutions.

An Editorial from the Daytona News Jounal

The Florida Bar has announced a major new initiative to help struggling homeowners. Florida Lawyers Assisting Homeowners (FLASH) will pair homeowners who have missed payments, but who are not yet in foreclosure, with volunteer attorneys who work in the area of real property law. This Statewide effort has launched a toll-free hot line (866-607-2187) and will take calls from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The program is intended to provide assistance to homeowners in negotiating with their lenders. To be eligible, the homeowner’s income must not exceed 125 percent of the national poverty level based on family size and yearly income and be a Florida resident.

A federal judge on Friday struck down an Orlando ordinance that barred large group feedings for homeless at downtown area parks.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell said the city ordinance violates the constitutional rights of activists who want to feed the homeless.

Activists who had been feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park sued the city in 2006 over the ordinance passed that year.

Attorney Jacqueline Dowd, who represented plaintiffs including First Vagabonds Church of God and Orlando Food Not Bombs, said they were "thrilled" with the ruling.

"We are hopeful that this ruling will have an impact on cities across the country that are thinking of regulating people who want to help those less fortunate," Dowd said.

Homeless Students Face Special Challenges:

They live with friends of their parents, with relatives, in garages and in shelters.

They sleep on couches, on floors, and share beds with brothers and sisters in low-cost motels.

Sometimes they live in cars.

They are children and, according to advocates, approximately 1,100 kids in Charlotte, DeSoto and Hardee counties are homeless under the guidelines established by the federal Department of Education. Helping them succeed academically presents educators with some special challenges.

"Children who are homeless often don't do as well on standardized tests as their peers because they don't have a regular place to study and often their parents, who may be working two or three jobs, don't have the time to help them with their homework," said Carmen McCraink, an associate professor of education at Barry University in Miami.

"To combat that, it's important that teachers recognize the signs that these students are having trouble adjusting to their circumstances — such as turning in homework assignments late or not at all — and act quickly to help them, she said.

A failure to do that, she said, could result in the school system itself victimizing these students by classifying them as unwilling or unable to meet academic standards.

Fortunately, there is help for school districts that have homeless students.

The federal Department of Education administers a special grant program aimed at helping students who are homeless succeed academically despite a nomadic lifestyle that keeps them constantly on the move, said Chantal Phillips, who works for the Charlotte County public school system..

“When children bounce around from school to school lack of academic success becomes an issue,” Phillips said. “One of the ways we deal with that is to allow kids to stay in the same school even though their addresses may change and they’re no longer in the districted area.”

By MIKE BILLINGTON
Associate Editor
See the Charlotte Sun on September 7 for the full story

Homeless go back on the streets: After three weeks, Sarasota officials shut down shelter.

For one month, about 30 homeless people in Sarasota had a place to stay. At just $11 a night, they got bathroom and kitchen facilities, a common room, an outside picnic area and twice-weekly dinners. Right downtown, to boot, in the foothills of high-rise condos.

"We're at the doorstep of opulence," the group's pastor said.

It was a simple, easy solution, remarkably fortunate for the homeless, and too good to last.

City officials kicked them out last week. They said the downtown area isn't zoned for short-term housing. Now, the group pools together what little money it's gathered, mostly from day labor, to try and rent a few hotel rooms. They held a flea market on Saturday to raise money for tents.

This collective was formed by Tim Huffman, manager of Renaissance Self-storage on Boulevard of the Arts. Huffman himself was living in a converted space in one of the buildings he manages. He began to notice that a number of his customers were renting space just to lock up their bedding in the daytime and bring it back out at night.

"It broke my heart," he said. "These are the people that were my customers, and I was like, 'Why are they dragging pillows in here every day?'"

So about a month ago, he formed the Haven of Rest Homeless Shelter on the south side of the road, converting unused offices and storage rooms to living space. Huffman shared his room with three others.

He didn't allow drug or alcohol use, and he compelled the residents to either find day labor or work for him. Zach Evans, a sort of a-religious preacher, delivered a message to them twice a day in the parking lot. Everyone came (and still does) to hear him exhort them to wake up, to love life, to realize that even nothingness is a gift.

And then he urges them into action. Huffman paraphrases his message thusly: "Now that we're helping you, what are you going to do to help somebody today?"

But soon the group started getting visits from the police. Apparently, says Huffman, the residents of nearby buildings were calling in to say that their favorite strolling grounds had gotten scary.

The group's response? They built a makeshift public park.

Walk by the storage center and you'll see the Haven of Rest Park in a cleared-out ditch, in front of the facility's parking lot. There's a black plastic pool with feeder fish swimming into it. A hose connected to a sump pump runs up to a fiberglass boulder, forming a not unpretty fountain topped by a stone angel. There are decorative iron candle stands, turtle figurines and benches sitting on canted wood palettes. Flowering plants scavenged from a nearby ditch have been transplanted into the perimeter. It's not going to win a beauty contest, but it beats the overgrown trash pit that was there before.

"It was going to be completely donated and maintained by the homeless of Sarasota County, just to show that we want to give back, that we are not people to be feared," Huffman said.

The park remains unfinished. Officials from the city planning department started coming by the building, first with claims of fire hazards, then with the immitigable complaint that the shelter was in the wrong zoning district.

"Downtown does not allow for short-term housing," said Gretchen Schneider, general manager of planning and development for the city.

The only solution was to get a zoning text amendment, which would require numerous public hearings and ultimately the deliberation of the City Commission. Huffman didn't have that kind of time, and early last week, the group moved out of the storage facility.

When Huffman was collecting rent from the homeless, he brought in about $300 a day. He'd wake them up in the morning and drive them in a van to the labor pool. Since they were evicted, Huffman says, not as many of them have been working, whether for lack of Huffman's discipline or because they're too exhausted from sleeping on the street.

"They don't sleep very well when they're on the street because they're afraid of getting beat up or arrested," he said.

But Huffman has still been collecting some money after Evans' sermons. Those who contributed to the group, with cash or with labor, got to stay four to a hotel room.

They function like a commune that way, on a system of unspoken debts and repayments. "We all look out for each other," says Anthony Edwards, whom Huffman is helping to cope with alcoholism and manic tendencies. "If they don't have something, I help them out. If I don't have something, they help me out."

The group is now seeking help from stores like Lowe's, Home Depot and Goodwill, where they hope to obtain discounted or donated tents. Their temporary plan is to camp out at Oscar Scherer State Park. Huffman will be joining them.

"This is the cheapest way for us to be safe without being arrested," he said.

In the long-term, Huffman's got his eye on a vacant hotel on U.S. 41. Using money that the collective pools together, he plans to lease the space and house up to 60 homeless people.

"We're not askin' for a handout," Huffman said. "We really want to earn our way. We're just need a place to rest and figure out how we're going to do it.

by Justin Richards

Published 08.20.2008
http://sarasota.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/homeless_go_back_on_the_streets/Content?oid=185698

©1996-2008 Creative Loafing Media - All Rights Reserved

Treat homelessness with multiple methods:

The ranks of the homeless are growing, and so is the public's discomfort in communities not accustomed to seeing significant numbers of homeless people out and about — communities such as Tarpon Springs.

In the past, small numbers of homeless people camped in the woods around Tarpon Springs. They were seldom seen.

But now, downtown business owners are finding homeless people sleeping in their alleys or in vacant lots and are hearing complaints that their customers are being hit up for money on the sidewalks. Police are finding homeless people sleeping in city parks and along the Pinellas Trail.

Where the homeless congregate, public urination and litter have become a problem. And right or wrong, residents have come to believe that certain areas of the city are no longer safe because transients are there.

Late last month the Tarpon Springs City Commission responded to the increasing complaints by discussing the issue at a commission meeting. Most commissioners demonstrated that they understand the complexities of the homelessness problem and the challenge of addressing it.

Unlike some among the general public, commissioners know that not all homeless people are drug or alcohol abusers. Some have physical ailments that prevent them from working, or they have mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia that are untreated because they can't afford treatment or can't manage their own affairs. Many are veterans who can't find jobs or are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome.

Some homeless people work, but don't earn enough to afford shelter. In fact, according to a 2007 survey of the county's homeless by the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless, 39 percent work full or part time.

Some had homes but have lost them in this dismal economy. The ranks of the homeless include families with children, who live in their cars or in vacant lots. In 2007, 18.5 percent of the Pinellas homeless were children.

Tarpon Springs officials are concerned that some of the homeless people in the city are coming from Pasco County. Some have wondered if the Shepherd Center, which provides a hot meal to the hungry along with other much-needed services for the poor, might be attracting more homeless people. Center officials denied that they draw the homeless to the city, but said that people who are hungry, no matter where they come from, should be fed. And they should.

Some speakers suggested that the city should turn a vacant building in the city into a shelter for the homeless, but with government budgets so stretched, few cities would take on the cost of operating a homeless shelter.

However, the commission was open to solutions that would not involve substantial costs, including these good ideas:

• Starting a business Crime Watch.

• Finding a way to distribute information about available services to homeless people.

• Researching ordinances some other Pinellas cities have created to outlaw aggressive panhandling.

• Talking with Pasco officials about ways to partner on solutions.

• Improving lighting in certain areas of downtown.

• Scheduling future workshops with area experts on the homeless.

Several speakers at the commission meeting addressed the terrible shortage of affordable housing in Tarpon Springs. Some of the working poor are homeless because they can't afford the market cost for housing. The Tarpon Springs Housing Authority is overwhelmed with 541 people on a waiting list for subsidized housing. Yet the city was cool to a recent overture from Pinellas County to participate in a countywide inclusionary housing ordinance that could spur the construction of more affordable housing.

Homelessness is growing. If Tarpon Springs wants to tackle the problem, it needs to do so from all angles.

A St. Petersburg Times Editorial Published Saturday, July 5, 2008 11:51 AM

A Plan to End Homelessness in Central Florida:

It would be easy to argue that this is the worst time to launch a plan to end homelessness in Central Florida. Money is tight everywhere.

But perhaps it's just the opposite: There's no better time to deal with the homeless quandary.

It's impossible to ignore as many as 9,000 homeless people in Central Florida. But it's not just about them. It's about the strain on community services, from hospitals to law enforcement.

The good news is that after years of talking about it, leaders in Central Florida finally are prepared to act.

Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer are co-chairs of a regional commission. Business is engaged, led by Walt Disney World President Meg Crofton and Orlando Magic's Alex Martins, both on the 21-member homeless commission.

And now, the last piece is in place: someone to coordinate this partnership between governments, businesses and social-service agencies.

Ray Larsen, most recently the senior vice president for Community Outreach with the Central Florida YMCA, comes on board July 1 as executive director. With a powerful board behind him, Mr. Larsen needs to quickly address the challenge ahead.

Here are some ways:

*How about a one-stop service for the homeless? Investing $2 million to start drop-in centers in Orange, Osceola, Seminole counties and the city of Orlando is money well spent. Starting with Orlando makes the most sense because it has the largest concentration of homeless people. Pulling together services there, from help with drug abuse to job counseling, would make a big difference. The more people who get help, the fewer homeless people there will be to worry about.

Better yet is to help some of these people apply for federal aid, running the gamut from veterans' assistance to food stamps to disability. That saves money, and is less of a strain on local agencies.

*What about coordinating services? That can be done by working with all the social agencies and faith-based groups to cut down on services that overlap, like providing meals or clothing. That doesn't involve spending money. The commission can even save some by streamlining services.

*Where's the money? Having each of the four communities fund these initiatives, at a total expense of $50 million yearly, is going to be a tough sell for now. That's why it's critical that Mr. Larsen tap into private dollars by knocking on every door possible of businesses in Central Florida. Consider the money preventive medicine.

It's the true definition of a team effort. Without it, the homeless challenge falls apart.

published June 17 in the Orlando Sentinel

Homeless children a growing issue

Six-year-old Ryan Rush doesn't know his grandmother cries for him when he's asleep at night.

Ryan's grandmother, Georgia Naclerio, lost her home when she could no longer afford the mortgage after her husband died. She lived in her car for three weeks and eventually moved into The Shelter. Since she has custody of Ryan, he was right there with her.

He's among 191 homeless students enrolled in Leon County Schools as of January. It's likely there are many others who have not been included in that figure. During the 2005-06 school year, 350 homeless students were enrolled in district schools. Last year, 395 kids in the district were homeless.

Earlier this month, the district released an annual Residence Survey in hopes of identifying unknown homeless students.

Statewide, 30,883 public school students are reportedly homeless — nearly a quarter of the state's total homeless population.

"If you have one-fourth of the population as homeless students, you've got a problem in this state," said Tom Pierce, executive director of The Homeless Program at the Florida Department of Children and Families. "The issue is they are the innocent victims of homelessness. . . . It's going to get worse because of the overall conditions."

Naclerio went to The Shelter a week before Thanksgiving, and she never thought she would be homeless.

She said, "But there's nothing I can do."

Keeping accurate numbers is tricky

Tracking the number of homeless students is challenging, and the records can vary between districts, the Florida Department of Education and other agencies that track this highly mobile population.

According to the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act, students are considered homeless if they don't have a consistent place to sleep at night, if they live in motels, cars and transitional shelters or with family members. Students waiting to be placed in foster care are also considered homeless.

The Department of Children and Families considers children homeless if they are living in a shelter or on the streets, Pierce said. But he describes the overall system for gathering the numbers of homeless students as educated "guess work."

Kenyetta Williams, homeless liaison for Leon County Schools, said the district's records on homeless students are based on parent response.

Williams said it's possible the numbers are higher, especially if families are living with relatives, commonly referred to as "doubling up."

"Some people don't want to say they're homeless," she said. "They'll say 'that's not me.' It may be a pride thing."

That pride can get in the way of agencies serving homeless families.

"We still struggle to find out who is homeless," said Pierce, noting that DCF's numbers are based on what the DOE reports. "It's very difficult to try and get a true and accurate look at who is homeless."

Agencies statewide are working on a consistent definition, said Stephanie Shepherd, deputy director of the Big Bend Coalition for the Homeless. But that hasn't happened yet.

So far they know two things — the homeless population is getting younger and agencies are seeing more homeless families with children in the Big Bend area and throughout the state.

In the 2007 Homeless Survey Report by the coalition, the lead local agency coordinating resources for agencies serving the homeless, 218 families were determined to be homeless. That number was 150 in 2005.

The many contributors to homelessness

Officials agree the state's homeless problem is fueled by reoccurring factors such as a lack of affordable housing, limited household income, unemployment and poverty.

"The economy has a lot to do with the number of people who are struggling," said Clair Scott, a resource teacher who tutors homeless students in Leon County Schools. "If the parents are stable, the children are stable."

Agencies are scrambling to keep up with the need for assistance.

"There needs to be houses for people who work the minimum-wage jobs," said Kisca Smith, program director for ECHO Family Services, a transitional shelter for homeless families.

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Tallahassee is $687 per month, according to the coalition.

Smith said she gets at least 20 referrals per week on homeless families in need. At capacity, ECHO provides housing for 12 to 16 adults and their children.

Pierce said DCF gives $14 million a year to the state's 27 agencies and groups serving the homeless population. He said Gov. Charlie Crist has put $243 million in the state's housing budget and plans to put in an additional $75 million to target the homeless.

But Florida's wilting economy has triggered budget cuts for state agencies and local governments, making the pot of money uncomfortably low.

"We stretch our resources as much as humanly possible," Shepherd said. The coalition lost $350,000 from the city's budget cuts.

When it comes to the school district, the transportation department feels the biggest pinch.

Additional stops and routes have been created. The district is required to provide transportation to homeless students so they can continue going to the same school they did before they became homeless, no matter how far it may be.

If more students become homeless in the future, the district will need to hire more bus drivers.

"If we have to yes, we will," said Ronnie Youngblood, divisional director of facility systems management. "That's one of things we continue to look at."

'Homeless students have so much on their plate'

Naclerio says that she worries about her grandson's education. Her daughter is in jail and she's had full custody since 2005.

From sleeping in her car to living in The Shelter, Naclerio couldn't provide a consistent place for him to do his homework at The Shelter. Since it didn't open until 5 p.m., he often sat on a step near the Tennessee Street building until it did.

According to the National Center for Homeless Education, children who have changed schools three or more times since first grade are much more likely to have repeated a grade or to have low reading scores by the third grade.

Adriana Schley, a 41-year-old mother of three girls, ages 14, 9 and 6, said she tries to encourage her daughters to do well in school. She didn't want homelessness to get in the way of their education.

"It's been a concern for me how they get their homework done," Schley said.

They recently found a better fit since moving into ECHO Family Services.

Now her girls can get on-site tutoring and case managers offer support ranging from life-skills classes to school supplies.

Naclerio also has found housing in ECHO's units. She and Ryan moved to a two-bedroom apartment on Feb. 6.

"I feel better now that I'm here," she said, while Ryan kept himself busy playing on the floor. "Now if I can just find a permanent place, then I would feel even better."

By TaMaryn Waters
Tallahassee DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Shelters fill up as housing jobs drop

Construction workers, carpenters, real estate agents and even mortgage brokers - those who once profited from the now-deflated housing boom - are now out of work and seeking public assistance.

Officials with the Community Coalition on Homelessness for Manatee County say they are getting a growing number of calls for help from those connected with the housing boom who have either lost their homes or are at risk of foreclosure.

Unfortunately, agencies that help those at risk - the homelessness coalition, Manatee Community Action Agency and the Salvation Army - ran out of funds to provide rental and mortgage assistance by summer's end, said Executive Director Adell Erozer.

Worse yet, those same agencies do not expect to get any money until after the first of the year - and, even then, they have been given no date when the funds will arrive.

Manatee schools have been affected by the increasing number of homeless, said Deb Bailey, of Project Heart, the school district's program to help homeless students. Bailey identified a record 984 children without permanent shelter in just the first three months of the school year, as compared to 2,200 students counted for the entire 2006-07 school year.

"We've always had chronic homeless, but this year it's different," Bailey said. "This year the families who need help are the ones who 12 months ago had jobs, cars, apartments or houses, but now they are unemployed and have lost everything. The crisis affects just about anybody connected with the housing industry."

Shelters are overflowing, the Salvation Army reports. Manatee and Sarasota shelters provided a haven for nearly 5,000 people in October alone, according to a computerized database for tracking services provided to the homeless and those at risk.

Soup kitchens in the bicounty area served a record 20,668 meals, and many of those standing in line have never had to ask for assistance before, said Mary DeLazzer, who oversees Our Daily Bread's kitchen.

DeLazzer notices big changes from last year. "I always look at the feet of people standing in line," she said. "Now I see mostly work boots - construction workers without jobs who have had to pawn their tools just to get by."

Here is a snapshot of several local agencies that are struggling to stretch limited resources to help those in need.

Project Heart/

Manatee school district

Project Heart assists families and students who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Tutoring, school supplies, case management, referrals for services in the community and counseling are offered at several locations within the school district.

The goal is to help homeless students enroll and remain in the same school throughout the school year.

Bailey projects the number of homeless students will be even higher this school year than last year's 2,200, as figures are already reaching the halfway mark of last year's total.

Hardest hit among the families in need are parents who recently lost their jobs and are now caught in the gap between applying and receiving assistance from programs like Medicaid and rental assistance. Those delays often stretch over several months. "These families need help with school supplies, school uniforms and medicines their children need," Bailey said.

Project Heart is trying to address transportation problems so children from families who have lost their homes and are now living in different school zones can remain in the same school.

But Project Heart is having budget problems of its own. In the previous school year, Bailey had received an $85,000 federal grant to help students and struggling families. This year, she received only $68,000 after federal budget cuts.

"The community's safety net is broken," Bailey said. "It's very sad to tell families, 'I'm sorry, I can't help,' when funds run out . . . especially when they have little kids with them, wondering where they are going to sleep tonight. Then it breaks my heart."

Salvation Army of Bradenton

Joanell Greubel, director of the Family Lodge, which provides temporary housing for women and children, could help only one out of every six people who sought shelter in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30.

"Of those 1,577, we only had space for 279 women and children," said Greubel. "There was no place else for them to go."

HOPE Family Services, the other shelter in Manatee County that receives women and children, takes in only victims of domestic abuse.

"That means the families we had to turn away had to leave town and possibly their jobs to seek shelter elsewhere," Greubel said. "And shelters in surrounding counties are also full."

Because the Salvation Army does not want to turn women and children out onto the streets until and unless they have a safe place to go, the shelter's turnover is slower than it was in years past, Greubel reports.

She also has found people need longer-term assistance because wages have remained stagnant while the cost of living has increased dramatically.

Greubel is seeing an increase in the numbers of elderly seeking shelter, including her most recent - an 85-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who was evicted from her apartment.

A similar situation exists in the Salvation Army's men's shelter. "Our meals have increased on average about 400 a month from last year and our stays increased about 400 a night," director Ed Wickman said.

Maj. Robert Pfeiffer, the Salvation Army's director of social services, predicts those numbers are going to escalate.

"We are going to see more homeless and more children in the street as foreclosures increase," Pfeiffer said. "We are reaching a critical melting point in the social structure in this country. Social-service agencies that provide assistance are being inundated."

United Way 211 of Manasota Inc.

Functioning similar to 911 for emergencies, the 211 phone line in Manatee and Sarasota counties refers callers in need of help to social agencies.

More than 6,000 people called 211 in October asking for help, according to agency reports. Of those calls, 2,318 needed financial assistance. Food requests numbered 3,428.

More people have called needing rental deposit money, particularly from workers in the construction, real estate, food service and now retail and health care industries, according to data provided by Ben Kunkel, with Manasota 211.

Community Coalition on Homelessness

The Open Door, a resource center for the homeless run by the coalition, reports 98 clients served - many with repeat visits - in October, nearly double the number of those who sought help in October 2006.

While the perception still persists that most homeless are single men with substance abuse or mental health problems, families in need are the fastest-growing segment of Manatee County's homeless population, said director Erozer.

The coalition has recently published "The Community Resources Directory of Homeless Services," a 44-page booklet listing regional resources in Manatee, Sarasota and neighboring counties. Copies are available at the Community Coalition on Homelessness, 202 13th Ave. E., Bradenton. The guide is also available in Spanish.

Our Daily Bread

DeLazzer has a tiny desk in her pantry where she stores all of the donated food and supplies the soup kitchen buys for 18 cents a pound from Meals on Wheels PLUS Food Bank.

A new shipment had just arrived last week and the shelves were packed with canned goods, bags of beans, rice and noodles.

"In three days' time, all of this will be gone except for that big jar of hot peppers," said DeLazzer, who is now serving more than 7,000 meals a month. During the summer months, the count topped 8,000. It's all she can do to keep the shelves full.

"It's not just food we need, we need money, as well, to buy toilet paper, napkins, plastic utensils, dish soap, disinfectants and floor cleaners," she said.

DeLazzer is thankful for contributions that come through the door, but she said she can stretch monetary contributions further than a can of food.

She picked up a can of salmon. "This costs $2.90 in the store but with that same amount of money, I can buy more than 15 pounds of food from the food bank. The food is going out of here like you wouldn't believe."

Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness

Richard Martin, executive director, sees little relief on the horizon.

"Many people who were in the workforce last year and then lost their jobs have reached the end of the unemployment checks," Martin said. "They are now facing eviction or foreclosure because they cannot find employment."

The Suncoast Partnership is a nonprofit agency that coordinates homeless outreach and services in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

Day labor, once a fall-back option for many without work, has dried up, Martin said. The demand for day labor is less than half what it was this time last year. "Everything is tied to the decline of the housing industry," he added.

Most agencies say they need emergency funding. "The funds dribble in in drips and drabs after the first of the year," Martin said. "We are strapped by lack of resources. People who once contributed to the United Way are now in need of the United Way. This is all moving so fast it is hard to pin down.

"We need an angel."

By DONNA WRIGHT Bradenton Herald November 25, 2007

Tent City to Open in St. Petersburg:

After more than 100 homeless men and women set up rows of tents under an overpass near downtown St. Petersburg last December, government officials and local charities decried the shantytown's unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

Almost a year later, a new "tent city" will open Saturday. Optimistically dubbed Pinellas Hope, the outdoor shelter will feature portable showers and restrooms and individual tents outfitted with 4- inch-thick mats.

After months of brainstorming about how to solve the homeless problem, this is the solution that advocates and government officials came up with.

No one knows if or how it will work out.

"It is an experiment," said Frank Murphy, president of the Catholic Charities Diocese of St. Petersburg, which will operate the camp. "We all sit around and say, 'What do you think is going to happen?'"

Pinellas Hope will sprawl across 7 acres along 126th Avenue N near 49th Street.

The tent city will include an outdoor dining room, computers, Internet access and designated areas where the homeless can speak with caseworkers, social service agency representatives and other support facilitators.

At least 225 tents will be available. Volunteers will bring in prepared food and serve warm dinners.

The shelter is expected to remain open through April 30.

"You are going to see a place which is a bit more humane than last year's tent
city," said City Council chairman Jamie Bennett. "It still is a tent city, but
it is better than a cold sidewalk in the dark of night."

But Pinellas Hope is a far cry from the permanent shelter officials promised in January, when the area's homeless crisis was thrust into the national spotlight after St. Petersburg police officers, citing a fire safety code, slashed dozens of tents occupied by the homeless.

Then, in June, the state Legislature demanded that government agencies trim their budgets. Many cities, including St. Petersburg, responded by slashing funding to social services in order to protect other expenses, such as those for police and fire service.

Michael Amidei, chairman of the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless' Interfaith Committee and a founder of the original tent city that opened in December, said local charities or cities will probably not be able to secure money to build a permanent shelter any time soon.

Pinellas Hope "is what it is," he said. "It is a Band-Aid solution for a five-month period of time, but that's considerably longer than the other tent cities have operated before."

Catholic Charities has received dozens of calls from homeless men and women interested in reserving a tent at Pinellas Hope. They were told to show up early on Saturday, Murphy said.

All potential residents will need to pass a background check. Among other safety measures: The complex will be fenced, and a 24-hour security guard will be present.

"It will be safe for them," Murphy said. "When they are lying on the street, there is no safety."

Some homeless residents have expressed concern that they will be fined or arrested if they do not move into Pinellas Hope.

An ordinance passed by the City Council this year prohibits camping and sleeping on St. Petersburg's streets if shelter beds are available.

Bennett said those rumors are false. The city will not arrest or penalize those who refuse to move to the tent city, he said.

"Tell me in our history when we have done that," Bennett said. "Our Police Department has been patient and they have really shown restraint when they could have been heavy-handed at any point."

What remains to be seen is how many people will show up Saturday looking for
help, Murphy said, and how many will stay.

"If they look and they don't like it, they can go," he said.

by Cristina Silva St. Petersburg Times

Homeless demonstration in St. Petersburg before GOP debate:

With the CNN/YouTube Republican debate tomorrow in St. Petersburg, members of the homeless community and activists are drawing attention to the city’s treatment of the homeless by holding a four-night sleep-in at the site where the debate will be held.

Yesterday they were forced to move across the street from the Mahaffey Theater to the sidewalk in front of the Hilton Hotel on 4th avenue south at first street southeast.

The Rev. Bruce Wright is pastor and director of Refuge Ministries. Wright said he and nine other people began a juice and water hunger strike on Sunday night in order to get the city of St. Petersburg to improve conditions for people who don’t have a place to live.

The solution suggested by the homeless involves a plan to move people into permanent shelters. Wright said that advocates and people who are homeless oppose the city’s use of the new Pinellas HOPE tent city, in part because it is a waste of resources that could be used for permanent solutions.

G. W. Rohl was once homeless and is an organizer of the sleep-in at the Mahaffey. He doesn’t like the city’s tent city idea because it’s temporary and far away from social services.

This morning St. Petersburg police removed some personal possessions of people who live on sidewalks under Interstate 375, outside the St. Vincent de Paul Society at 15th Street N and 5th Avenue N.

Homeless advocate Eric Rubin said Officer Sandra Miner and other St. Pete Police officers threw away the belongings of some people living there.

Rubin said tonight there will be a solidarity march from the St. Vincent de Paul Society under I-375 at 15th Street N and 5th Avenue N to the Hilton Hotel across from the Mahaffey Theater on 4th Avenue S at 1st Street SE to join the sleep-in.

11/27/07 Seán Kinane
WMNF Evening News Tuesday

20,000 fewer chronically homeless on streets:

The federal government is taking credit for what it says is a nearly 12 percent drop in the number of people who are chronically homeless, according to government estimates being released Wednesday.

About 20,000 fewer chronically homeless were on the streets from 2005 to 2006, says the Department of Housing and Urban Development citing its programs designed to move homeless people into permanent housing.

HUD says people are chronically homeless if they have been continuously living on the streets for a year or more, or if they have been homeless at least four times in the past three years. They also have to have a disability, often mental illness or substance abuse.

The number of chronically homeless people dropped from 175,900 in 2005 to 155,600 in 2006, according to data collected by HUD from about 3,900 cities and counties.

Many cities had declines. New York, New York, went from 7,002 in 2005 to 6,503 in 2006, HUD reported. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, the number dropped from 831 in 2005 to 577 the following year. In Washington, D.C., the number increased from 1,773 to 1,891, though city officials told HUDHUD they believed the change was caused in part by better counting methods.

Advocates for the homeless said they expected a decrease on the national level, given the government's increasing emphasis on permanent housing instead of temporary shelters.

"In the past few years, there has been a significant investment in ending chronic homelessness, both in time and resources," said Mary Cunningham, director of the Homelessness Research Institute at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

"Communities across the country are really working hard on this issue," she said. "It would be a major disappointment if the numbers were not going down."

HUD has been shifting resources from emergency shelters to transitional and permanent housing for years. The number of emergency shelter beds dropped by 35 percent from 1996 to 2005, to 217,900.

Meanwhile, the number of beds in permanent housing for the homeless increased by 83 percent, to 208,700.

HUD spent $287 million last year on programs that serve people who are chronically homeless, creating 4,000 permanent housing units, the agency said.

Earlier this year, HUD estimated there were a total of 754,000 homeless people on a given night in January 2005. The overall estimate for 2006 is expected early next year.

The homeless are notoriously difficult to count, though HUD started requiring housing agencies to try in 2005. The agencies are required to count their local homeless populations every other year, though about 60 percent do it annually.

The 2006 estimate for people who were chronically homeless was based on annual data from agencies that conduct the counts each year.
AP November 5, 2007

Hide-Away Storage gives $30,000 to Salvation Army:

Steve Wilson, managing partner of Hide-Away Storage, celebrated the 30th anniversary of his business by giving $30,000 to area Salvation Army shelters and churches today.

Wilson gave $12,000 to The Salvation Army in Manatee County to help cover shelter expenses for the homeless. The Salvation Army of Sarasota County received $9,000.

The remainder of Hide-Away's $30,000 gift was presented to The Salvation Army operations in St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, and Naples.

"We wanted to find a way to show our appreciation to our thousands and thousands of wonderful customers and also to the communities in which we have served during the past 30 years, Wilson said in news release. "It just seemed natural to choose the Salvation Army for our 30th anniversary celebration gift. After all, the Salvation Army is one of the most admired service organizations worldwide. And we try to use the Salvation Army as a model of how we at the Hide-Away Storage can serve our customer base."

The gifts come at a crucial time when supplies are low and the numbers of homeless are on the increase, said Ashley Canesse, development director of The Salvation Army in Bradenton. "People who used to donate to us are finding themselves now in need."

The $12,000 gift to the Bradenton shelter will house, feed and provide case management for 40 women and children for nine critical days and nights," says Major Tony Barrington, area coordinator for The Salvation Army, Manatee.

The first Hide-Away Storage location began in September of 1977 in Bradenton. There are now 10 locations, three in Bradenton, three in Sarasota, and one each in Ellenton, St. Petersburg, Fort Myers, and Naples.

Staff Report Bradenton Herald 11/5/07

Man who feeds homeless cleared

In a case watched closely by homeless advocates around the country, Orlando jurors Tuesday acquitted 22-year-old Eric Montanez of violating the city's controversial ban on large group feedings in public parks.

Montanez, who faced up to six months in jail and a $500 fine for the misdemeanor, said he never lost faith during his two-day trial, believing the jury "would not convict a person for feeding the homeless."

Immediately after the verdict, Orange County Judge Steve Jewett praised Montanez for wanting to help those less fortunate but cautioned him that "you do need to follow the law."

But outside the courtroom, Montanez vowed to continue his group's weekly feedings at Lake Eola and stuck with his contention that volunteers already were in compliance with the 2006 ordinance, which prohibits feedings of 25 or more people in city parks without a permit. The law also limits each group to two permits per park per year.

Although the feedings regularly attract more than 50 people -- some said more than 100 -- volunteers have said there are several groups sponsoring the feedings and that no one group is feeding more than 24 people at a time. Much of the testimony focused on what appeared to be varying interpretations of the law.

City prosecutor Kimberly Laskoff had no comment on the verdict, but Orlando Police Department spokeswoman Barbara Jones issued a statement Tuesday evening saying: "It appears the jury felt the defendant did not violate the city ordinance. That said, the city will continue to enforce this ordinance, as it is a vehicle for the city to balance the needs and safety of residents visiting the park and those who desire to feed in the park."

The April 4 arrest was the city's first and only enforcement of the ordinance so far.

Across the country, several major cities have passed laws aimed at keeping the homeless out of upscale neighborhoods or tourist destinations -- a trend some call "the criminalization of homelessness."

According to a report by the nonprofit National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, tactics have included bans or restrictions on panhandling, sleeping in public and loitering, as well as destruction of homeless camps and prohibitions of public feedings.

Dallas, for instance, passed a law effective September 2005 that penalized charities, churches and other organizations that serve food to the needy outside certain designated city areas. Violators can be fined up to $2,000.

"It does seem to be a new trend," said Orlando attorney Jacquelyn Dowd, who represented Montanez and whose nonprofit law firm, Legal Advocacy at Work, often handles cases for those with no permanent address. "Instead of going after the homeless, they're going after people who serve the homeless."

During the trial, though, Laskoff said the ordinance -- while perhaps not "popular" -- was never aimed specifically at the homeless. Instead, she said, it was an effort to control any large-scale feeding for reasons of safety, both to those eating and to others. She called Montanez's volunteerism "a noble gesture" but said he understood the law and ignored it anyway.

"This is a young man who wants to prove his point," Laskoff told jurors in her closing arguments. "He wants to do what he wants, where he wants and how he wants. . . . The defendant himself told you he fed more than 30 people on that single day" of his arrest.

But other testimony showed there was occasional confusion over the law. One week Montanez and fellow members of Orlando Food Not Bombs, which began the weekly Lake Eola feedings in 2004, were told they were in compliance, only to be told the next week they were not. That scene was captured in a video played for the jury.

Whether Orlando police make further arrests or not, the ordinance still faces a constitutional challenge by the Central Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in federal court. That trial is not set until summer 2008. Montanez and the First Vagabonds Church of God -- a ministry run by a formerly homeless man -- are among the plaintiffs in the case.

Meanwhile, Montanez wasted no time in returning to his cause. After speaking to the media, he went immediately to Lake Eola to join an ongoing "Ladle-Fest" held in support of him -- three days of thrice-daily hot meals for the hungry.

But he added, "I'm going to try to avoid getting arrested again."

by Kate Santich
Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

Habitat sets goal for affordable homes: Group announces plans to build 500 homes in just 5 years.

Brock Leach doesn't want to see economic apartheid in Manatee and Sarasota counties.

His solution in stopping the future development of walled communities ringed by low-income housing? Having a clear, shared vision for the community and encouraging a generosity of spirit.

Leach, former chief executive officer at Tropicana and now president of Sarasota Habitat for Humanity, shared his goals with a packed audience at the annual meeting of the Suncoast Workforce Board on Thursday. The meeting was held at the Lakewood Ranch Country Club.

Sarasota Habitat has an ambitious goal of building 500 homes in five years in a way that builds on community collaborations between private, nonprofit and government entities. The aim is to provide affordable housing for residents while creating a sense of community, Leach said.

"We want to be a neighborhood, not just homes," he said.

Each of the seven communities being planned by Habitat are within three miles of downtown Sarasota and will have children educational centers, playgrounds and green space.

Habitat expects to close on property for Cohen Way, a development of 50-75 townhomes in the Rosemary District, on Monday, Leach said.

Examples of public and private partnerships, he said, include Lion's Gate, developer of the Presidium project in downtown Sarasota, donating land for housing and the Sarasota County Commission approving a plan to provide Habitat with a $5 million grant.

Lion's Gate, with its donation, has stipulated that its employees have "first right of refusal" on the townhomes being planned. Leach encouraged other businesses to enter into a similar agreement with Habitat.

The organization has raised $13.5 million so far for the $50 million needed for the housing projects, Leach said. A capital campaign is expected to be launched early next year to raise the additional funds.

Pat Glass wins Workforce Leadership Award

Pat Glass, former Manatee County commissioner, is the recipient of this year's Workforce Leadership Award for her support and efforts toward affordable housing.

Glass received the award Thursday at the Suncoast Workforce Board's annual meeting.

"She has been instrumental in pulling together community leaders to address the critical need of affordable housing," said Peter French with the University of South Florida and a Suncoast Workforce Board member.

"This is where the real world is," Glass said about the majority of local residents who need affordable housing.

"The people most in need are the people we most need."

By Jennifer Rich Bradenton Herald

Homeless people to tell teens about life on the street:

David Pirtle thought the worst of homeless people. They were bums, derelicts, worthless.

They were lazy, crazy and smelly.

It was a notion he believed as a teen and a young adult.

"Right up until I became homeless," he said.

Now, the Washington, D.C., man shares his story with youths across the country in the hopes of breaking down stereotypes and putting an end to violence against homeless people.

The message is coming to a city near you.

The National Coalition for the Homeless is creating up to a dozen local speakers' bureaus in Florida cities this fall. Daytona Beach and Orlando are among them.

The effort began in the early 1990s when a "Faces of Homelessness" speakers bureau was established in Washington. Small panels of people who have been or still are homeless speak at high schools, colleges and youth groups and share their experiences on the street.

That group travels across the country, and a handful of other bureaus have popped up in cities. But this is the first time the coalition is targeting an entire state.

"Florida is one of the meanest states for the homeless," said Michael O'Neill, head of the Washington-based bureau.

Florida has experienced more attacks against the homeless than any other state, according to the coalition. Statistics show eight homeless people died here in 2006 as a result of attacks, mostly at the hands of young people.

Groups try to stop attacks

In 2005, Michael Roberts was killed in the woods of Holly Hill when four teens repeatedly beat him with sticks, fists and logs. Earlier this year, John D'Amico suffered lifelong injuries when a cinderblock was smashed into his face in Daytona Beach during an attack by a 17-year-old and two 10-year-olds, who are thought to be the youngest attackers of the homeless.

Organizers also say Florida has a record of criminalizing homelessness by enacting policies that target the group.

The Orlando City Council last year passed an ordinance that prohibits groups from feeding the homeless on city property downtown without a permit. Each group can get two permits a year.

"When cities debate, pass and support such laws, it gives the impression that homeless people are the scum of the Earth," said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "The city wants to get rid of them, so young people think they'll do it."

His organization will coordinate with local homeless coalitions and assistance groups to set up the panels of speakers, who will receive a small honorarium for their time. They should be in the schools by November.

George Crossley president of the Central Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, welcomes the speakers.

"I am all for anything that will cause young people to stop thinking about homeless people as worthless," he said. "I think that is some education that's much needed."

Raymond Adkins has been homeless for seven years. He thinks having homeless people go into the schools would debunk stereotypes and show teens what it's really like to live on the streets.

"It would show the kids to not mistreat the homeless," he said outside the Homeless Assistance Center in Daytona Beach, where meals are served each afternoon. Adkins, who lost his home and business after a "nasty divorce" and also served time in prison, said he would be willing to share his story. "It's rough out here."

Daniel Hargett, who is passing through Daytona Beach on his way back to Ohio, said it would probably be better to make the teens hit the streets with the homeless.

"Take all the kids that throw the rocks and put them on the streets with [the homeless] . . . and see how they live," he said. "They wouldn't make it one day without their mommy."

Barbara Burns, the sister of Michael Roberts, already shares her brother's story with youth groups and told the coalition she would participate in a panel discussion. Her hope is that the speakers will be able to motivate teens to become activists for the homeless.

"It just starts with one," she said. "Then it just carries on over."

'Earth-shattering'

Pirtle, who lived on the streets for three years, already is seeing change by telling his story.

He had a "normal" life and worked as a restaurant manager in Phoenix until he began experiencing symptoms of schizoaffective disorder, a type of schizophrenia. His unexplained actions caused him to lose his job and his apartment, and he started hopping trains east.

He slept on park benches, rummaged for food in garbage and stayed in abandoned houses before heading to Washington, where he stayed in a shelter.

"I remember the very first night -- it was earth-shattering," Pirtle said. "It's a completely other world when you're standing outside in the middle of the night and you realize you have no place to go."

He began speaking to teens last fall and said it's amazing to see teens change their attitudes and get out in the community to help the homeless.

"No matter what you think about people who are homeless, you are wrong," he said.

by Kristen Reed, Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer August 27, 2007

Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta (FHLBank Atlanta) will award $4.2 million in Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grants and subsidies to help fund 355 single-family and multifamily housing units affordable to lower-income residents in communities throughout Florida.
Ten local developers, in partnership with FHLBank Atlanta's member institutions, will use individual grants -- ranging from $108,000 to $500,000 -- as well as low-cost loans to develop affordable housing in Arcadia, Avon Park, Dania Beach, Fort Myers, Fort Walton Beach, Miami, Naples, Pensacola, Sarasota, and St. Johns County.
In Pensacola, SunTrust Bank and the Wakulla County Senior Citizens Council will use a $1.8 million AHP subsidized loan to help build Englewood Senior Apartments, an $11.9 million, 92-unit apartment community for low-income elderly renters. Other winning projects include a new $8.3 million rental apartment complex in hurricane-impacted Fort Myers and Puppy Park, a mixed- income subdivision of 71 townhomes and condominiums in Sarasota developed by Habitat for Humanity of Sarasota in partnership with Bank of Commerce.
"Through AHP, developers can tap into the financial resources of local lenders like the Bank of Commerce in Sarasota or regional institutions such as SunTrust to bring affordable rental and homeownership choices to Florida's communities," said Richard Dorfman, FHLBank Atlanta president and CEO.
Awards announced today are part of $21.2 million in grants and subsidies FHLBank Atlanta recently awarded to 10 states and the District of Columbia to create or preserve more than 2,000 units of affordable housing. Each year, FHLBank Atlanta sets aside 10 percent of net income to fund the Affordable Housing Program. Since 1990, FHLBank Atlanta has contributed more than $346.7 million in AHP funds to develop 58,871 housing units and to provide down-payment assistance to more than 6,809 families.
AHP is a competitive award program that provides funds to help develop single-family and multifamily housing for very low- to moderate-income households. FHLBank Atlanta generally grants AHP awards twice a year to member financial institutions and their community housing partners. For the complete list of winners, visit http://www.fhlbatl.com/ahpwinners.
About FHLBank Atlanta
FHLBank Atlanta is a financial services organization that provides low- cost funding, community development grants, and other banking services to more than 1,200 financial institutions in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. FHLBank Atlanta is one of 12 district banks in the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which since 1990 has contributed more than $2 billion to affordable housing development in the United States.
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AHP 2007 Round I Winners FLORIDA Habitat for Humanity of Broward Dania Beach, FL Member: Regent Bank Sponsor: Habitat for Humanity of Broward Grant: $108,000 for 18 units AHP funds will be used to construct 18, three- and four-bedroom single- family Habitat for Humanity homes for lower-income families in Dania Beach. County wide St. Johns County, FL Member: Branch Banking and Trust Company Sponsor: Habitat for Humanity - St. Johns County Grant: $150,000 for 15 units AHP funds will be used to build 15 single-family homes for very low-income families in St. Johns County. St. John Village Apartments Miami, FL Member: Regions Bank Sponsor: St. John Community Development Corporation Grant: $160,000 for 16 units St. John Community Development Corporation will use AHP funds to renovate St. John Village Apartments, a 16-unit multifamily complex in Miami targeted to residents earning below 50 percent of the area median income. Arcadia PHD Rehab II Arcadia, FL Member: RBC Centura Bank Sponsor: Arcadia Housing Authority Grant: $400,000 for 20 units AHP funds will be used to renovate 20 public housing rental units in hurricane-impacted Arcadia. The units will be targeted to very low- and low-income families. Puppy Park, Phase IA Sarasota, FL Member: The Bank of Commerce Sponsor: Habitat for Humanity Sarasota, Inc. Grant: $497,000 for 71 units Habitat for Humanity of Sarasota will use AHP funds to construct 71 multifamily units for residents earning 70 percent or less than the area median income in Sarasota. When completed the proposed Puppy Park development will include 215 one-, two, three-, and four-bedroom townhomes and condominiums designed with the principles of new urbanism by world renowned architect, Carl Abbott. Englewood Senior Apartments Pensacola, FL Member: SunTrust Bank Sponsor: Wakulla County Senior Citizens Council Subsidy: $1,838,410 for 92 units AHP funds will be used to develop Englewood Senior Apartments, a 92-unit rental development targeted to very-low income seniors in hurricane- impacted Pensacola. Maple Crest Apartments Fort Myers, FL Member: SunTrust Bank Sponsor: Affordable Housing Solutions for Florida, Inc. Grant: $250,000 for 59 units Subsidy: $1,900,000 AHP funds will be used to construct Maple Crest Apartments, a 59-unit rental development targeted to very low- and low-income residents in hurricane-impacted Fort Myers. Cirrus Pointe I Naples, FL Member: Branch Banking and Trust Company Sponsor: Cirrus Pointe Partners, LLC Grant: $500,000 for 16 units AHP funds will be used to help 16 very low- and low-income first-time homebuyers purchase a three-bedroom condominium unit in the Cirrus Point I development in Naples. Ridgedale Rehab Avon Park, FL Member: SunTrust Bank Sponsor: Avon Park Housing Development Corporation Grant: $500,000 for 36 units AHP funds will be used to acquire and renovate a 36-unit multifamily development in Avon Park. Units will be targeted to households earning at or below 50 percent of the area median income. Harbour Place Apartments Fort Walton Beach, FL Member: Branch Banking and Trust Company Sponsor: Okaloosa Community Development Corporation Grant: $500,000 for 12 units AHP funds will be used to help construct Harbour Place, a 12-unit rental development for formerly homeless and lower-income households in Fort Walton Beach.

Transient victims are often nameless as well as homeless:

Venus Martinez has a name in death because she had been arrested when she was alive. Other homeless die unrecalled and unrecorded.

The 29-year-old woman had no identification when her body was found late Sunday near Interstate 4 in Orlando. But police had her fingerprints from past charges, including a July 11 arrest for prostitution and possession of drug paraphernalia.

When the homeless die in abandoned buildings, from violent crime or in accidents, a police record could be the only way to determine who they are.

"Without a name, without ID, they're a marginally subhuman population," said James Wright, a sociology professor at the University of Central Florida.

Drivers licenses, Social Security cards and military identification are among the first things to be stolen or lost when a person hits the streets. Without it, the homeless can't get full-time jobs, stable housing -- or even a name on a death report.

"Every Monday I get calls from code enforcement or law enforcement, looking for help in identifying someone they found over the weekend," said Nancy Martinez, a senior outreach worker in Orlando with the Health Care Center for the Homeless.

Martinez, who is not related to Venus Martinez, comes into contact with many homeless people on the street and in camps. She said more homeless seem to be dying from being run over by cars, a major fear of transients.

'The driver never stopped'

"A few months ago, one of my clients was hit by a car, and I couldn't even identify him at first because of the tire marks on his face," she said. "The driver never stopped. The car just kept going."

Police records make identifying victims easier, as does help from other homeless people who knew them, said Orlando police Sgt. Roger Brennan, the department's homicide-unit supervisor.

But closing cases can be difficult because witnesses, who usually are other transients, move from one place to another without telling police or anyone else.

"Transient witnesses who leave no phone number or name are extremely difficult to locate so they can testify in court. That usually delays cases," Brennan said.

One of the best resources for identifying the homeless is the local media.

"We get most of our tips after people read about it in the paper or watch something on television," Brennan said.

Questions of identity come up regularly. Orange County spent $115,000 to give pauper's burials to 301 people during the 2005-06 budget year. And 231 unclaimed bodies have been buried in two county cemeteries so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

"We have some John Does and some Jane Does out there," said Pete Clarke, deputy director of the county's department of health and family services. "If we have a name, we put a little plaque in the ground."

August Felix has a plaque at his grave. The 54-year-old man died in May 2006 after five teens beat him to death for sport. He was identified because he had a record for trespassing.

"We're pretty much lost while we're alive," said John, a transient who goes by only his first name and fears dying alone and nameless. "Only other homeless people know me, and they would not tell police who I was if anything bad happened to me."

Even if a homeless acquaintance can provide information, as at least one did for Venus Martinez, transients often know each other by only first names or nicknames.

Dennis Wayne Pickett, 47, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in January and carried no identification. Friends who also are homeless helped police identify him and his dog Gloria, who also died in the accident.

But Ernest, another homeless man who uses only his first name, figures that no one would care if he were killed. He has no identification and no family.

"I mean, it ends here if I die," Ernest said. "I don't think anyone could even ID me."

Police seek killer

Now that investigators have identified Venus Martinez, the remaining job is to determine who killed her.

Originally from New York, Martinez had arrests locally dating from 2002. An October 2004 arrest for marijuana possession shows she had a home in Orlando. Two months later, she was listed as homeless when she was picked up on a warrant for theft.

To Nancy Martinez at the Health Care Center for the Homeless, the young woman was someone afraid of leaving the streets.

Their paths crossed just a few months ago, when Nancy Martinez was talking to homeless gathered at Compassion Corner in downtown Orlando about getting health care and other help.

Venus Martinez's boyfriend, whose name was not available Tuesday, wanted to be helped. Through the center, he got into a detox program and was given a ticket to return to his family out of state.

He wanted Venus to come with him, but she wasn't ready.

"He occasionally will call and check in and is doing wonderfully," Nancy Martinez said. "But every time, he asks if I've seen Venus and if we could help her."

"The biggest thing is, because you're homeless, no one cares," she added. "Her boyfriend cared. He wanted her to come home to him. He was in love with her."

By April Hunt who can be reached at ahunt@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6269, and Walter Pacheco who can be reached at 407-420-6262 or wpacheco@orlandosentinel.com.

Families swell homeless ranks: Living paycheck to paycheck, adults with children fall further behind

Jessica Gardner spends most days looking for a job. When she's not filling out applications, the mother of two does what many spouses do: tidies her family's belongings, maybe folds some laundry.

Most mornings, her husband, James, grabs coffee at the nearby 7-Eleven and heads off to work at the labor hall on Babcock Street.

These normal tasks are carried out in a not-so-normal setting: the woods across from Rockwell Collins in Melbourne, where the Gardners live in a tent. They were evicted from their trailer two months ago.

The Gardners' scenario illustrates the plight of the working poor who can easily fall behind as they live paycheck to paycheck, and it makes them a part of the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population in Brevard County, according to the county's most recent homeless census.

While the county's overall homeless population increased 14 percent this year to 1,899 people, the number of homeless families surged to 166 this year, compared to 19 last year. The number includes families without shelter and those with an immediate risk of losing their dwelling, such as through eviction or foreclosure.

Area homeless advocates say displacement from the 2004 hurricanes, the effect of Florida's housing boom and bust and wages not keeping pace with higher living costs are causing the increase.

"When I started 10 years ago, the majority of people were living month to month, week to week," said Joe Robinson, director of the North Brevard Sharing Center. "Now those individuals living month to month are living week to week, and those living week to week are barely making it."

Incomes stagnant

Families such as the Gardners often find themselves on the verge of homelessness after an anticipated job or place to live falls through or a job is lost due to illness, according to Brevard County Housing and Human Services director Rosa Reich.

The Gardners, who have not been homeless before, experienced something similar.

James Gardner, 41, lost his job as a forklift operator for a construction company after spending 41 days in jail for driving on a suspended license. Gardner said his boss planned to rehire him after he got out. But business was slow so that didn't happen.

Then it was rent time, and there was no money. Their two children in tow, the couple stayed in a motel for two nights before going to a Wickham Park pavilion for a few weeks and then the woods.

But another reason is cropping up with increasing frequency: wages that do not keep up with rising costs of living.

"Many of the homeless families subsist on disability, child support and other forms of income that may not rise at the same rate as housing costs," Reich said.

Despite the downward creep of market prices, many homes remain out of reach for the working poor. On the upside, some rental prices have eased this past spring as investors put their units on the already crowded market. Landlords once choosy about tenants with blemishes on their credit rating may be more likely to accept them now.

During the past six months, John Farrell, director of The Daily Bread in Melbourne, has seen more people seeking the soup kitchen's services.

"What I hear is that they lost their jobs, or they're one paycheck away from homelessness," he said. "My own conclusion is that we'll see more people who are not homeless, but unemployed, working poor or on a fixed income."

Homeless with kids

Andriana Giuliano, 15, stays with her mother and eight siblings in a shelter after her father, the family breadwinner, received a nine-year federal prison sentence for fraud.

Giuliano, who will be a sophomore at Palm Bay High next year, never imagined she'd be without a place to call home.

But she is coping.

"I've always been the type to deal with it and go along with what would happen," she said. "Where I live doesn't make a difference."

The Giuliano family remains largely intact.

The same cannot be said for the Gardners, whose two children, Jasmain, 2, and Daniel, 1, were sent by the state to live with Jessica Gardner's adoptive parents in North Florida.

The children lived with the couple under a Wickham Park pavilion the first two weeks until passers-by called the state's welfare agency.

"I'm glad they did call, in a way. I kept trying to call (Department of Children and Families) and they said they didn't have room," Jessica, 22, said. "I'm a lot happier. I know they're getting a bath and three meals a day and not getting bit by mosquitoes."

For children or teens, the trauma of being homeless can be magnified. It can be difficult for families to stay together and keep kids in school.

"It really can set kids back on their self-confidence, their education. There are kids living in parks and in the back seat of cars trying to go to school," said Ginger Ferguson, director of Coalition for the Hungry and Homeless.

On solid ground

There are roughly 13 agencies in Brevard that provide transitional housing, where rents are partially subsidized and people can stay for 30 days or more while they get back on their feet.

But many advocates say the 500 or so beds these groups provide are not meeting demand. The agencies with such housing, and homeless shelters, too, are flooded with calls for help. Sometimes all they can do is put names on waiting lists.

April Tabor considers herself lucky. The 26-year-old mother of two has been in transitional housing since 2004. At the time, Tabor had no job or place to go as her husband threatened to kick her out.

"It was just sink or swim," she said. "I don't know the struggles of being on the street. I can't imagine it."

The Gardners, like many others, aren't so lucky. James Gardner expects to be camped out in the woods for about two more months.

His boss recently hired him back with a July 30 start date. He will make about $1,700 per month, much of which he can save for an apartment. Then, he hopes, he and Jessica will be reunited with their children.

"I miss them," he said. "I'm the one that got us into this situation, and I'll get us out of it. My kids don't deserve this."

BY REBECCA ADAMUS FLORIDA TODAY

Veterans Job Training Grants

Nearly $624,000 in grants will be distributed to the City of Jacksonville and to two Volunteers of America of Florida groups, Cocoa Beach and Jacksonville, to support and enhance job training programs related to helping veterans succeed in civilian careers.

The grants are provided through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP).

"These resources will help many brave men and women who’ve served in our military transition from homelessness into civilian careers,” said U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL), in a news release Wednesday. "This grant money means veterans who’ve had difficulties making the transition will have a new opportunity. Additional job training is a benefit to veterans and a positive development for Florida communities."

These grants will assist homeless veterans with reintegration into America’s workforce. Homeless veterans may receive occupational, classroom and on-the-job training, as well as job search and placement assistance, including follow-up services. HVRP is recognized as an extraordinarily efficient and effective program and is the only federal program that focuses exclusively on employment of veterans who are homeless.

Mosquito Nets for the Homeless:

The Charlotte County Homeless Coalition may have helped the homeless as they received 50 large mosquito nets from Volunteers of America-Florida. They were free and the coalition plans to distribute them.

Since 1989, the coalition's mission has been to prevent homelessness and hunger. The coalition also helps chronic homeless people access mainstream services and provides basic necessities.

Iain Ocasio of the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition showrd one of the mosquito nets the coalition plans to distribute.

by Connie Thrasher Sun-Herald

Identity crisis stumps many homeless:

Ed Lafayette has lost a lot of things over the past 10 years - his wife, his home, his job - but perhaps nothing as vexing as his photo ID.

Without it, he, like thousands of homeless people in the same situation, can't get help finding a new home, can't get a steady job, can't get medical care.

Not without other identification, most notably a birth certificate.

But they can't get that birth certificate without ... a photo ID.

"It's the biggest problem we have - it's the biggest problem we've always had, getting someone an ID," says Lela Jordan, director of the Vickers House in West Palm Beach, where homeless come for help. "Without an ID, you're pretty much stuck."

A tentative solution has come to light. But if it pans out, it will help only some of the homeless: the ones who land in the county jail.

Representatives from the sheriff's office and the public defender's office met recently to discuss the possibility of getting inmates without identification hooked up with the agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, that provide ID, said Jennifer Loyless, who coordinates a program to help inmates after they get out.

The effort could help those who are arrested for trespassing or public drunkenness, but it doesn't eliminate the problem, Jordan said.

And it doesn't help Lafayette.

He hasn't been in jail since 2002, when he was arrested for being in a park after hours, according to court documents.

Lafayette said he had a Florida ID - not a driver license - several years back. But it expired and then he lost it. Because it was a Florida ID, he should have been able to skip the red tape and simply get another by contacting the state DMV, but he says the state reports no record of it.

So Lafayette sought help at St. Ann's Catholic Church.

"We get that request all the time," said Marsha Burkhardt, associate director for the church's homeless programs. The church offers the homeless showers, free meals and help navigating the documents system.

It's such a common request, the church sets aside several thousand dollars a year to cover the typical cost of about $50 per person, Burkhardt said.

Lafayette determined he needed his birth certificate and sent an application and a $15 check to New York to get it. But the check came back uncashed: proof of ID required.

"The law is very specific. Customer service is our number one goal, but obviously the law is written for a purpose and was tightened dramatically after 9/11," said Sandra Lambert, director of driver licenses for Florida.

She notes that the state can issue an ID to people who at one time held a driver license or state ID in some other states. The key is "some" - Florida doesn't honor those from 20 other states, Lambert said.

The folks who help the homeless pursue identification say they can spend days, even weeks on each case. Sometimes that means finding a homeless person's relatives.

She also likes calling town clerks rather than sprawling state agencies. Sometimes the clerks will take assurances from a church or social service agency that a person is who he says he is and send a birth certificate, Burkhardt said.

Getting a birth certificate in this state also requires a Social Security card - and that too requires ID.

But the Social Security rules are broader. The agency requires a photo ID, but if you don't have a driver license, state license or passport, it will accept a school ID, employee ID, marriage certificate, life insurance policy, health insurance card (not Medicare) or U.S. military ID.

That last has proven helpful to Jordan at the Vickers House. She said she was able to send a Navy veteran to the VA hospital to get an ID. Another man didn't have the actual ID, but had photocopies. "That gave us something to work with," Jordan said.

Many homeless folks don't stick around the weeks or months it takes to break through the bureaucracy, Jordan said. She has a pile of certificates for people who have wandered off.

Patience, however, doesn't guarantee success.

"Sometimes they don't even know where to look. You need the mother's maiden name, you need to know what county you were born in, what city you were born in," Jordan said. "Sometimes it's actually impossible to get their ID."

By Sonja Isger
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 02, 2007

The results of the homeless census for Sarasota and Manatee counties done by the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness were released Thursday.

In January 2007, volunteers with the partnership went out for 24 hours and conducted face-to-face interviews with people who are homeless in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

According to the survey results, there are 1,043 homeless people in Sarasota and Manatee counties -- fewer than half of the reported number two years ago and far less than people working with the homeless estimate.

Mary Ruiz, director of Manatee Glens, said a good estimate for all the homeless people in Sarasota and Manatee counties is around 10,000.

Martin said the partnership survey did not result in an accurate count of homeless children, either.

According to Ruiz, a partnership board member, in Manatee County schools there are 2,030 homeless children, and the numbers in Sarasota County are thought to be comparable.


Anonymity

Every two years, the department of Housing and Urban Development requires a homeless census to be done. While the results of the 2007 census were lower than the survey done two years prior, Richard Martin, the executive director for the partnership, said it was no indication of the true homeless population in the two counties.

"A lot of the homeless refused to take the survey," Martin said. "They want to remain invisible."

Martin said there are many reasons a homeless person might want to remain anonymous. He said fear of authority, fear of social service intervention about their children, and the stigma associated with homelessness are some of the reasons that kept people from participating in the survey.

Martin had given his volunteers who conducted the survey specific training on how to indicate the homeless that didn't want to participate. He said somehow that training had been lost along the way.


Tracking

Martin said that another way to get more accurate numbers of the homeless population is by tracking the people who use services available to help the homeless, such as the ones available from the Salvation Army.

The Homeless Management Information System is a database designed to track people using such services, without counting them twice if they use a variety of agencies.

The HMIS database produced a count of 6,245 homeless people receiving services in Sarasota and Manatee counties for 2007.

Also, according to Martin, the Sarasota Salvation Army serves 500 meals a day to people in need.


Causes

According to the census, 54 percent of the people surveyed cited poverty, lack of employment and money as the reason they were homeless.

Ruiz said it is estimated that people need to make roughly $15 an hour to be able to afford an apartment in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

Other major causes that contribute to homelessness are a mental or physical disability and substance abuse. Both can prevent a person from maintaining active employment.


Funding

Martin said he didn't expect the results of the census would influence funding from HUD. However, he did refer to the Florida Legislature's special session in June and the outcome of the property tax reform movement.

He said that if the Legislature cuts funding for community programs, it could affect the amounts given to services for homeless people in Sarasota and Manatee counties.


Census results for County Homeless

488 total homeless

73 percent male

27 percent female

64 percent White

38 percent Hispanic

18 percent Black

4 percent Native American

90 percent single

10 percent married

83 percent between ages 18-60 years

52 percent have a disabling condition

28 percent have a physical disability

13 percent have a mental illness

22 percent have a substance abuse problem

44 percent have been homeless for more than a year

17 percent were veterans (an increase of 14 percent from 2005)


clinn@venicegondolier.com


By Courtney Linn

A home for homeless veterans in Volusia: If facility is successful, more housing could follow across county

He moved to Florida in 2000 for weather and opportunity.

Seven years later, Nicholas Broncato had lost his job, his wife and his home.

Friday, the Navy veteran got some good news.

Broncato is among the first to move into a new housing facility in DeLand for homeless veterans, who represent nearly a quarter of the county's transient population.

Officials opened the facility Friday, calling it a step toward dealing with one of the county's thorniest problems.

"It's a piece of the puzzle. It's not the solution to the puzzle," said Randy Croy, executive director of Serenity House of Volusia, which built the housing. "This prevents the victimization of the vulnerable homeless veteran."

He told a crowd at Friday's grand-opening ceremony that if the 16-bed Veterans Transitional Living Facility is successful, it could lead to more housing for the hundreds of military veterans still living on the street.

Friday's grand opening comes just one month after two 10-year-old boys and a 17-year-old boy were charged with taking part in beating a homeless man in Daytona Beach. The incident highlighted how vulnerable homeless people are to attacks, advocates for the homeless said.

For Broncato, who said he is a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict, the housewarming was a sign of hope.

The 56-year-old former seaman had good jobs in New York but he and his wife moved to Florida in 2000 for better weather and to open an auto shop, he said.

Since then, Broncato said, he broke his neck, separated from his wife, faced mounting medical bills and lost his home in the Feb. 2 tornadoes, which sent him to the hospital with a head wound.

"I got hit in the head by a cinderblock. I thought I was dead," Broncato said. "It was devastating. I lost everything I had."

Broncato said he was treated at Florida Hospital DeLand and released with a nightgown, a bus ticket and his battered pair of Perry Ellis shoes. He joined the ranks of the homeless in Daytona Beach until Serenity House stepped in, got him in touch with the Department of Veterans Affairs and got him back on track, he said.

Now, he'll be one of the first residents in the first facility of its kind in the county, Croy said.

The $250,000 facility opens at a time when more veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Croy fears some of the them will end up homeless. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, who also was at the ceremony, agreed and called the facility a step in the right direction.

"If we've done anything else of late, we're creating a lot of veterans," Mica said. "We need a place like this where they can get the care they need."

The county estimates its homeless population at about 2,700, about 600 of whom are veterans, said County Council member Joie Alexander.

"This new facility is a step closer to meeting some of those needs," Alexander said at the ceremony. "We ask our men and women to sacrifice everything that we hold dear. . . . We have a duty and obligation to provide the services they need so they can be healed and restored."

The homeless are grateful for the soup kitchens that are around, but one man said Friday there still aren't enough services and facilities in Volusia.

"Out here, a veteran is treated just like what I consider dirt," said Marvin Howell, 47, who served in the Air Force for 15 years.

Everyone's just "shoveling people around," Howell said. "You can open up a facility for housing, but there's a difference between warehousing people and providing services."

Michael LeBlanc, 50, is a former Marine who lives in the woods in South Daytona. He said it was good that a new facility was opening up for veterans. It's just not for him.

"I don't need anything," he said. "I've got a carpeted tent. It's clean. It's got pine needles."

Broncato said he's proof that there's life after service, even for those down on their luck.

"There is help out there, if you look," Broncato said. "They gave me a new way of life."

By Tanya Caldwell puiblished in the Orlando Sentinel. She can be reached at tcaldwell@orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7910.

Help homeless take first step on road back:

It was essentially a business lunch, but at one point our conversation became more personal when she shared the circumstances that originally brought her to Manatee County.
"Would you ever guess that I was homeless?"
Across from me sat a successful professional person recounting days of sleeping and living in her car.
Situations in life are many and varied, but those tough "down and out" times give us a higher level of understanding.
During my years in social services, I collected widely diverse examples of houseless, homeless, hopeless, helpless, temporary situations and chronic conditions. I met the Vietnam veteran on the courthouse steps; the battered alcoholic living under the bridge; the lost child searching the dumpster; a mentally ill, highly educated citizen; someone who lost his job; a person just released from jail.
Quite a few can be helped immediately. Others take a lot of time and dedication.
I share this with you today because Manatee County and the city of Bradenton have joined with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Local decision-makers, business leaders, churches, service providers and advocates came together in 2004 for a community summit titled "Shedding Light on Homelessness."
Hundreds of participants met regularly, ultimately fulfilling the mission "to develop a coordinated plan with input from the public, private and nonprofit sectors of our community to end chronic homelessness."
After months of dedicated hard work, the document was publicly presented in August.
Critical to the goals of transitional and affordable housing, job opportunity, access to treatment and shelter, and coordination of services are these crucially important endeavors: The Community Coalition on Homelessness One Stop Center; We Care (health care procedures donated by a large number of our physicians); Manatee Glens Marchman Program, which will be set up to triage emergency drug and alcohol treatment cases; and the Salvation Army's collaboration with other homeless services in discharging lost souls toward a brighter future.
These are but a few examples in need of community support and better understanding. On Sept. 11, Jumpstart Foundation will meet at Bradenton City Centre with copies of the plan - titled "Voices" - and someone with whom you can talk. On that day, we will once again tackle the major impediments to providing accessible workforce housing and some logical solutions waiting to move forward.
Whether the truly poor are visible or invisible, they are an actual part of the human landscape. And while some people deplore the homeless, others are compassionate - witness the citizens who joined the National Alliance to produce a hard-wrought Plan to End Homelessness. They aren't romantic dreamers. They are caring and realistic.
How did my friend get out of her automobile?
Someone opened a door and helped her take one step at a time.
by Pat Glass in the Bradenton Herald

Wireless a lifeline for homeless: Cell phones are becoming increasingly important to people living on the street.

There are days like the one last week when John Marzette is low.

The 41-year-old homeless man is low on job prospects, low on cash and low on minutes for his cell phone.

"You don't have as much money as you usually would because you have to continuously charge it with prepaid minutes," Marzette said of the used T-Mobile phone his sister gave him to stay in touch. "It has its ups and downs. But it's an important thing to have."

Though it may seem strange to own a cell phone when you don't have a roof over your head, homeless advocates say the phones are becoming increasingly important to people living on the street.

They offer the best chance homeless people have at getting a call back from a potential employer. They are the most reliable way to stay in touch with family members who don't live in the area.

"There is a misperception that homeless people are lazy, unemployed people who don't work," said Lesa Weikel, a spokeswoman for the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County. "A high percentage of homeless people do actually work. It may be that they can't afford a home or a place to live, but they do get enough money to pay for a cell phone."

Last month, when a homeless man was hit and killed by a driver who didn't stop on Nebraska Avenue, his friend told police detectives to check the man's cell phone for a number to call his mother about the accident.

"It's absolutely become a lifeline," said Cory Crocker, who along with his wife, Tracey, provides services to the homeless through Covenant House Ministries in Sulphur Springs. "Some folks are only homeless for a very brief period of time, and that lifeline is hope."

For Marvin Wells, 35, it meant more than hope. It meant a chance to put much-needed money in his pocket.

Wells had done enough work on day labor jobs that employers would call him regularly when they needed an extra set of hands. But he couldn't pay his $39-a-month Cingular bill, plus taxes. He canceled his service two weeks ago, cutting off his sole source of contact to the only income he had.

"I haven't been able to compensate for it," Wells said. "It's hard to make it when you can't get the work. I had some guys who were calling me all the time, but they can't now."

Most who live on the street get a cell phone by buying a prepaid one for about $20 and then adding the minutes as they go. Most prepaid phones don't require subscribers to have an address because there's no bill being mailed. Prepaid phones also eliminate the chances of an account going into collections for breach of contract. If there are no minutes available, the phone won't work.

100 minutes for $20

William Hayes of St. Petersburg bought his phone for $20 at a corner convenience store. He uses it to keep in touch with his mother, his 16-year-old daughter and prospective employers. The phone came with 100 minutes when he bought it two weeks ago, and he's down to 35 minutes now.

"I tell my family to call me now so it doesn't burn up my minutes," said Hayes, 46.

If not a phone, voice mail

Pinellas County homeless advocates say they also have noticed the proliferation of cell phones among people who can't afford a place to live. But Pinellas offers an alternative for people who can't afford cells but need to provide a phone number to potential employers.

It's called Community Voice Mail. It works by providing homeless people a phone number and a way to record a message. The numbers can't be used for outgoing calls, but people can check their messages from any regular or pay phone.

"We're finding it very useful and we're getting more and more people signed up for it," said Sarah Snyder, executive director of the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless.

Tracey Crocker, a homeless advocate who was homeless herself before moving to Florida and meeting her husband, said the phones provide a sense of security. Especially for women.

Christa Eland, 47, doesn't have a cell phone but gets by with a calling card.

"The only problem is that when I try to call my kids, I always get the answering machine," she said. "They don't have a way of calling me back, so I waste all my minutes talking to a machine."

Her boyfriend has been in jail for the past five months but should be getting out soon. She said he's promised to help find them a place other than a shelter to sleep, if only for a few nights.

Maybe, Eland said, she'll talk to him about getting a cell.

by Kevin Graham St. Petersburg Times, who can be reached at (813) 226-3433 or kgraham@sptimes.com

America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters:

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her "nobody there" conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman's discomfort, and explains, "Don't mind me, I'm dead. It's okay. I've been dead for some time now." She pauses, then adds reassuringly, "It's not so bad. You get used to it." Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that's hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, "don't know the rules."

Margi is not so mellow. The "fucking Jews" have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. "Communist!" she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will "sue the boss." Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff's efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to "make things right."

Mick is having a bad day, too. He hasn't misbehaved but sits and stares, glassy-eyed. This is usually the prelude to a seizure. His seizures are easier to deal with than Bob's, for instance, because he usually has them while seated and so rarely hits his head and bleeds, nor does he ever soil his pants. Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike. The last time he went down, he cut his head. The staff has learned to turn him over quickly after he hits the floor , so that his urine does not stain the carpet.

John is trying hard not to be noticed. He has been in trouble lately for the scabs and raw, wet spots that are spreading across his hands and face. Staff members have wondered aloud if he is contagious and asked him to get himself checked-out, but he refuses treatment. He knows he is still being tracked, thanks to the implants the nurse slipped under his skin the last time he surrendered to the clinic and its prescriptions. There are frequencies we don't hear -- but he does. Thin whistles and a subtle beeping indicate he is being followed, his eye movements tracked and recorded. He claims he falls asleep in his chair by the stairway because "the little ones" poke him in the legs with sharp objects that inject sleep-inducing potions.

Franklin sits quietly by the fireplace and reads a magazine about celebrities. He is fastidiously dressed and might be mistaken for a businessman or a professional. His demeanor is confident and normal. If you watch him closely, though, you will see him slowly slip his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and furtively pull out a long, shiny carpenter's nail. With it, he carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo. Then the nail is returned to his pocket, a faint smirk crossing his face as he turns the page to pursue his next photo victim.

Scenes from a psych ward? Not at all. Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city's "homeless."

Where the Outcasts Are Inside

In bad weather -- hot, cold, or wet -- most of the homeless have nowhere to go but public places. The local shelters push them out onto the streets at six in the morning and, even when the weather is good, they are already lining up by nine, when the library opens, because they want to sit down and recover from the chilly dawn or use the restrooms. Fast-food restaurants, hotel lobbies, office foyers, shopping malls, and other privately owned businesses and properties do not tolerate their presence for long. Public libraries, on the other hand, are open and accessible, tolerant, even inviting and entertaining places for them to seek refuge from a world that will not abide their often disheveled and odorous presentation, their odd and sometimes obnoxious behaviors, and the awkward challenges they present to those who encounter them.

Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America's public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside.

"Homeless" is a misleading term. We have homeless people in America today, in part, because we have no living wage, no universal healthcare, disintegrating communities, and a large population of working poor who can end up on the street if they lose one of their part-time jobs, experience an illness or an accident, or have a domestic crisis. For them, homelessness is generally temporary, probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There is little to distinguish such people from the rest of us and we usually do not notice their presence among us. Programs to help people in such circumstances may be inadequate -- and it is a shame they are needed at all -- but they usually work. For the people we point to on the street or in public places and normally identify as homeless, however, homelessness is a way of life and our best attempts to rescue them continually fail.

We commonly refer to them as "street people." We see them sleeping in parks, huddled over grates on sidewalks, resting or sleeping on subway cars, passed out in doorways, or panhandling with crude cardboard signs. Social workers refer to them as the "chronically homeless." Although they make up only about 10% of the total number of people who experience homelessness in a given year, they soak up more than half the dollars we spend on programs to address homelessness. There are at least 200,000 people across the nation living more or less permanently on the street, enough to fill a thousand public libraries every day.

Drunk as a Skunk

The term "chronically homeless" is also inadequate when it comes to describing these individuals -- it only tells you that their homeless state is frequent. It neither indicates why they are homeless and stay that way, nor says anything about their most salient characteristic: Most of them are mentally ill. The published data on how many homeless are considered mentally ill by those who study them varies widely from 10% to 70%, depending on whether all the homeless, or just the chronically homeless, are included (and depending on how you define illness or disability). How, for example, do you categorize alcoholics and drug addicts?

When Crash is sober, for instance, he reasons like you or me, converses normally, and has a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, he is rarely sober. In one of his better moments, he petitioned me to let him stay in the library even though he was caught drinking -- an automatic six-month suspension. "You know I'm a good guy and I don't bring that stuff into the library," he pleads. "C'mon, give me another chance."

Crash is sitting in his wheelchair in the foyer outside my office where I serve as the library's assistant director. It's hard for me to address Crash without staring at the massive scar on his face -- a deep crease that neatly divides it down the middle from scalp to chin. Unfortunately, his nose is also divided and the sides do not match up, giving him an asymmetrical appearance like a Picasso painting on wheels.

"Alcoholics pass out in the library's chairs," I explain, "and if we can't wake you up we have to call the paramedics. If you piss your pants or puke, the custodians have to clean that up and they hate that. You guys fall down and knock things over. You're unpredictable when you drink. You disrupt others. Public intoxication is against the law..."

"Okay, okay," he interrupts me, "I get it. Hey, just thought I'd try and get back in is all -- no hard feelings, man."

No hard feelings I assure him. He smiles and we shake hands. I wish I could cut him some slack -- after dozens of confrontations with angry and threatening drunks, I appreciate a cheerful drinker like Crash -- but I can't afford to establish a precedent I can't keep. The rule is clear: no drinking in the library and no exceptions. As he waits for the elevator doors to open and take him down, I venture a question I've been holding onto for awhile. "I know it's none of my business, but how did you get that scar?"

"Car accident," he replies, "same one as put me in this wheelchair. That's why they call me Crash."

"Were you drinking?" I ask.

He shakes his head and sighs. "Drunk as a skunk ... drunk as a skunk." As the elevator descends I think about just how hard it must be to be both wheelchair-bound and homeless. I wonder about the commonly held notion that alcoholics must "hit bottom" before they can rebound. Is there such a thing as bottom for guys like Crash? Is he any more capable of controlling his urge to drink than Ophelia can control the voices in her head?

Our condemnation of transient-style alcoholism is both hypocritical and snobbish. If you are unhappy and caught without a prescription in America, you self-medicate. Depressed lawyers do it with fine scotch. An unemployed trucker might turn to beer or meth. Anxiety-ridden teachers or waitresses might smoke pot or order just one more margarita. Indigent people who want relief from their demons drink whatever is available and affordable or swallow whatever pills come their way. Dr. Tichenor's mouthwash is a popular choice for street alcoholics and "Doc Tich," as the brand is commonly known, doesn't offer a pinot noir.

What Library School Didn't Cover

The strong odor of mouthwash on the breath of transient alcoholics who shelter with us is often masked by the overwhelming odor of old sweat, urine-stained pants, and the bad-dairy smell that unwashed bodies and clothes give off. It can take your breath away long before you can smell theirs.

The library wrestles with where to draw the line on odor. The law is unclear. An aggressive patron in New Jersey successfully sued a public library for banning him because of his body odor. That decision has had a chilling effect on public libraries ever since. When library users complain about the odor of transients, librarians usually respond that there isn't much they can do about it. Lately, libraries are learning to write policies on odor that are more specific and so can be defended in court, but such rules are still hard to enforce because smell is such a subjective thing -- and humiliating someone by telling him he stinks is an awkward experience that librarians prefer to avoid. None of this was covered in library school.

It's a chicken-or-egg world for the mentally-ill homeless. Are they on the street because they are immobilized by severe depression or is deep depression the consequence of being on the street? Any tendency towards a psychological problem is aggravated and magnified by the constant stress, social isolation, loss of self-esteem, despair, and relentless boredom of street life. Imagine the degradation of waiting an hour in the cold rain to get into a soup kitchen for a meal; the hassle of hunting endlessly for an unpoliced spot to sleep; the constant fear of being robbed or attacked by other street people; or the indignity of defecating in a vacant lot. It's a combination that would probably drive a mentally healthy person to psychosis and substance abuse. Street people, who suffer serious psychological disorders, are often substance abusers, too, and the drug that a psychotic person prefers, often matches the psychosis. I have learned, for example, that bi-polar users prefer cocaine when in their manic phases and schizophrenics gravitate, naturally enough, to hallucinogens.

Alcohol and drugs mix with depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and paranoia in complex ways, so it is hard to pull any given disorder apart and understand just who this person in front of you, cursing or pleading or thrashing on the floor, may be. Public librarians, of course, are not trained to do this. We deal with behaviors that are symptomatic without understanding why someone is suffering or what we can do about it. And even if we did understand and had been trained for such situations, healing the homeless is not our mission. Taxpayers expect us to provide library services and leave the homeless to social workers. They give us resources only for one mission, not two.

What about those social workers then? They turn out to be too few, under-funded, over-worked, and overwhelmed. My initial unsuccessful attempts to get the social workers who operate the "homeless van" to stop in and assess a "regular" homeless patron who, we suspected, had suffered a stroke, reminded me that they had more pressing priorities. In the dead of winter, they struggle to get people sleeping in alleys or passed out on sidewalks indoors so they don't freeze to death. Theirs is an everyday "life or death" race. If a homeless guy is inside the library, then, "Hey, mission accomplished."

Navigating the Archipelago of Despair

A workshop I attended on treating Native Americans for alcoholism compellingly described how incorporating sweat lodges, healing ceremonies, and other elements from Native American culture into established treatment methods can improve their effectiveness for Native American patients. Of course, the social worker added, it's essential to provide a halfway-house option between rehab and release and that remains a huge problem. Typically, he told us, his clients wait three to six months to get into a halfway-house after rehab.

"And where do they go while they wait?" I asked, naively enough.

He shrugged and sighed. "Back with their drinking buddies in the park, under the bridge, wherever."

The inadequacy of existing resources and the absurdity of the conditions they endure are just part of the landscape, a given for social workers. Public librarians can cooperate with (and learn from) them, but we understand that they are overwhelmed and often unavailable. So, like it or not, we are ushered into the ranks of auxiliary social workers with no resources whatsoever.

Local hospitals are also uncertain allies. They have little room for the indigent mentally ill for whose treatment they often can't get reimbursed. So they deal with the crisis at hand, fork over some pills, and send the hopeless homeless on their way.

A manager at a shelter-clinic told me that he keeps a stash of petty cash handy because sometimes a taxi arrives at his door from one of the city's hospitals, carrying an incoherent patient without ID or any possessions other than the hospital gown he or she is wearing. When that happens, clinic workers are instructed to rush for the cab before it can unload its passenger and pay the driver to return to the hospital, puzzled cargo still in hand.

Throughout the fragmented system of healthcare for homeless people, from rehab to hospitals to jails, there are few ground rules or protocols for discharging the mentally ill and next to no communication between healthcare providers, police, social workers, and shelter managers in this archipelago of despair. Public librarians are out of the loop altogether; our role in providing daytime shelter for the homeless is ignored. When, in an attempt to build my own useful network, I attended conferences on homeless issues, I was always met with puzzlement and the question: "What are you doing here?"

"Where do you think they go during the day?" I would invariably answer.

"Oh, yeah, I guess that's right -- you deal with them, too," would be the invariable response, always offered as if that never occurred to them before.

Paramedics are caught in the middle of this dark carnival of confusion and neglect. In the winter, when the transient population of the library increases dramatically, we call them almost every day. Once, when I apologized to a paramedic for calling twice, he responded, "Hey, no need to explain or apologize." He swept his arm towards the other paramedics, surrounding a portable gurney on which they would soon carry a disoriented old man complaining of dizziness to the emergency room. "Look at us," he said, "we're the mobile homeless clinic. This is what we do. All day long, day after day, and mostly for the same people over and over."

Sanitizing Gels and Latex Gloves: Plying the Librarian's Trade

The cost of this mad system is staggering. Cities that have tracked chronically homeless people for the police, jail, clinic, paramedic, emergency room, and other hospital services they require, estimate that a typical transient can cost taxpayers between $20,000 and $150,000 a year. You could not design a more expensive, wasteful, or ineffective way to provide healthcare to individuals who live on the street than by having librarians like me dispense it through paramedics and emergency rooms. For one thing, fragmented, episodic care consistently fails, no matter how many times delivered. It is not only immoral to ignore people who are suffering illness in our midst, it's downright stupid public policy. We do not spend too little on the problems of the mentally disabled homeless, as is often assumed, instead we spend extravagantly but foolishly.

And the costs could grow far beyond the measure of money. If an epidemic of deadly flu were to strike, if an easily communicable strain of tuberculosis or some other devastating disease emerges, paramedics will be overwhelmed by their homeless clients who are at high risk for such illnesses. People who drink until they pass out tend to aspirate and choke, and people who sleep outdoors at night breathe cold, damp air. People who sleep in crowded shelters breathe each other's air.

Serious respiratory problems among the chronically homeless in a shelter are as common as beer guts at a racetrack. If an epidemic strikes, the susceptibility of the homeless will translate into an increased risk of exposure for the rest of us and, eerily enough, our public libraries could become Ground Zeroes for the spread of killer flu. Librarians are reluctant to make plans for handling such scenarios because we do not want to convey the message that America's libraries are anything but the safe and welcoming environments they remain today.

But here's the thing: It's not just about libraries. The chronically homeless share bus stops, subways, park benches, handrails, restrooms, drinking fountains, and fast-food booths with us or with others we encounter daily, who also share the air we breathe and the surfaces we touch. When sick or drunk, they vomit in public restrooms (if we are lucky). Having a population that is at once vulnerable to disease and able to spread microbes widely to others is simply foolish -- and unnecessary -- public policy, but in the library we focus on more immediate risks. We offer our staff hepatitis vaccinations and free tuberculosis checks. We place sanitizing gels and latex gloves at every public desk. Who would guess that working in a library could be a hazardous occupation?

In Place of Snake-Pit Hospitals, Snake-pit Jails

Ultimately, the indigent mentally ill are criminalized. If their presence in our libraries is a common and growing problem that we librarians would like the rest of society to be aware of, acknowledge, and commit themselves to helping us solve, here is a secret we would like to keep to ourselves: We are complicit. No matter how conscientiously and compassionately we try to treat our mentally disturbed users -- and at the Salt Lake City Public Library we work very hard to be fair, helpful, and tolerant -- librarians often have no good choices and, in the end, we just call the cops.

Take, for example, the case of a young man who entered the library fuming and spitting racial and ethnic slurs. He loudly asked some Hispanic teenagers, who were doing their homework, when they crossed the border and they reported his rude behavior. When a security guard approached, the young man started yelling obscenities and then took a swing at him. To his credit, the guard backed off and tried to calm him; but, on the next lunge, the guard took the kid down, cuffed his hands behind his back, and called the police. They recognized him. He had been let out of jail just two days earlier. Putting him back there, staff members argued, obviously wasn't going to make a difference. Shouldn't he be taken to a hospital for treatment?

The police pointed out that he was simply too strong and violent to be handled at a hospital, so he would have to go to jail. While waiting to be taken away, the kid turned some corner in his mind and left sobbing.

His behavior was not a measure of his character or even of his civility, but of how severe his psychosis had become without treatment and under the stress of prison. The man was sick, not bad. If we accept that schizophrenia, for instance, is not the result of a character flaw or a personal failing but of some chemical imbalance in the brain -- an imbalance that can strike regardless of a person's values, beliefs, upbringing, social standing, or intent, just like any other disease -- then why do we apply a kind of moral judgment we wouldn't use in other medical situations? We do not, for example, jail a diabetic who is acting drunk because his body chemistry has become so unbalanced that he is going into insulin shock, but we frequently jail schizophrenics when their brain chemistries become so unbalanced that they act out, as if punishment were the appropriate and effective response to a mental disorder.

And the police aren't happy about their role either. Cities are responding to such problems with mental health courts and the like for sorting out the mentally disturbed from other prisoners. Salt Lake City now has a model program, but nationally there is a long way to go.

According to the Department of Justice, there are about four times as many people with mental illnesses incarcerated in America today as under treatment in state mental hospitals. Some jails devote entire wings to the mentally ill.

Jails, of course, are intended to control, intimidate, and humiliate. Such a dehumanizing environment can be especially devastating for the mentally ill. I am particularly wary when dealing with street people who are recently out of jail because they are likely to be in an especially agitated state. Of course, cops and jailers are no better trained or prepared than librarians to handle people with serious psychological problems. This is a bond we share -- our unacknowledged charge and our inevitable failure to meet it.

In the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, the discharged mentally ill began to be "deinstitutionalized" from crowded hospitals with "snake pit" conditions where they got inadequate treatment. They were supposed to be integrated into local communities and cared for by local clinics. That was the dream anyway, but such humane alternatives to indifferent hospitalization failed to materialize.

The clinics were never built and the communities that were supposed to embrace the mentally ill didn't get the memo. The safety net that was to catch them proved to be chockfull of holes. Instead, they migrated to urban psychiatric ghettoes -- alleys, parks, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and flophouses. As housing became more competitive and costly in the 1990s, they were further compressed into the margins of society where their suffering festered like an open wound. Now, it is up to the police to re-institutionalize them -- but this time in snake-pit prisons where they generally receive no treatment at all. So, in the last couple of decades, we have exchanged revolving doors to padded cells for revolving doors to jail cells with steel bars.

The cost of keeping a mentally-ill person in jail is not cheap. In Utah, it turns out to be the yearly equivalent of tuition at an Ivy League college. For that kind of taxpayer money, we could get our mentally ill off the streets and into stable housing environments with enough leftover for the kinds of support services most of them need to stay off the street. Again, the right thing to do for them may also be the most practical choice for us. We could solve the problem for less than it costs to manage it. In the meanwhile, they will cycle between the jail and the library. Is it any wonder that they crave a calm and entertaining environment after weeks, months, or years of fear and noise in jail? From a taxpayer's perspective, however, it seems cheaper to warehouse them in the library, between stints in jail -- or simply to pay no attention to where they are at all.

Refusing Treatment

Even if treatment options were not so scarce and inadequate, many of the mentally ill would not get treatment because they refuse to be treated. Paranoia is rampant on the street and paranoid people do not willingly submit to strange doctors and nurses who might "implant" something in them -- or worse. The cops, paramedics, and social workers can't take a person to the hospital just because he is ranting incoherently. He has to be a danger to himself or others.

Committing the mentally ill, homeless or otherwise, to treatment facilities against their wills is a civil liberties conundrum. As a political activist with controversial ideas, I am sensitive to the issues raised when citizens are forced into treatment. Images of Soviet dissidents getting dragged into psych wards and drugged come immediately to mind. But when a person is hallucinating and clearly upset, it is hard to accept, as I have often heard from social workers and the police, that "nothing can be done."

Sid was in his twenties when he came to us -- a tall, lanky, blond kid with a scraggly beard who walked around rumpled and slump-shouldered, his head hung in a beaten-dog kind of way. He avoided eye-contact and was very quiet most of the time. He liked to read graphic novels and comic books. Occasionally, though, he would jump up and move quickly outside where he would shout and twitch uncontrollably. He seemed to sense when his Tourette's Syndrome would strike and wanted to spare us.

On his worst days, he was troubled by hallucinations and voices he would answer in exasperated whispers. The police told me he had been raped by other transients -- a common occurrence on the street, bound to aggravate and complicate existing psychological disorders. When addressed directly, Sid was unfailingly polite and soft-spoken. Sometimes, we saw him eating scraps from garbage receptacles. The library staff worried about him, replaced his clothes when they fell apart, and bought him food when he grew thin and pale.

Sid, however, refused treatment. The case could be made that Sid was a danger to himself. After all, he often wasn't coherent enough to acquire food for himself. But nobody made that case. One day Sid disappeared. Staff members looked for him on the street and asked other homeless patrons if they had seen him. No one knew a thing and we never saw him again. I often wonder what happened to him. I like to imagine that he was rescued by family members who had been looking for him. It's far more likely that Sid's demons led him to a bus and that he's wandering the margins of another alien city where "nothing can be done."

We see so much despair of Sid's sort among the lost souls who shelter at the library that, by winter's end -- our "homeless season" -- we often find ourselves hard put to cope with our own feelings of depression and frustration. As one library manager told me, "I struggle not to internalize what I experience here, but there are days I just go home and burst out in tears." She is considering leaving the profession.

Another colleague started out in social work and transitioned to a library career when she found she couldn't handle the emotional stress of dealing with her down-and-out clients. Imagine her surprise to rediscover her feelings of despair while working in the library. "I deal with the same clientele," she told me one day, "but now I have no way of making a difference. I still go home feeling sad and discouraged that, in a nation as rich and powerful as ours, we abandon mentally ill people on the streets and then resent them for being sick in public."

There is hope, however. After decades of studies by various task forces, followed by experiments by local governments, a consensus has emerged that the most effective way to help chronically homeless people is to stabilize them in housing first and then offer treatment. Social scientists and policy-makers have concluded, logically enough, that it is hard to "get better" while living in a stressful, demeaning, and unstable environment and easier to recover when one feels safe and secure.

This "housing first" strategy isn't cheap, but it is far more realistic and effective than requiring people to get better as a prerequisite for housing -- and it costs much less than failing the way we do now. Salt Lake County, like many local governments, has created a ten-year plan to end homelessness based on housing-first principles. The wheel of reform is moving slowly, however, and many people who need help now will suffer and die on the street before things can turn their way (if they ever actually do). And the librarians at the City Library and the good citizens of Salt Lake will watch them struggle daily, while waiting for saner policies to take hold.

Gaining the World and Losing Each Other

In the meantime, the Salt Lake City Public Library -- Library Journal's 2006 "Library of the Year" -- has created a place where the diverse ideas and perspectives that sustain an open and inclusive civil society can be expressed safely, where disparate citizens can discover common ground, self-organize, and make wise choices together. We do not collect just books, we also gather voices. We empower citizens and invite them to engage one another in public dialogues. I like to think of our library as the civic ballroom of our community where citizens can practice that awkward dance of mutuality that is the very signature of a democratic culture.

And if the chronically homeless show up at the ball, looking worse than Cinderella after midnight? Well, in a democratic culture, even disturbing information is useful feedback. When the mentally ill whom we have thrown onto the streets haunt our public places, their presence tells us something important about the state of our union, our national character, our priorities, and our capacity to care for one another. That information is no less important than the information we provide through databases and books. The presence of the impoverished mentally ill among us is not an eloquent expression of civil discourse, like a lecture in the library's auditorium, but it speaks volumes nonetheless.

The belief that we are responsible for each other's social, economic, and political well-being, that we will care for our weakest members compassionately, should be the keystone in the moral architecture of a democratic culture. We will not stand by while our fellow citizens are deprived of their fellowship and citizenship -- which is why we ended racial segregation and practices like poll taxes that kept disenfranchised Americans powerless. We will not let children starve. We do not consign orphans to the streets like they do in Brazil or let children be sold into prostitution as they do in Thailand. We are proud of our struggles to meet people's basic needs and to encourage inclusion. Why, then, are the mentally ill still such an exception to those fundamental standards?

America is proud of its hyper-individualism, our liberation from the bonds of tribe and the social constraints of traditional societies. We glorify the accomplishments of inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneers, and artists. But while some individuals thrive and the cutting edge of our technology is wondrous, the plight of the chronically homeless tells me that our communities are also fragmented and disintegrating. We may have gained the world and lost each other.

The Penan nomads of Sarawak, Borneo, members of an indigenous and primal culture, have no technology or material comforts that compare with our mighty achievements. They have one word for "he," "she," and "it." But they have six words for "we." Sharing is an obligation and is expected, so they have no phrase for "thank you." An American child is taught that homelessness is regrettable but inevitable since some people are bound to fail. A child of the Penan is taught that a poor man shames us all.

Ophelia is not so far off after all -- in a sense she is dead and has been for some time. Hers is a kind of social death from shunning. She is neglected, avoided, ignored, denied, overlooked, feared, detested, pitied, and dismissed. She exists alone in a kind of social purgatory. She waits in the library, day after day, gazing at us through multiple lenses and mumbling to her invisible friends. She does not expect to be rescued or redeemed. She is, as she says, "used to it."

She is our shame. What do you think about a culture that abandons suffering people and expects them to fend for themselves on the street, then criminalizes them for expressing the symptoms of illnesses they cannot control? We pay lip service to this tragedy -- then look away fast. As a library administrator, I hear the public express annoyance more often than not: "What are they doing in here?" "Can't you control them?" Annoyance is the cousin of arrogance, not shame.

We will let Ophelia and the others stay with us and we will be firm but kind. We will wait for America to wake up and deal with its Ophelias directly, deliberately, and compassionately. In the meantime, our patrons will continue to complain about her and the others who seek shelter with us. Yes, we know, we say to them; we hear you loud and clear. Be patient, please, we are doing the best we can. Are you?

By Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.com

Chip Ward recently retired as the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System to devote more time to political activism and writing. He's the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land..
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

Homeless to Get One-Way Ticket out of Gainesville:

A one-way bus ticket out of town is a recommendation that has
long been associated with those who argue that Gainesville does too much for
its homeless population.

But some of Gainesville's most ardent homeless advocates are now lining up
behind a plan that does just that, with the intention of reuniting the
homeless with family or friends elsewhere in the country.

Today, the city and the St. Francis House shelter will launch Homeward
Bound, a program that advocates say will help some of the nearly 1,000
homeless people in Alachua County find the supportive environments they need
to get back on their feet.

"Its not just a bus ticket out of town," Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan
said. "It's trying to reconnect people to the places and people that have
the resources to get them back on their feet."

Through the program, which will be funded with $10,000 of city money,
caseworkers at St. Francis House will work with homeless residents who have
been in Alachua County for at least 30 days and who want to go back to
family or friends elsewhere in Florida or the country, said Jim Hencin,
Gainesville's block grant manager and one of the city officials most
involved in homeless issues.

Once someone has agreed to help the homeless resident, the caseworker will
buy a bus ticket, take the participant to the station and make sure they get
on the bus, Hencin said. They will later check up on the residents to make
sure they arrived and to gauge how well the program is working, he said.

"No doubt there will be cynics who say this is another way of sort of
washing your hands of the problem," Hencin said. "But the safeguard here is
that we know they will be linking up with someone else, a family member or
friend on the other end. It's not just, 'Here's your bus ticket and
goodbye.'"

But the program includes enough safeguards, such as prohibiting residents
who return to Gainesville from using the program again, to make sure the
public's money is being spent wisely, Hencin said.

"This is not intended to be a travel agency to help those who want to move
from community to community," he said. "They need to be going somewhere
where there is a family or friends willing to provide housing. We're not
just moving folks to other communities with no expectation of them being
housed."

With nearly 43 percent of the homeless population hailing from other areas,
according to a survey of the homeless last year, homeless service providers
have provided versions of this service for years. Beth O'Grady, coordinator
of the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry, said she
receives four or five requests a month from homeless people who are looking
for help to return home.

Sometimes these residents can find help in the form of donations from
service providers, O'Grady said, but the city's involvement in the program
will provide a sure source of funding.

"We've been doing this for a while and trying to pull together funds for
people who really want to get to family members somewhere else and really
are stranded," O'Grady said.

Hanrahan first proposed the program in June after hearing about a similar
project in San Francisco.

The San Francisco program, also called Homeward Bound, has served more than
1,800 people and met mostly with success, said Dorothy Enisman, program
director of San Francisco's Homeward Bound program. Enisman said a key to
running a successful program was a policy of checking up on residents a
month after their move.

Enisman said the program gets people into a supportive environment that can
help them out of their situation.

By JEFF ADELSON
New York Times Regional Media Group

House council OKs bill to battle homelessness:

Florida residents on the verge of becoming homeless could get an extra boost from the state if a measure that cleared a House council Tuesday makes it into law.

The bill, which would fund grants for local agencies that work to prevent homelessness, passed through the Healthcare Council as it makes its way toward the House floor. An identical bill is being offered in the Senate.

Rep. Faye Culp, a Tampa Republican backing the House measure, said homelessness is one of the key problems facing her city. Instead of paying for more temporary shelters, she said, the state should use its money to find permanent solutions for people who need a place to stay.

"Temporarily being in a shelter is not stable," she said. "It is not what we should strive for."

The idea for her bill, Culp added, originated in "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future," the far-reaching list of goals laid out by House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-Miami.

Culp's measure would include a $250,000 grant to a Tampa group called Connected by 25 that works to find housing for young adults who are about to be phased out of the foster-care system. The group now relies solely on donations from individuals and businesses.

If the Tampa program proves successful, Culp said, she may try to cast a wider net for it during next year's legislative session. But for now, she said, she hopes other communities will view Connected by 25 as an example of how to prevent homelessness.

In Manatee County, the homelessness problem is growing.

There are more than 2,000 people without homes in the area, said Ashley Canesse, development director for the local Salvation Army.

"It's very hard to afford permanent housing in Manatee County right now," she said.

Many of Manatee's homeless people, she said, are local residents who just couldn't make ends meet in the face of rising costs.

A program like Culp's would be a positive step for the county, Canesse said.

"That's what we all want to do," she said. "We all know that people fare better if they're living in their own personal housing."

By LYNDSEY LEWIS
Bradenton Herald Staff Writer

Humanize homelessness:

Talk of an ordinance to put an end to camping on public property is definitely meant for the homeless. And of course a way to solve a problem is to put them away. If homeless people had money to pay a fine for camping they would most likely have a home.

As for an end to panhandling, all these laws are directed at the economically challenged - poor people.

I would be the first to agree that there is a percentage of homeless people who just don't want to work. A small percentage. Most people are homeless under circumstances they have no control over. Loss of income or shelter at a crucial time can lead to years of homelessness. The government stopped the welfare system and a lot of people were left to their own devices. Then there are some people with mental health issues. Our medical and mental health system for the poor is a joke. Poor people die every day because they can't afford treatment. But as long as they stay out of sight that doesn't matter either.

So what do people do who are homeless? Where do they sleep? Where do they bathe? Where do they eat? People don't want panhandling. Would they rather someone just take their money? At least respect that they ask. No one has to give a panhandler money. It is your choice. I personally need the karma so I help everyone I possibly can. I'm sure a lot more of us could use the good karma.

And where do they sleep? We are so worried about appearance. Instead of worrying about the injustice of another human being, who has to sleep in an alley in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the response is, "That looks terrible. They're so dirty." These are our sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, friends and fellow Americans.

Maybe if we all thought of homelessness as not an issue but a personal thing that is happening to many good people it would be different. It needs to be individualized. We need to hear personal stories. When we make this a person-by-person thing instead of talking about an overwhelming 6,000 homeless people, maybe then compassion for our fellow man will win out over aesthetics. Personally, I would rather know that my tax dollars were going to help house and feed people rather than putting up new plants in front of some condos. But I'm crazy like that.

by Denise Hawke letter to the Editor Bradenton Herald

Manatee Churches Uniting to Help the Homeless:

Bill and Mary Townsley, in their Feb. 12 letter to the editor (Bradenton Herald), suggested that area churches open their buildings to help the homeless. The good news is that congregations in Manatee County are responding through the new Family Promise program to create an Interfaith Hospitality Network.

In this program, congregations will open their doors in the evenings to homeless families and provide shelter, volunteers and resources for up to 14 guests. Host congregations, usually three or four times a year, provide shelter in the evenings for a week's rotation. A social worker meets regularly with the families at a day center as guests actively seek housing, services and resources needed to regain their independence.

Volunteers in Manatee County congregations are working hard to get Family Promise up and running this year. So far we have seven of the 10 congregations needed to begin operations. Those participating in the network include: Palma Sola Presbyterian, Trinity United Methodist, Kirkwood Presbyterian Church, First Assembly of God, Harvest United Methodist, Westminster Presbyterian and First Presbyterian Church. The Family Promise day center will be housed at Central Christian Church in downtown Bradenton.

There is great potential for the Manatee County faith community. We have more than 100 congregations in Manatee County that could join us to provide a single, powerful, coordinated solution for homeless children and families. We'd like to encourage congregations of all faiths and interested individuals to join our effort.

The public is welcome to attend our next community information meeting Tuesday, March 20, at 7 p.m. at Central Christian Church, 926 15th St. W., or contact us at 794-6229. Come be part of a solution as we open our hearts and doors to provide hospitality and safe shelter to our most vulnerable neighbors.

Diana Shoemaker, President
Family Promise of Manatee County
Bradenton

ST. PETERSBURG - Police Chief Chuck Harmon said Friday that officers would arrest homeless people as "a last resort" while enforcing strict new city ordinances that prevent people from sleeping on sidewalks and other public rights of way.

Speaking at a press conference just hours after a City Council meeting, Harmon said police officers would try to reason with homeless people who were violating the new ordinances and attempt to get them help, such as access to shelters. Officers would arrest homeless people only if they encountered stiff resistance, Harmon said.

"It is not our intent and has never been our intent to criminalize homelessness," Harmon said. "Enforcement is going to be our last resort."

The City Council passed a series of ordinances Thursday night that forbid people from putting up tents or any other temporary shelter on public property. The ordinances also prohibit sleeping on rights of way adjacent to residences or sleeping on any right of way if shelter space is available.

The City Council approved the ordinances over the objections of advocates for the homeless and a coalition of civil rights groups and the Pinellas-Pasco public defender's office, which told council members that the laws may be unconstitutional.

The city has also reopened a tent city on property owned by St. Vincent de Paul on Fourth Avenue N that it shut down in January, saying it will have room for 75 tents.

The police department's vow to reason with the homeless was a far cry from the harsh approach it took after the murders of two homeless men in January, when officers raided two tent cities and cut tents with scissors, knives and box cutters.

Both Harmon and Mayor Rick Baker called the raids a mistake after they provoked outrage and drew national attention.

By Friday morning, the two satellite tent cities appeared abandoned. Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said there were 75 tents and 100 people at the city-endorsed tent city.

Several homeless residents in the new, sanctioned tent city said they appreciated the security. But some added that they wanted more input and resent having to wear wristbands.

"How would you like someone to build a house for you, an architect, and he doesn't consult you at all?" asked G. W. Rolle, who has been homeless since October.

Some homeless people have gone to the Lakewood United Church of Christ on 54th Avenue S, where parishioners have voted to open a 30-tent encampment on church property. City officials say any property owner needs a permit before allowing people to sleep outdoors.

Harmon said police officers had recently gone by the church, but not seen any tents. If tents are erected, Harmon said, it would be a code enforcement issue, not a police matter.
by Abhi Raghunathan who can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com
Times staff writer Christopher Ave contributed to this report.

In St. Petersburg, as homeless pull up stakes, some entrench:

The city on Wednesday began coaxing about 75 homeless people to leave a group of sidewalks near downtown for a lot it controls.

It will not be an easy task.

Advocates for the homeless immediately likened the new site to a prison camp, while an area church proceeded with plans to open its own tent city despite the city's objections.

About 12 people did move to the city site Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis said.

Others seemed ready to resist. They were preparing to stay at the 18th Street site, and possibly be arrested, or move to the Lakewood United Church of Christ on 54th Avenue S.

Parishioners there voted Sunday to open their own 30-tent encampment.

The Rev. Kim Wells said church officials may ask for a permit to run the tent city, but are not sure if a church even needs one.

"The church is about offering hospitality to people who need it," Wells said.

City officials say any property owner must obtain a permit before allowing people to sleep outdoors, meaning the church might face fines if it moves ahead.

The church chose to open its doors after speaking with the Rev. Bruce Wright, an advocate for those living in tents on 18th Street. Wright said there will not be enough room for everyone at the city site - a claim city officials deny.

Council member Jamie Bennett accused Wright and another advocate, Eric Rubin, of exploiting the church and the homeless as part of their own political agenda.

"They're just going to keep fighting us," Bennett said. "They're going to pick up their band of merry men and going to go somewhere else.

"This has to stop."

People who live near the church met Wednesday night to discuss how to fight the church's proposal, Bennett said.

Wells said the church has fielded fewer than 20 complaints.

"We've complied. We've tried to help," Bennett said. "Every politician is on the same page. This is all because Eric Rubin and Bruce (Wright) are going to lose their pre-eminence."

City officials and advocates both converged on the 18th Street encampment Wednesday afternoon to rally support for their own cause.

Advocates called the city's actions subterfuge.

A few people said they wouldn't mind moving.

Daniel Nelson was among the first to decide to move. "We just went through some problems here," Nelson said.

But several others seemed dug in.

"Over there is dirty and a lot of trouble," said Vera Blaine. "Here we watch out for each other."

People relaxed near their tents or napped on chaise longues while the city and advocates held their discussion.

"They're turning it into a permanent prisoner camp," said Wright, pointing to rules requiring residents to have their photographs made and to wear wristbands.

The City Council is expected today to ban tents on city streets and sleeping in the public right-of-way.

If both measures pass, city officials said the people would have to leave or face being arrested.

Business owners in the area have been demanding action for weeks.

"It's about ... time," said Brian Longstreth, a real estate agent active in the nearby neighborhood association.

by Aaron Sharockman who can be reached at asharockman@sptimes.com

The homeless struggle: Another showdown looms in St. Petersburg

Leaders of a group of homeless people living near downtown say they won't move from a sidewalk camp unless the city agrees to keep the tent city open indefinitely, among other demands.

The announcement, made at a Friday news conference at City Hall, could lay the groundwork for another showdown with police as early as next week.

It also brings a brief era of cooperation between the city and some advocates for the homeless to a grinding halt.

"We are asking them to put down in writing what they have agreed to verbally," said the Rev. Bruce Wright of Refuge Ministries.

The city has been preparing to open a 90-day tent city on a vacant private lot so that people could move off the sidewalks near First Avenue N and 18th Street. At the end of 90 days, city officials say, they should be able to place residents in a more permanent setting, including a new shelter in Largo.

Though advocates initially agreed to the move, they now say it will not proceed without written protections.

Among them: The advocates and the homeless want equal say in how the camp is run. They also want to be able to bring new people into the tent city to replace people who are helped. And they don't want to be sent to the Largo shelter, to be built at the former site of the PSTA headquarters.

Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis said the city never agreed to those terms, nor would it.

He said when the new site is ready, people will be asked to move.

And if they don't?

"Arrest is always an option, but it's not the first one we'll utilize," Davis said. "Reasonable people will move. If we're put in a position to have to take an enforcement action, I think people in the public will understand that."

City Council member Jamie Bennett, who has in the past has sided with the advocates, said patience throughout the city is wearing thin.

"This has gone on so long," Bennett said. "We're trying to be humane, but we're also trying to be adult."

The city made national news when police officers slashed the tents of a group of homeless people living on sidewalks in January.

Since then, officials have helped raise more than $1-million to provide shelter space and solicited the help of the federal government.

Mayor Rick Baker thought he had reached a suitable short-term compromise last week, when he agreed to open a tent shelter on the grounds of St. Vincent de Paul along Fourth Avenue N.

Now that agreement appears in jeopardy.

Speaking Friday, several tent city residents and advocates said the homeless would refuse to move unless the city agreed to sign a proposal guaranteeing a voice in decisionmaking.

The list of demands seeks to establish a long-term tent city run by those who live there, rather than a temporary settlement overseen by the city.

Eric Rubin, an advocate for the homeless, said Deputy Mayors Davis and Dave Metz had been most involved in the discussions. Rubin said there was concern in the homeless community that the city was enacting plans without enough feedback.

"We heard about some of their plans to move forward without enough input, and we wanted to put a stop to it," Rubin said.

Davis said Rubin, Wright and two tent city residents were invited to a meeting Wednesday, but did not attend.

Kathy Hines, a resident of the tent city on 18th Street near First Avenue N, said she was especially concerned about a city plan that might require residents of the new, city-sponsored tent city to wear armbands.

"I don't like that idea. ... I will not go with the wristbands requirement," Hines said. "A lot of these people have jobs and they're worried about losing their jobs if they have to wear wristbands all the time."

Without the support of Hines, the "mayor" of tent city, as well as advocates such as Wright and Eric Rubin, it is unlikely that the large group of homeless people living in tents will agree with the city's proposal.

The city is considering using armbands to help identify who belongs, officials said. Service providers would be required to wear them as well.

"We have to control it somehow," said Bennett. "You don't want to make it like a stalag or anything, but you have to understand who the residents are somehow, whether it's a tag or ID."

The city is racing against a clock to see whether the homeless will move.

The City Council will consider ordinances Thursday that would make the tent encampment on 18th Street and other places in the city illegal.

Davis knows if the ordinances are adopted, some residents will immediately demand they be enforced.

by Aaron Sharockman who can be reached at asharockman@sptimes.com or 727 892-2273.
St. Petersburg Times

Tackling the housing issue from all angles:
Blame it on the big, bad business community, frazzled politicians, migratory retirees, baby boomers, workers, families, a stable/unstable economy, personal choice, "unexpected" growth, lavish land uses and, above all, the weather.

Housing is the premium topic at the barbershop, coffee house and kitchen table and has spilled out into every area of community discourse. Unfortunately, there is a general attitude that tends to lump everything under "rooftops," thereby ignoring the very specialized nature of human living or working space. Certainly being adjacent to vacant, unused land is preferable to some folks, but so is productivity. Empty space may not gobble up resources or blow around in hurricanes, but it doesn't provide safe harbor for families, either.

When it comes to analyzing human needs, one size simply does not fit all, nor does one carefully aimed insulting remark cover every problem in meeting those needs. Lakewood Ranch, for example, is a place (and a nice one at that) and not the major cause of crowded roads. It's people, not places, people with vehicles, some of whom live in other areas, who create traffic.

Ironically, a lot of things occurred simultaneously. During the current spate of high population growth, the economy flourished but some housing efforts didn't. Risk-takers were rewarded. Many amateurs jumped into real estate investments with visions of flipping for the big bucks. Blaming builders and developers, political fingers were pointed in the wrong direction by people who had no compass. Actually, business professionals are our potential problem solvers, along with builders, growers, lawyers, bankers, retirees and citizens seeking a culture of ever expanding opportunity. "Just tell us what you want!" they cry, "and no surprises."

Here we were in 2004, a time of plenty, with a shortage of houses to accommodate our workforce as well as a dearth of transitional housing or shelter for the homeless. Reality emerged rapidly when the housing market dipped. It was over coffee one morning that Dr. Russ Kitching and I discussed the "big picture" with a thousand angles. The picture required focus. We needed something to jump-start public/private dialogue, to jump-start housing opportunities. Thus was born Jumpstart Foundation, a not-for-profit organization made possible through a stellar cast of charter members and board of directors. The modest brochure reads: "Jumpstart paves the way. During boom times or down times, a community must be prepared to endure over the long stretch. Economies are cyclical, markets are volatile. Needs are constant!"

Public/private membership is wide open and committed to increasing workforce housing inventory and accessibility, building trust in the business community, influencing sound government policy, eliminating blight and establishing an information forum. A conference including representatives from The Urban Land Institute is planned for May, according to Stan Stephens, Jumpstart chairman, and Cheri Coryea, Manatee County human services director. The subject will be "density." Look here for more information in the coming weeks.

We are all aware that "housing" cannot be separated from "high cost," including everything from taxes, impact fees, labor, building materials, insurance and yes, weather. But, good, productive meetings require focus and clarity of purpose, one headache at a time.

Pat Glass, just-retired from political office after almost three decades as Manatee County commissioner, writes every Wednesday to Herald readers about key issues and concerns with her unique insights. To reach her write to her c/o Bradenton Herald Metro Desk, 102 Manatee Ave. W., Bradenton, FL 34205.

Homework, no home:
They fly under the radar in places few would think to look. At night, they lay their heads down in abandoned automobiles, in motel rooms, in spare corners in the homes of relatives. They are the estimated 1,500 children who are homeless yet enrolled in a Pinellas County public school. Thousands of others can be found in Hillsborough and Pasco schools, and in school districts across the state.
Curtis Reitmeyer is one of them. The 10-year-old will tell you the best hours of his day are the ones he spends at Skycrest Elementary School in Clearwater. The rest of the time, he's cooped up in a cramped motel room with his mom and dad, his older brother and two younger sisters.
Curtis says that sharing a bed with another family member makes it hard for him to fall asleep. Traffic along U.S. 19 and arguments among other motel dwellers sometimes wake him in the middle of the night.
And the utter disarray that results when six people spend months together in a small space makes it hard to keep track of things. Curtis says he missed a day of school recently because he couldn't find one of his shoes.
"At our apartment, they were always right next to each other," he says.
* * *
Barbara Duffield, policy director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, describes childhood homelessness as pervasive, hidden and heartbreaking.
"It's pervasive in that it exists in every community across the country," Duffield says. "It's hidden in that families with children are less visible than other segments of the homeless population. It's heartbreaking because of the damaging effects homelessness has on every aspect of a child's development."
Under federal law, homeless advocates must identify and provide education services to homeless children. In Pinellas, the school district's homeless education assistance team includes two resource teachers, a social worker and a program coordinator.
Althea Hudson, the coordinator, has seen enough to know how important the smallest comforts can be to needy children.
"The things we take for granted," Hudson says, "are the things they cherish."
While people are quick to judge the homeless, there often are extenuating circumstances that land them in difficult situations. Jon Reitmeyer, Curtis' dad, acknowledges that he hasn't always managed his money well. But he is working two jobs to save for an apartment.
Unfortunately, his credit is bad, which makes landlords wary of leasing to him. So he hands over close to $2,000 a month to the motel, which makes it hard for the family to get ahead.
Debi Turner, principal at Blanton Elementary School, says she has seen many families like the Reitmeyers. At present, she knows of at least five Blanton families who live in shelters. Six to 10 are "doubled-up" with friends or relatives, and one family is living in a van.
"These kids have to come to school and perform, yet they have the weight of the world on them," Turner says.
Largo Middle School principal Fred Ulrich also has seen his share of homeless children. In most cases, Ulrich said, the families are doing everything they can to work toward a better life.
"It's part of our culture to think people are supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps," Ulrich says. "But if you've dealt with these issues, you see there's more to it than, 'Why don't you get a job?' "
The two school district employees who know this better than anyone are Janet Walker and Duane Kinnison, resource teachers with the homeless education assistance team. They encounter childhood homelessness every day as they travel from Tarpon Springs to St. Petersburg.
They visit the county's family shelters to check on new arrivals and tell them their rights under federal law. They make sure schools know that homeless children can't be denied enrollment even if they are unable to show proof of age, residency or immunizations.
For Walker and Kinnison, the job often is very basic.
"Sometimes, the children just need some good old reassurance," Kinnison says. "You've got to be a friend to them."
* * *
Diamond Williams loved being in her school's gifted program. She cried when she found out she would have to leave it.
Diamond, 8, and her two older brothers now live with their mom, Martisha Haymon, at a Clearwater shelter. They've been there ever since Haymon, 36, a licensed child care worker, fled an abusive relationship in Georgia.
Haymon hopes the eight weeks the family is allowed to stay will be enough time for her to save the $3,100 she needs to move into an apartment. Meanwhile, her biggest worry is that her kids will fall behind in school. That's why she's glad the Pinellas school district has placed an after-school tutor at the shelter.
From 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Highland Lakes Elementary teacher Rachel Barnes works with as many as a dozen children in a small space set up like a classroom. Some, like Diamond, don't need much help. Others are so far behind Barnes wonders if they'll ever catch up.
"You would never know walking up to them that they're in this situation," Barnes says. "I'm sure there are kids in schools nobody knows are homeless."
The district's homeless education assistance team works hard to keep it that way. Sometimes that means providing school supplies, like pencils with good erasers. Other times, it means outfitting kids with everything from jeans to sneakers.
"They won't be name-brand," says Hudson, the coordinator. "But at least they'll fit."
Most school districts receive federal grant money to fund their homeless programs. Pinellas got $95,000 this year. Hillsborough got $125,000, and Pasco got $90,000. But 34 of Florida's 67 districts didn't get any funding at all.
That's because there's not enough money to go around.
Nationally, more than 900,000 children in kindergarten through 12th grade were identified as homeless last year. That's up 50 percent from the 2003-04 school year.
* * *
Emina Dizdarevic became homeless last summer when her mom got evicted from a low-income apartment complex in Largo. Emina's dad had left, and her mother, who was making $8-an-hour cleaning houses, couldn't afford rent.
Emina and her older brother, Adis, moved with their mom to a homeless shelter in Clearwater. But they weren't able to stay long enough for Bosnian-born Sada Dizdarevic, 34, to save money for another apartment. Since December, the family has been staying at Resurrection House, a long-term residential program for homeless families in St. Petersburg.
Emina, 10, hopes she'll have her own room some day in a big house. Maybe then, she thinks, she won't be embarrassed to invite her friends from school over to play.
"I know it's not my fault," she says. "But they might make fun of me now."
The toll of childhood homelessness can extend beyond academics, says Harry Brown, an associate superintendent for Pinellas schools who served as the district's first homeless resource teacher. Children like Emina often have a hard time making friends because their lives have been so chaotic, he says.
"It can be like an adult starting a new job every couple of weeks," Brown says.
That's another reason why the work of homeless liaisons within school districts is so vital, says Duffield, the National Association policy director. School often is the only place where homeless children can form stable relationships. School gives structure to their day and provides services, such as breakfast and lunch.
"Ultimately," Duffield says, "school is the place where they hopefully will gain the skills they need to prevent them from becoming homeless adults."
* Source: National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
An estimated 1.35-million children are homeless. That's 39 percent of the homeless population. Forty-two percent are under 5; 47 percent of homeless students do not attend a full year of school; they are twice as likely to have a learning disability; and three times more likely to have emotional or behavioral problems.*
Fast Facts:

State numbers
Florida ranked sixth in the number of homeless children and youth enrolled in public schools during the 2003-04 school year, the most recent year for which data is available, according to a U.S. Department of Education report to Congress. Here are the 10 states with the greatest reported numbers of homeless children and youth for that year. Because many homeless children go unreported, the actual numbers of homeless children are much greater.
California 142,554
Texas 137,858
New York 20,838
Pennsylvania 19,631
Louisiana 17,079
Florida 16,069
Arizona 14,597
Kentucky 13,640
Missouri 12,983
Ohio 12,482

by Donna Winchester St. Petersburg Times

A groundbreaking survey of homelessness being released today found that
704,000 people nationwide sought shelter at least once in a three-month
period.

Families with children accounted for one-third of those seeking emergency
shelter or transitional housing between February and April 2005, the most
recent period studied, according to the report by the Department of Housing
and Urban Development. The rest were individuals, mostly adult men. Nearly
half were black.

The count covered only those seeking shelter, not people living on the
street, so the total number of homeless people would be higher.

"This first-of-its-kind study is a huge leap forward in our understanding of
not only how many people are homeless, but also what their needs are," HUD
Secretary Alphonso Jackson says. The report says, for example, that at least
a quarter are disabled.

HUD, which briefed USA TODAY on the report Monday, says it is the most
comprehensive government estimate ever of homelessness. Previous counts
looked only at the number of people homeless on a given day or week.

The three-month figure — equal to the population of South Dakota — is an
estimate based on a sample of 80 communities. It will serve as a baseline
for annual reports to Congress and may be expanded to include people living
on the street.

Martha Burt, a homelessness scholar at the Urban Institute, says the new
database has shortcomings. For example, it has limited information about the
health of those seeking shelter, and she thinks future versions will have
trouble tracking those living on the street.

HUD's report also cites a previously reported one-night survey of hundreds
of communities in January 2005. That survey found 754,000 homeless people,
including 45% who were living on the street. USA TODAY published its own
estimate of 727,000 in October 2005, based on earlier tallies.

The three-month count found that on an average day, 335,000 people sought
shelter, but more than twice that number sought shelter at least once during
the entire period.

Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of
Pennsylvania who co-wrote the HUD report, says it's unclear whether
homelessness has increased or declined, because past estimates were done
differently.

He says poverty among blacks, who are more likely to live in urban areas,
runs deeper than for other groups.

Culhane says families with kids have remained a steady one-third of the
homeless, and he says government needs to do more to provide housing, such
as expanding rent subsidies.

One of every three homeless kids has a diagnosable psychiatric disorder,
such as post-traumatic stress, by age 8, says Ellen Bassuk, a psychiatrist
who is president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

"They have trouble sitting still and learning in school," she says.

Nine of 10 homeless mothers have been victims of violence, often domestic,
she says.

Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless welcomes
the new count but says more housing and shelters are needed as well as a
focus on the root causes of the problem. He says homelessness "can happen to
everyone."


By Wendy Koch
USA TODAY

Partnership: Dignified homeless shelters needed:

One out of 100 Americans will experience homelessness this year, according to some estimates.

To gauge the extent of the problem in Sarasota and Manatee counties, the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness held a census of all the homeless in the area.

On Jan. 29 at noon, volunteers for the agency assembled to search the two counties for people who would be homeless for the next 24 hours. The volunteers handed out donated toiletries and asked the people to participate in a survey that asked where they stay, why they're homeless and what services they need.

"We found nine camps," said Connie Insley, a volunteer.

A camp is a group of homeless people, usually in a wooded area, like a small town.

"There is a hierarchy within the camp," said Nancy Smith, a volunteer. "It is just like anyone's house."

Camps are eventually broken up by the police, which makes the members leery of anyone, said volunteer Jim McEntee.

Avery Burke, another volunteer for the organization, also works for one of the nonprofit organizations that participates. He often goes out looking for homeless offering assistance.

He said that homelessness is not always a choice. Sometimes an addiction or mental illness makes it hard for someone to get his life in order. Sometimes a financial problem compounds and spirals out of control.

"It (homelessness) could be any one of us at any day," he said. "Miss one car payment or get hurt and lose your job, you could wind up homeless."


Help

The Suncoast Partnership is a nonprofit organization that works with other nonprofit organizations in the two counties to help eliminate homelessness. More than 45 agencies participate.

Richard Martin is the chair of the Suncoast Partnership. Martin said the partnership is focusing on finding solutions to the problems of homelessness, and surveys like this one will help.

However, Martin also said there is no one specific solution for all the homeless because each situation is different.

"Some people can't just decide not to be homeless anymore," Burke said.

Martin said that the lack of affordable housing in the area is a large contributor to homelessness.

Martin and directors from the allied agencies would like there to be more shelters for the homeless in the area.

"A roof gives dignity. Dignified shelters are the first step," Martin said.

Currently, the Salvation Army in Sarasota and Bradenton provide the only shelters in the area.

Martin and other directors said government help is not enough to help fight homelessness.

"It takes a village," Martin said.

The results of the survey are expected in late March 2007.


By COURTNEY LINN

Sun Herald Staff Writer

Sarasota and Manatee agencies receive homeless assistance grants:

Four local agencies made the cut Tuesday for $1.4 billion in homeless assistance funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Bradenton and Sarasota branches of the Salvation Army were big winners, along with the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness and Jewish Family and Children's Services Inc.

The four grants topped $400,000, said Adrienne Lazeroff, executive director of the Suncoast Partnership, which wrote the HUD grant on behalf of applying agencies in Manatee and Sarasota counties.

The Salvation Army of Sarasota got the largest grant, $170,432, to continue its Families in Transitional Housing, or FAITH, program, Lazeroff said.

FAITH families commit to a structured program that will help them get out of debt. In return, they are provided with rent-free apartments for one year while they save for a down payment for housing, Lazeroff said.

Among groups that lost out in Tuesday's announcement was Family Resources Inc. of Bradenton, which was denied its bid for $315,000 to build a residence for homeless teenagers and their babies.

First Step Inc., a substance abuse counseling service serving both counties, also failed in its bid for $78,483 to build permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless persons recovering from chemical dependency.

"It's really disappointing," said Anne Melton, Family Resources executive director, when she heard the news. "But are we going to quit because of this setback? No!"

The Salvation Army of Bradenton and Jewish Family & Children's Services of Sarasota-Manatee Inc. each received $100,000 for homeless-prevention programs.

The Bradenton Salvation Army will use the money to provide rental assistance to prevent evictions, foreclosures and utility shutoffs, said spokeswoman Ashley Canesse.

"It's a miracle that we have received this funding for the fourth consecutive year," said Canesse. "It's even more of a miracle when you realize how the need has escalated."

Canesse said evictions in Manatee County for 2005-06 were up 14.6 percent compared to the previous year, while foreclosures increased by 36.8 percent for the same period, according to county figures.

"I don't want to raise hopes that this money is here now," said Canesse. "The funds have been awarded but won't be received until a contract is signed, and that could take a couple of months."

Jewish Family and Children's Services provides assistance through the Building Strong Families Program for those at risk of being homeless who commit to long-term goals to stabilize their finances.

"We are delighted to receive this gift so we can continue and enhance the level of care that we can provide," said Rose Chapman, president and CEO.

The agency has helped 412 families, including 960 children, since the Building Strong Families program began three years ago.

The Suncoast Partnership received $37,793 to expand a computerized database for tracking the homeless.

"We are very pleased to get the money," said Lazeroff. "A baseline on who is homeless in our community is critical to our goal of eliminating homelessness."

An expanded database will help bring more homeless assistance funds into the Manatee and Sarasota counties, Lazeroff said.

That's good news for Melton, who is trying to raise $2.5 million to fund and operate the home for teen moms.

"All we need is one really good one to give us a kick-start," said Melton, who recalled it took eight years to raise funding to build the agency's runaway shelter. "If it takes us that long to get money for this project, we will be on the second generation of babies."

Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@Bradenton.com.

Grant recipients

• The Salvation Army of Sarasota: $170,432

• The Salvation Army of Bradenton: $100,000

• Jewish Family and Children's Services: $100,000

• Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness: $37,793

by DONNA WRIGHT
Bradenton Herald Staff Writer

Rising costs. Fewer housing options. Less help. It's a scenario that sparks fears of a spike in Florida's homeless population.

Thanks to a few tents and a couple of police officers armed with box cutters, St. Petersburg's homeless problem has gotten national attention.

But to those who track homelessness and its causes, last month's tent slashings aren't as alarming as what could happen in the future if housing and government funding trends continue. Consider:

- Staggering tax and insurance increases are forcing landlords to raise rents - Pinellas' average rent increased 12 percent in two years - even as apartments are disappearing due to hurricane damage and condominium conversions.

- Federal money for building more affordable housing is dwindling or disappearing, while state lawmakers last year refused to repeal a cap on the state's affordable housing trust fund.

- Social service programs that help keep people stable and out of homelessness, including rent subsidies, job training and health care programs, are waning even as the number of people needing them increases.

The result of these trends, housing and homeless experts fear, is that moderate income earners will squeeze low income earners out of the affordable rental market and that thousands on the brink of homelessness will topple over.

"The safety net is gone and there simply is no way for them to survive," said Sarah Snyder, executive director of the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless.

The effects of stagnant incomes, shrinking housing and slackening aid already are being felt. Statewide and across west-central Florida, homeless counts are rising, from an estimated 1,500 in Pinellas in 2000 to 4,400 in 2006. Hillsborough saw its homeless population jump from an estimated 3,600 in 1999 to 11,000 in 2005.

Advocates for the homeless fear those numbers are a sign of things to come. They worry that people whose incomes sheltered them from homelessness in the past might be vulnerable now.

"We're talking about people from median income on down. People from 100 percent of median income on down just aren't making it," Snyder said.

* * *

Homelessness is getting a lot of attention these days, in St. Petersburg, in Florida and across the nation.

Specifically, states, communities and even the federal government are adopting multiyear plans to end "chronic homelessness." The chronically homeless are people who have been homeless more than a year or homeless several times in the past few years. Often they have serious underlying problems such as substance abuse or mental illness.

Conventional wisdom says these people need "supportive housing" - long-term living units with access to counseling and other services. Many states and cities, Florida and St. Petersburg included, are working to create more of those living areas.

But experts say it does little good to have a homeless policy without a housing policy. Many people who are homeless on a given night simply couldn't make the rent due to a short-term financial crisis like a medical or auto repair expense, or a lack of cash for security deposits. And the drug-addicted and mentally ill need a place to live after they've stayed in a shelter or similar space long enough to stabilize.

"Homelessness is a housing issue at its root," said Tom Pierce, director of the state's Office on Homelessness. "And it's not just a low income issue anymore. The middle class is being priced out of the market. Teachers, firefighters are having trouble finding housing in their communities."

Last year, Pierce's office, which gives $400 per year per qualifying family facing eviction when unexpected expenses eat up the rent money, ran out of money in October. Lawmakers added more, but Pierce plans to ask for almost twice as much - nearly $4-million - for the next fiscal year.

But if people can't find an affordable place to live in the first place, the emergency fund can't help much. That's especially true in Pinellas, where units of affordable housing are disappearing and there's little land left on which to build. From 2003 to 2005, some 4,500 of the county's mobile homes disappeared; developers bought out the mobile home parks to build more expensive developments.

From 2000 to 2005, 4,400 Pinellas apartment units were converted to condominiums. Meanwhile, average home values in Pinellas jumped 72 percent during that time, while the average rent jumped 12 percent from 2004 to 2006.

* * *

Both county and state homeless strategy plans acknowledge the need for more affordable housing. But it's ultimately up to the Florida Housing Finance Corp. to arrange for construction.

But don't look for a rash of building soon. The housing corporation's most recent annual report - for 2005 - outlines the difficulties facing the state right now.

"This past year has been a year unlike any other for affordable housing in Florida," director Stephen P. Auger wrote in the report. Hurricanes, storm evacuees, the costs of land, construction, insurance and utilities, plus apartments converting to condominiums have put significant pressure on the state's ability to provide affordable housing, Auger said.

On top of that, many agreements the state made years ago with apartment complexes to set aside units for low income renters will soon expire. (The complexes received favorable loans through the housing corporation in exchange for the set-asides.)

Funding for federal Section 8 rent vouchers has been flat for a number of years - most housing authorities, including St. Petersburg's, have long waiting lists. And state lawmakers, over the objections of affordable housing advocates, last year chose to retain a $243-million cap on the state's affordable housing trust fund, and to keep the rest of the $940-million free to use for other emergencies.

"From afar people look at our housing trust fund and they salivate, but only a small percentage gets spent," said Freyja Harris, program director of the Florida Coalition for the Homeless.

"The problem is only going to get worse, but the funding is not going to increase unless that cap is reversed," Harris said.

But restoration of significant spending, whether directly on housing programs or indirectly on supportive social programs, is considered unlikely in this budget environment.

On the state level, lawmakers are expecting a very tight budget year, and community organizations that provide social services to the homeless and other low income Floridians are gearing up for a fight for funds.

Recent changes in the state's Medicaid program, which provides health care to the poor, have forced some community mental health organizations to lay off workers whose job it is to ensure that mentally ill clients at risk for homelessness follow their treatment plan.

Florida likely will give back some $17-million in federal funds because the state, to control its share of cost in a joint children's health care program, tightened eligibility requirements.

At the federal level, at a time when wages are stagnant and a St. Petersburg resident must earn $13.31 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment (or else work 80 hours a week at minimum wage), funds for a job training program considered key to preventing homelessness have been reduced the past few years.

President Bush has proposed a second round of cuts to the country's social service programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, as well as eliminating the Social Services Block Grant.

These things keep Snyder of the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless awake at night.

"It's one thing to get people off the street today," Snyder said. "But the long-term issue of where are people going to live is a real concern."

By ALISA ULFERTS St. Petersburg Times
Published February 18, 2007

Let us consider safe and sanitary homeless camps. Robin Miller of Bradenton recently wrote a thoughtful post about one approach to homelessness. Readers of “Sarasota Speaks” may already have encountered his post. The entire article may be found here: http://www.roblimo.com/node/192 I asked Robin for permission to excerpt portions for this blog, and it was kindly granted. What follows is from Robin:

Homeless shelters are chronically underfunded and almost always overcrowded, especially in the winter. Remember, shelters aren’t just there for the “visible homeless” — the booze-smelling panhandlers who bother us in the supermarket parking lot — but also for families and non-boozing singles who have been hit with high medical bills or lost their jobs, and because they had no money (or on a landlord’s whim) got evicted from their homes and couldn’t find someplace else they could afford to rent.

Some municipalities rent hotel or motel rooms to house homeless when their shelters are full. This is a hugely expensive short-term solution to a long-term (and growing) problem. My solution is simpler and cheaper: Licensed, legal homeless camps. The reality is that homeless camps are the wave of the future. We are going to have more of them, so we might as well have clean, decent ones with toilets, showers, and electricity.

Except they don’t need to be “homeless” camps, just campgrounds where anyone is free to stay as long as they pay minimal rent and/or help maintain the place.
Campgrounds are far cheaper to run than indoor shelters. The same $10,000 that might only help a dozen people stay in a homeless shelter for a month might help 100 or more “live rough” in tents, but with water, electricity, and showers available, along with simple firepits and lanais where they could cook without burning down their tents. A $25/week, $100/month tent campground would be the perfect place to live for someone who is truly serious about going to school or saving up for a monthly (instead of weekly) apartment or who wants to set aside enough money to eventually buy a house. It could be a haven for a poet who wants to devote full-time to her writing and is willing to put up with crude living conditions in exchange for a chance to live for six months on a few thousand dollars.

Naturally, this kind of living situation wouldn’t work well in Maine or Michigan. People would die there in the winter. But I live in Florida, where simple, outdoor-based living is feasible (if not necessarily comfortable) year-round.
A modern tent is nearly as comfortable as many of the shacks early settlers here built. And what about trailers? As in all those Katrina-surplus FEMA trailers? Wouldn’t they be good enough for rock-bottom housing? I could live in one and get by. Even my wife could, if she really had to. We’ve discussed all this, and have decided that while we really like our comfortable house and two cars, we could survive life in a camp trailer or tent — and still find many moments of joy.
The thing is, this level of living is now illegal almost everywhere. A woman down south of us on Florida’s west coast was running a non-subsidized homeless shelter that was really just a fenced lot with some tents and junk trailers on it, and she got shut down over building code violations even though her beneficiaries were undoubtedly living better on her property than they had lived elsewhere.
So change the laws!

I suspect that many churches and social service groups would happily fund and run simple “homeless” campgrounds if such things were legal. I’m sure many church-run campgrounds would prohibit drinking and drugs on the property. Some might require attendance at religious services. As long as they weren’t receiving government money, why shouldn’t they set up whatever rules they like?
And if laws allowed, I’m sure some private operators might even open for-profit campgrounds — and make a go of them. 20 camping spaces per acre, each bringing in $100 per month or more, could pay a considerable mortgage. Even with a two-acre campground only half-full, that’s still $2000 per month, which is more than enough to build and maintain a simple place, especially if residents are required to pitch in a certain number of hours every month to keep the place tidy and secure.
The thing is, we have this dichotomy in our society: There is (duh) more money in building expensive houses than in building cheap ones. Ditto apartments. Hardly anyone is building new apartments that auto parts store clerks can afford to rent. And even as “regular” housing gets further out of reach for low-income workers almost every year, we are unwilling — as a society — to consider simple, low-cost alternative housing. Indeed, in many areas building codes have made it illegal to even try to build something bottom-rungers can afford.

We are going to have homeless people camping out, like it or not, and current real estate and employment trends mean we’ll have more of them doing it 10 years from now than today. The least we can do is make the “homeless” experience as clean and safe as we can, for as many people as possible. And that means legal camping, with rules and regulations designed to keep campsites clean and safe, instead of consigning our “homeless” to lives of filth and misery the way we do today.

Should panhandling be illegal in Manatee County?

I attended the Manatee County Commission “workshop” on the proposed panhandling ordinance. Commissioner Ron Gettman chaired the meeting. He was joined by representatives from most law enforcement agencies.
He was careful to begin the meeting by pointing out that this was not about homelessness, the ordinance was about panhandlers. The primary justification offered for the ordinance was that there had been complaints from the community. Gettman also said that it was a public safety issue.
A powerpoint presentation was then given describing all of the current financial assistance that the commission is currently providing for homeless services. Manatee County is currently providing approximately 1.4 million dollars to social service agencies to work on homelessness issues.
The county attorney then outlined the proposed ordinance. Essentially, the ordinance would outlaw: 1) “aggresive panhandling,” and 2. any solicitation conducted within 15 feet of any roadway. This ordinance may be presented to the full county commission for a public hearing on March 13, 2007. The law enforcement community voiced their support for the ordinance. A representative from a homeless coalition pointed out that their might be problems with the proposed penalties, and suggested that violators be required to perform community service.The floor was then opened for public comment.
Approximately ten people spoke in favor of the ordinance. Some of the comments had little to do with panhandling but instead focused on other issues, such as public urination or campsites built on private property. A realtor complained that the panhandlers were depressing the home market. Others complained about enabling the lifestyle choices of those who used solicited money for cigarettes or alcohol. There were also legitimate complaints about panhandlers that were disturbing particular neighborhoods.
I spoke out against the ordinance. A similar law from St. Petersburg has been declared unconstitutional. In 2002, Cook County, Illinois paid $475,000 to settle a lawsuit filed after persons were arrested under a similar unconstitutional ordinance. I also argued that jail beds should be treated like a scarce resource and not used to confine those who have “lifestyles” that we disagree with. Manatee County will be responsible for paying for legal representation for anyone jailed under the new ordinance. Furthermore, anyone arrested will be responsible for court costs and other fees. Failure to pay will result in additional consequences, such as further incarceration or driver's license suspension. The Suncoast Partnership to end Homelessness is willing to work with Manatee County and law enforcement to come up with creative solutions to the problem that do not involve criminalization.

For the Bradenton Herald article on the workshop, go to:
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/16648585.htm

Here is a letter to the editor from Adrienne B. Lazeroff, executive director of Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, serving Manatee and Sarasota counties.

As Manatee County considers an anti-panhandling ordinance, we must stop to ask ourselves, is criminalization the solution to the problem?

We can all agree that panhandling impacts our community, but there is a lot of disagreement on the solution for curbing it. The solutions that we seek should address the underlying problem: poverty.

When people are arrested and charged under panhandling ordinances, they develop a criminal record, making it more difficult to obtain employment or housing, thereby exacerbating poverty and its problems. It is also paramount that we consider the effects of criminalization on the accessibility of needed services, as such measures often result in moving people away from services.

Our community needs to consider constructive approaches, such as outreach (directing those who panhandle to mental health or substance abuse services). We should be working together to achieve real solutions to prevent and end poverty, such as dedicating more resources to affordable and transitional housing, health care, and the creation of jobs with a living wage.

Here is the editorial from the Sarasota Herald Tribune from 2/9/07
The risk of banning beggars
County needs to consider potential costs of ordinance

Adam Tebrugge doesn't hold popular views about Manatee County's proposed panhandling ordinance, but they warrant a full discussion before the County Commission votes on the plan.

Tebrugge, a member of the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness and an assistant public defender, was the only person who spoke against the ordinance at a forum this week. He says the proposal may prove more costly than its proponents foresee.

The ordinance, drafted by a task force of law-enforcement officers and attorneys led by County Commissioner Ron Getman, would ban people from panhandling within 15 feet of a public road in the county and its cities. Also targeted are beggars who threaten or intimidate people on roadsides and in public places, including business parking lots.

Violators would be warned, then face up to 60 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $500.

For safety reasons, the restrictions also would apply to people using sidewalks for charity fund-raisers such as car washes.

As many speakers pointed out this week, panhandlers who create traffic hazards and harass passers-by pose a genuine problem. County intervention is justified.

But Tebrugge warns that Manatee's proposal could face a costly legal challenge. He cited a Second District Court of Appeal ruling in 1995 declaring a St. Petersburg panhandling ordinance unconstitutional, and a $475,000 settlement that Cook County, Ill., paid in 2002 as the result of a lawsuit involving its panhandling ordinance.

Getman asked the county's legal staff to examine those cases. Other issues raised by Tebrugge deserve a closer look, too.

Tebrugge pointed out that those arrested would be entitled to legal representation, an expense that would most likely be borne by taxpayers. And panhandlers who are jailed will take up increasingly scarce bed space -- again, at a cost to taxpayers.

It's possible, of course, that this ordinance will generate few arrests or jail terms and serve, instead, as a giant "Panhandlers Unwelcome" sign that prompts most beggars to leave Manatee.

But before county officials commit to displaying that sign with this ordinance, they should be certain they have a strong grasp of what could go wrong.

In the meantime, all Manatee residents should heed the advice of advocates for the poor: Don't give money to panhandlers. The donations are better directed to local agencies equipped to help the needy. Handing cash or coins to panhandlers, some of whom use the money to feed alcohol and/or drug addictions, will only perpetuate the problem.

In Orlando, a law against feeding the homeless – and a debate over Samaritans' rights:

At Lake Eola park, there is much beauty to behold: robust palms, beds of cheery begonias, a cascading lake fountain, clusters of friendly egrets and swans, an amphitheater named in honor of Walt Disney.
Then there are the signs.

DO NOT LIE OR OTHERWISE BE IN A HORIZONTAL POSITION ON A PARK BENCH ... DO NOT SLEEP OR REMAIN IN ANY BUSHES, SHRUBS OR FOLIAGE ... per city code sec. 18A.09 (a) and (o).

Visit the park's restrooms, and you'll find this sign on the wall above the hand dryers:

BATHING AND/OR SHAVING IN RESTROOM IS PROHIBITED ... per city code 18A.09 (p) ... LAUNDERING CLOTHES IN LAKE EOLA PARK IS NOT PERMITTED.

Since joggers and dog walkers tend not to snooze in flower beds, and because employees at the glittering office towers around Lake Eola don't scrub laundry in park sinks, it's clear, says Monique Vargas, at whom the notices are targeted.

“They're talking to us, to the homeless,” says Vargas, 28, who says she has lived on the streets, in parks or under overpasses, since age 16. “It's a way of saying, 'Your kind isn't wanted in our city.'”

Orlando, population 200,000, works hard to conjure the image of a true-life Pleasantville: a safe, welcoming place where visitors can soak up year-round sunshine and devour choreographed experiences at palm-ringed theme parks. But its spotless sidewalks, sparkling lakes and twinkling skyline belie a real city with real maladies – most notably, a surging homeless population that authorities are struggling to control.

After a law that banned panhandling was struck down by the courts, the city tried to discourage aggressive beggars by obliging them to carry ID cards, and later by confining them to 3-by-15-foot “panhandling zones” painted in blue on sidewalks downtown.

Despite these laws, the number of people living on the streets of the Orlando metro area swelled, from roughly 5,000 in 1999 to an estimated 8,500 today, dwarfing the city's shelter capacity for 2,000 people.

So in July, the city commission tried a “supply-side” approach: It passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups of people in Orlando's downtown parks.

Those who wished to feed more than 25 hungry individuals at parks within a 2-mile radius of City Hall could do so, but only if they obtained a “Large Group Feeding Permit” from the parks department – and no one would be granted more than two feeding permits a year.

No exceptions.

For the first time anyone in Orlando could remember, not only would panhandlers find themselves in the crosshairs of the law, but so would those trying to help them.



“It's now illegal to feed the homeless in Orlando, Florida,” Jay Leno, host of NBC's “Tonight Show,” told a studio audience last summer in Burbank, Calif., during his opening monologue. “Have you seen the fat people walking around Disney World? We should make it illegal to feed THEM.”

But when the Orlando Sentinel posted Leno's wisecrack on its Web site, local bloggers weren't laughing.

“Feeding the homeless only encourages more homelessness,” one resident, with the moniker “Justin Credible,” wrote. He then summed up his argument in an equation. “Less Homeless
Less Problems
Better Place to Live.”

Another, “TG,” didn't oppose feeding the destitute. “But there are places set up for this. Soup kitchens exist ... It is not unreasonable to want to keep Lake Eola Park from becoming a homeless cafeteria.”

William Beem added: “For what it's worth, Las Vegas enacted a similar law at the same time as Orlando. Tourist towns think alike.”

Indeed, a week before Orlando's ordinance took effect, Las Vegas criminalized giving food to even a single transient in a city park.

In August, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the Las Vegas ban, saying it violated constitutional protections of free speech, right to assembly and right to practice one's religion. A federal court in Nevada has prohibited the city from enforcing the ordinance until a final ruling is issued.

Advocates for the homeless feared it wouldn't be long before other cities passed similar laws. As it happens, they were right.

Already, the cities of Dallas, Fort Myers, Fla., Gainesville, Fla., Wilmington, N.C., Atlanta, and Santa Monica, Calif., have laws restricting or outright prohibiting the feeding of the homeless. In Fairfax County, Va., homemade meals and meals made in church kitchens may not be distributed to the homeless unless first approved by the county.

Other cities, including Miami, are considering similar anti-feeding measures.

“We've seen cities going beyond punishing homeless people to punishing those trying to help them, even though it's clear that not enough resources are being dedicated to helping the homeless or the hungry,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, NLCHP, a non-profit in Washington, D.C.

A 2006 report on 67 cities by her group and the National Coalition for the Homeless, a nonpartisan, non-profit network, found an 18 percent increase since 2002 in laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling; a 12 percent jump in laws outlawing “passive” begging; a 14 percent rise in laws defining sitting or lying in public places as criminal acts.

Says Michael Stoops, the coalition's executive director in Washington, D.C.: “The idea is to drive the visible homeless out of downtown America, so that cities can attract developers, big money.”

What's wrong with attracting investment?

Nothing, Stoops says – unless it comes at the expense of decency. “It's a sorry state of affairs when you can feed the squirrels, the doves and pigeons at Lake Eola, but not a hungry guy down on his luck.”



Undeniably, a quarter century has done much to Orlando.

Once a sleepy town, it is today a city with a growing skyline, widening freeways, sidewalk cafes, and strip malls with neon signs in Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and Japanese.

Its mayor, Buddy Dyer, ran for office in 2003 promising downtown revitalization, and revitalization is what locals are getting.

On streets around Lake Eola, where drug dealers and prostitutes once roamed, residential towers like “The Paramount,” “The Metropolitan at Lake Eola,” and the “The Vue at Lake Eola,” are now rising. In addition, the city is finalizing plans to renovate the downtown Citrus Bowl and build a new performing arts center and “Events Arena” by 2011 – at a cost of $1 billion.

Homelessness, in the view of Dyer and members of his staff, adversely affects public safety and economic development, and therefore must be addressed.

Ultimately, “it's a balancing act,” says Brie Turek, Dyer's spokesperson. “We need to balance the needs of our citizens and our businesses with the needs of the homeless.”

The large feedings were unbalancing constituents who lived near the parks, she says.

“We were receiving dozens of complaints about individuals sleeping in people's bushes, urinating on private properties. Some citizens reported finding homeless people doing drugs in their stairwells. There were reports of carjackings. There was even a stabbing.”

Alana Brenner, a city clerk who serves as the mayor's point person on the homeless problem, dismisses critics who say that Orlando's feeding ordinance discourages Good Samaritanism. “It's a restriction on the time, place and manner of feedings, nothing more.”

While the city would prefer that feedings be done through existing agencies such as the Salvation Army, it has also set up “an alternative location near downtown, on Sylvia Lane,” where, Brenner points out, “feedings can take place any day, any hour.”

The locale she referred to is roughly a 15-minute walk from City Hall, a sweep of blacktop where charities fed groups of destitute men and women several years ago. Shadowed by an overpass, the parking lot is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and flanked by an electrical power station and railroad tracks.

The city has provided portable toilets and picnic benches, but there is no running water to wash one's hands, says Jacqueline Dowd, a lawyer with the ACLU, which has also sued to overturn Orlando's feeding ordinance.

And the neighborhood, she says, is unsafe. “I've documented five cases of homeless people being beaten around there in the past year.”

One was August Felix, 54, who was found on March 26, severely beaten and lying motionless on a sidewalk one block from the Sylvia Lane feeding site. He died in the hospital a month later from the head injuries, police say.

Five boys, aged 15 and 16, were arrested on second-degree murder charges. “This was a case of bored kids – kids with time on their hands,” says Sgt. Richard King, who investigated the killing. “They targeted Mr. Felix because he was easy prey.”

The city acknowledges that it presently lacks resources to adequately provide basics for people with no place to live – bedspace in emergency shelters, for one thing. (“There is a capacity issue,” is how Brenner puts it.)

Permanent housing for those with very low incomes is also in short supply, despite Orlando's decade-long residential building boom. “A lot of apartment complexes have gone condo, which has removed affordable rental units from the local market,” says Brent Trotter, president of the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida. “What's being built today, the average family in the service industry can't afford.”

The fastest-growing segment of central Florida's homeless population is families with children, the coalition says. It recently reported that shelter nights for children climbed 70 percent in 2005-2006, to 64,548.

Orlando has taken some steps to address this. In December, it sponsored “Project Homeless Connect,” an outreach program that paired 600 homeless people with 60 charities, service providers, religious groups and employers. Twenty-two individuals were placed in housing after the event.

Last fall, the city earmarked $860,000 to refurbish 299 apartments for low-income families and homeless people. It plans to spend $329,258 more this year to renovate the Health Care Center for the Homeless, and it will give $2 million to the Coalition for the Homeless, the Christian Service Center, the Harbor House, the United Way and the Center for Drug Free Living.

More outreach is needed, concedes Turek, the mayor's spokeswoman, but the city needs help from surrounding counties, the state and local businesses. “The city itself can't shoulder the burden of the homeless problem for the entire central Florida region,” she says.

At city council meetings, Brenner notes, “We heard almost no complaints from our own citizens about the ordinance. Sure, there are activists from other cities that are against it. But sometimes you want to ask them, 'Why aren't you feeding in your OWN community?'”



It's ideal apple-eating weather; coppery sunlight descends the purest of skies, and a warm breeze rustles the silvery moss in the live oaks above the 22 or so men and women waiting in a crooked line along the sidewalk.

Winter rewards the homeless who have persevered through Orlando's humid summer months, and now Suzanne Peters, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs, a group that feeds the homeless here once a week, wants to reward their patience.

It's nearly 5:15 p.m. when her tan, Chevy Blazer rolls up to the corner. The homeless stir, chatter, as Peters opens the hatch.

Out comes a serving table, vats of stew, eggplant, mashed potatoes and salad, ladles, stacks of paper plates, plastic cutlery, cartons of fruit juice, and boxes half-filled with apples, bananas, oranges, bagels and French rolls.

“Folks!” she calls out, “you can't sit on that wall. That's private property. The big, bad men will come and arrest you.” She motions to the curb. “You can stand on the sidewalk, or sit on the curb here. Sorry.”

Peters and her partners used to feed 75 to 150 homeless people at a time in Lake Eola Park, just a block north. Then, after the ordinance took effect, patrol cars, four at a time, would roll up, officers would step out and ask who was in charge.

“They'd tell us it was a 'no-feeding zone,'” says Brett Mason, a 19-year-old college student, who joined Food Not Bombs when it came to Orlando in January 2005.

The officers, he says, would “park nearby and watch us, in unmarked cars with tinted windows. Sometimes they'd take pictures of us, shoot video of us. Then they'd say, 'You have to get a permit to feed here,' and shoo us away.”

So the group retreated to this street corner and began feeding out of the back of members' cars. On occasion, to show defiance, Food Not Bombs fed in front of municipal buildings, even City Hall.

That's because the ordinance, says Ben Markeson, who belongs to the group, is based on a misguided premise.

City officials “think groups that share food with the homeless are attracting the homeless to downtown neighborhoods. But the homeless are already here. And they'll be here with or without the food.”

That opinion is shared by Paul Johnson, 34, and his fiancee, Ericka Holder, 26, of San Diego; Dave Whipkey, 37, of Kissimmee, Fla.; Carlos Gonzales, 64, of Orlando; Scott Phillips, 30, and his wife, Sherri, 39, of Lorraine, Ohio; Broderick Williams, 42, of Tampa; and, Derrick Wiley, 31, of Daytona Beach – all of whom have no place to live, all of whom are grateful for the hot meal they're getting.

Some days of the week, says Johnson, are “good food days” – meaning he and other homeless people can find three squares a day by hopping from church to church, charity to charity. “But there are lots of days – Mondays and Tuesdays are the toughest – when it's hard to get one meal.”

Wiley, a part-time cook at a downtown eatery, came to Orlando in 1998. What keeps him here? “It's a beautiful city. There are jobs. And there are people like this, who help others out of the goodness of their hearts.”

The feeding ordinance, however, was a shock. “They are trying to make downtown beautiful, which is cool. But, please, don't step on me, just 'cause I'm trying to make it.”

He smooths out his black T-shirt, looks down at his gray sweat pants, sky-blue socks and bedroom slippers. “I guess to them, I'm an eyesore ... They don't want to see me around the prestigious areas anymore.”

A police car crawls past. Wiley waits for it to turn the corner, then adds, “It's discrimination.”

So far, no one has been arrested in Orlando for feeding a hungry person. But the day it happens, says Sgt. Barbara Jones, a police spokeswoman, “we know we're going to look like the bad guys.”

Still, an ordinance is an ordinance, she says, and “our job is to enforce the law.”

By Todd Lewan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 3, 2007

Homeless fight back with high tech: A tent city resident with a videocamera allows people around the world see police slashing tents.

Tina May grabbed a $30 disposable plastic videocamera when she saw police officers cutting down tents at the homeless camp she called home.

The police kept cutting. May kept filming.

Just a few hours later, May's video of the Jan. 19 raid went up on the Web site YouTube. It has logged over 13,000 views in a few weeks, been shared on blogs and Web sites like MySpace, and promoted St. Petersburg as a national poster child for cruelty against the homeless.

May's video shows how new media technologies allow even the most destitute draw attention to their causes. They don't need expensive digital equipment, just a cheap camera, a compelling image and the Internet.

Cassandra Van Buren, an assistant professor at the University of Utah who studies new media issues, said the inexpensive cost of digital cameras, coupled with easy-to-use sites such as YouTube, now mean that nearly everyone - even the homeless - can become a watchdog.

"What we're seeing now is that regular citizens have access to their own distributions through YouTube and the Web in general," Van Buren said. "That's the big shift you're seeing that enables this type of citizen countersurveillance."

May, just 14 years old when she first ran away from home, is a tiny 32-year-old woman who wears bulky jackets and fuzzy pink slippers with red hearts. She was arrested six days after she made the famous video, accused of pawning a stolen drill that she said was hers.

May is proud that she made the video.

"I didn't think it was right that they were slashing our tents," May said. "I'm glad I did it. People know all about us."

Since the initial raids, more homeless people have put up tents at two locations: On 15th Street near Fifth Avenue N and on 18th Street near Central Avenue. Mayor Rick Baker has since said the decision to cut the tents "was a mistake." Police officials - who initially said they took away the tents because of concerns with fire codes - say they don't anticipate any more raids.

Eric Rubin, an advocate for the homeless, said many people in the city's two tent cities now have disposable cell phones and videocameras. A MySpace page called homelesstentcitystpete offers regular updates and a list of needs water, toilet paper, portable shower.

"The reality is that a picture is worth a million words," Rubin said. "It's now being used as a form of protection as well."

May says an advocate for the homeless bought the plastic videocamera and gave it to her boyfriend, who gave it to her before he was arrested. She had just brought her stuff to the tent city at Fifth Avenue N and 15th Street and hadn't even put up her tent when she saw police pull up.

After shooting the video, May went to a CVS drugstore to get some DVDs of the video made for $51.99. She kept one DVD, and several other copies were passed around. One advocate for the homeless - May isn't sure who - uploaded the video to YouTube on a home computer hours after the raid. The credit reads: "Video by Tina May."

The views and outrage soon followed, as viewers registered their disgust: "Outrageous. ... This is a terrible act. ... This is atrocious."

The local music group Meyer Baron & the Spaghetti Band even wrote a song called Walk On By after watching it.

The song begins:

"In a city known as paradise

Under a picture postcard sky

folks in uniform came to haul

your a-- away

They sliced up your tent city

and drove you to the streets

Where nothing is a heavy price to pay."

by ABHI RAGHUNATHAN St. Petersburg Times

Manatee's homeless count:

Cold weather worked to the advantage of homeless advocates who fanned out across Manatee and Sarasota counties from noon Monday to noon Tuesday to take count of the homeless.

"I don't like to think of anybody out in the cold, but the weather should help us get a higher count," said Adrienne Lazeroff, executive director of the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness.

Results won't be announced until the end of March, but Lazeroff said wide participation indicates success.

"Thousands upon thousands of surveys were administered by hundreds of volunteers," Lazeroff said. "I feel we are going to have a really successful count."

That data is vital to securing more than half a million dollars in federal funds, as well as state and local grants to provide services to the local homeless, Lazeroff said.

The hope of more services sat well with homeless residents of a camp located in Ellenton, just north of Interstate 75 in a wooded area off U.S. 301.

A middle-aged man named Doug identified himself as the camp's spokesman.

"If it will help us get jobs and more services, then we ought to do it," said Doug, who declined to give his last name.

Lack of steady employment is the main reason many people are homeless, said Doug, who has been on the streets for more than five years. Both Doug and his fiancee, Kim, also a camp resident, had jobs at nearby restaurants until their employers found out they lived in the woods.

"When they find out you are homeless, they don't want anything to do with you," said Kim, who didn't want her last name used. "But we are people, too. Give us a chance. Get to know us. "

The Ellenton camp, with its wind chimes and potted plants hanging from the trees, has been home to Kim and Doug for more than two years. They share the clearing with about 50 other campers, living in a circle of tents that surround a common area defined by a tarp stretched over a tent pole and secured to the ground.

The camp is guarded by a dog named Molly.

The biggest threat to the camp is not from law enforcement, Doug said, but from what he called the "bad homeless" - the ones on crack cocaine and other hard drugs.

"People who are on crack and stuff, man, they'd come in here and slit your throat, just to get more of it," said Doug, who takes pride in keeping order.

"When anybody comes here, the first thing I ask is, 'Do you do hard drugs, any kind of hard drugs? If you do, you might as well turn around and leave 'cause that is something we don't tolerate back here. We never did and we never will," said Doug.

The Ellenton camp was one of nine surveyed by volunteers Avery Burke, Connie Insley, Mike Mahan and James McEntee, all homeless outreach specialists with Manatee Glens.

During the 24-hour period, they surveyed 41 people living in the woods.

A homeless man who said his name was Jack completed the survey at the Manatee County Central Library. He arrived in Bradenton two weeks ago from Rhode Island. Although experienced in just about every construction trade, Jack said he has been unable to find work.

"You have to get to the day labor places by 4 in morning just to get in line," he said. "There are hundreds of men lining up for work and they just don't have enough jobs to go around."

Lack of steady work was the primary cause of homelessness cited by people surveyed by Trudy Bailey, a volunteer who worked the survey table at the library.

She said she believes that past counts in recent years have greatly underestimated the size of Manatee's homeless population.

Bailey is seeing more families, especially single women with children, seek help through the Open Door, where she volunteers.

"Homelessness is not going to go away unless we do more to help these unfortunate people," said Bailey. "There but for the grace of God go I."

Most residents do not realize how many working homeless they encounter during the day, said Lazeroff.

Case in point, Lazeroff said, was the Publix cashier who checked out the sandwich platters for the press conference after the end of the census. Turns out she is homeless, too.

"No one would ever know she is homeless," said Lazeroff. "She does not fit the typical profile."

But that was the typical profile of people interviewed by Lt. William Evers of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, who volunteered for the census.

"The ones I encountered were working homeless," Evers said. "I think most people assume that if you are homeless, you are not working, but that's not necessarily true."

Homelessness is not a government issue, said Sarasota County Commissioner Paul H. Mercier, a member of the Suncoast board, at Tuesday's press conference.

"It's a community issue," Mercier said. "We need to identify the homeless, and local businesses must be part of the solution."

"Of all the people we have surveyed, there is not one of them that would not work if they could find employment," said Bailey.

The solution is not just jobs, said Lazeroff, but employment that pays a decent wage so people can afford housing.

by DONNA WRIGHT
Herald Staff Writer

Homeless census crucial for help:
Sarasota County counts its homeless, a step in getting them assistance.

Unfortunately, the Sarasota Herald Tribune has asked me to remove the article. I am very disappointed in this request. I am simply attempting to maintain an electronic scrapbook so that the community can find recent information about homelessness in one place. I will see if there is any room to negotiate with them about use of their material. In the meantime, in the interest of civility, I have removed the article. Below is a link that you must cut and paste into your browser bar.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070131/NEWS/701310315

Homeless census underway in Manatee County: Cold weather forced the homeless to the Salvation Army shelter in Bradenton, which housed 149 on Sunday night, 47 over capacity, according to Robert Greubel, the men's lodge manager.

With all 102 beds filled, the men found sleep on mats and blankets in the TV room.

"We do what we can. We try not to turn anybody away when it gets cold," said Greubel, who expects to see just as many men throughout the cold snap. "It's pretty much given on nights like this."

Meanwhile, on the eve of the coldest day of the year to date, the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness has joined with 45 local agencies to administer a 24-hour bicounty census, which began at noon Monday and ends at noon today.

The homeless survey is required by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development to take place during the last seven days of January, when the cold is more likely to drive them to shelters, said Adrienne Lazeroff, executive director of Suncoast Partnership to End Homeless.

"It's quite literally a snapshot of who is homeless at a particular time," she said. "It's very likely we will see many more people seek shelter because people in this climate may not have winter jackets and heavy blankets. No one wants to sleep outside when it's 34 degrees."

Miami's poverty a grim backdrop to Super Bowl glitz: The bomb-sniffing dogs are training. Fleets of limos are on the way. The ink is dry on anti-gouging pledges. Thousands of volunteers are on the march. Concierges are hustling to fill every VIP whim.

And Miami's newest homeless camp, a plywood and pallet shantytown, is gussying up to take center stage, if only for a moment.

With South Florida gearing up to host its record-tying ninth Super Bowl next Sunday, community titans have the drill, the details and the mission down pat. Their primary aim is to show off South Florida's best side, then revel in the estimated $350 million tourism bonanza.

As hundreds of posters and banners hanging on windows and from streetlights in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties say, "One game. One dream. One chance to shine."

But the world's most-watched sporting event is also offering an opportunity to shine a laser beam on the other Miami: the third-poorest city in the nation, where living wages and affordable housing are out of the reach of many of the residents helping to foot the Super Bowl tab.

Against a backdrop of lavish parties -- some with admission rivaling the $3,000-plus going rate for tickets to the Indianapolis Colts/Chicago Bears game -- advocates for the homeless and poor are staging a "Reality Tour." On Wednesday, a bus will take a few of the thousands of journalists converging on South Florida on a short drive to communities a world away from trendy Miami Beach, where the reporters will work, stay and presumably play.

"There is one game and one dream, but different realities," said Joseph Phelan, an activist with the Miami Workers Center. "Miami is the playground of the rich and famous, but it is not paradise for the poor . . . and the only thing the city and county are doing about it is filling their pockets with tourism dollars from the Super Bowl."

New foe: Gentrification

Among the stops will be Umoja Village, a shantytown established last fall by squatters who claimed the city-owned land under a 1998 court settlement reached after Super Bowls past, when the city cleared out its homeless by confiscating and burning their belongings.

That practice is now illegal, but the squatters hope to highlight what they contend is the newest way of displacing the poor: gentrification. In many depressed neighborhoods, low-income and public-housing apartments have been razed to make way for pricey new condos, or for "affordable housing" that, despite millions spent, was never built.

Ironically, the most visible example sits across from one of the most tangible payoffs from the 1995 Super Bowl, the National Football League Youth Education Town Center in Liberty City. Started with a $1 million donation from the NFL, the YET Center is an oasis for children who live in one of Miami-Dade's toughest neighborhoods.

Inside the brightly painted walls, elementary kids are learning to build robots on brand-new Dell computers. Tutors help with homework and coaches teach an array of sports, from basketball and football to dance and fencing. All for free.

"It's fun," said David Spivey, 6. "You get to play games. You get to build stuff."

But more than six years ago, the county began bulldozing 850 public-housing units near the center, promising to replace them with half as many affordable homes. Today, $22 million later, only 10 houses are complete, and the number of kids the center serves has plummeted -- from about 800 a day to about 300.

Habitat for Humanity has since taken over the project, and the housing agency is under investigation for fraud and mismanagement.

"Substance is a lot more important than image, and it bothers me that the county is more interested in maintaining the illusion of glitz and glamour than it is in dealing with the reality of poverty and corruption," said Max Rameau, a community activist who organized the squatters village.

Local economy's boost

But for South Florida, the Super Bowl is all about image. In the view of community leaders, the region's economic future rests on the Super Bowl's success. Not on the game at Dolphin Stadium, but on the impression that sunny South Florida leaves on the estimated 120,000 visitors, including 3,500 credentialed media, and 1 billion worldwide TV viewers expected to watch the game.

Though some analysts question the figure, officials with the South Florida Super Bowl XLI Host Committee estimate that visitors and the NFL will pump more than $350 million into the regional economy. That's 35 times more than the $10 million the committee raised -- a total of $2 million from Miami-Dade and Broward counties and the rest from corporate sponsors -- to house the teams; throw parties for the media; hire a concierge service to line up yacht slips and tee times for corporate high-rollers; extract anti-gouging pledges from hoteliers; recruit 8,000 hospitality volunteers; and infect residents with Super Bowl fever.

"There's a huge multiplying effect," said Rodney Barreto, the host committee's chairman. "If visitors have a good time, they come back. They buy real estate. They move their companies here."

If the Reality Tour is the worst publicity that South Florida has to contend with this week, Barreto will be happy. A member of three previous host committees, he knows too well that calamity can knock at inopportune times.

In 1989, just six days before kickoff, the Super Bowl was upstaged by the fatal shooting of a black motorcyclist by a white policeman in Miami's poorest black neighborhood. Instead of Miami's new skyline and tropical sophistication, newspapers and broadcasts around the world were dominated by combat-ready cops, rampaging youth, burning cars -- and stories about the two Miamis.

But, Barreto notes, a good deal has changed since then, most notably a concerted effort to ensure the NFL and host committee's largesse reaches every segment of the community. To date, he said, minority and female-owned businesses in South Florida have been awarded $14 million in NFL contracts for catering, barricades and other services needed to throw the grandest party around.

That sum eclipses the $10 million record set in Detroit last year and is one reason Darryl Holsendolph, a Miami native who grew up blocks from the shantytown, would prefer activists chose a different time to air the county's dirty laundry.

As the holder of the contract to sell NFL souvenirs at Miami International Airport, Holsendolph, 43, says he is proof of a Super Bowl's trickle-down effect. For his first Super Bowl in 1995, his company, Holsen Inc. Merchandising, hired about 25 people. For the 1999 game, his staff grew. And for next week's game, he has about 100 people on the payroll -- 60 percent of them from his old Liberty City neighborhood.

"What happened with housing is a shame, but it has nothing to do with Super Bowl," he said. "I suggest now is the time to start looking for opportunities in 2010."

And that, of course, is when South Florida is set to host the Super Bowl for a record-breaking 10th time.

by Maya Bell
Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

A homeless survey is underway throughout the state of Florida. Here is a report from central Florida:

More than 60 agencies are asking questions in 3 counties with the hope they will get an accurate count.

Waiting in line for his noontime meal Friday, Larry Allen agreed to tell how and why he ended up homeless.

The 50-year-old laborer was among more than 1,000 homeless people across Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties interviewed by volunteers in the first homeless census in three years.

The headcount helps determine how much federal cash will flow to Central Florida to tackle the problem. The survey identifies what help -- beyond shelter -- the homeless need.

A similar tally, minus the questionnaire, was done in Volusia earlier in the week. The main goal is to get a fresh idea of the number of the homeless, which at last count was about 9,000 across the region.

This time, the homeless and advocates both predict the same results: an increase in homeless families and homeless who work, and not enough emergency beds, much less enough for people who want detox or mental-health care.

"I've been hoping to find a place so I can get over this and get on with my life," said Allen, who wants out after six months of living in the woods and the occasional shelter.

Allen's story is familiar to those who work with the homeless.

Allen said he has always worked, but he started drinking too much. He tried to dry out on his own but said alcohol seems to surround him.

Thursday night, when temperatures dipped near freezing, Allen said he drank too much again. It kept him warm as he slept outside a downtown building but kept him from getting to work on time Friday morning.

"I know I can quit, if I just get a little time away. There just isn't a place for me to go," he said.

Orlando is home to a handful of large shelters with programs in job training, life skills and how to stay straight once an addiction is kicked.

With the jump in the numbers of working poor and needy single women with children, some facilities also have playgrounds, day care and Headstart pre-school on site.

But only the Men's Pavilion at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida accepts people who are intoxicated. And they can be booted if they cause trouble.

"Any addiction or mental illness, those people don't have anywhere to go," said Don Moody, who heads the Orlando Union Rescue Mission.

The mission's men's shelter used to take in those clearly under the influence. After too much commotion and anxiety, it began screening.

Now, the 120-bed men's center includes 50 set aside for those living there longer term and going through education training and 12-step recovery.

Those will be the easy people to find, log into the census and approach with the questionnaire.

The more invisible homeless -- who stay in the woods or camps or blend into the downtown landscape -- simply will be counted.

A medical-outreach team that works in the three-county metro area has been recording numbers of those homeless all week. Police in downtown Orlando, Kissimmee, Sanford and St. Cloud will report Thursday and Friday night counts in their cities on those overnights, said Cathy Jackson, director of the Homeless Service Network of Central Florida.

In Volusia County, this year's count of the homeless was taken Sunday and Monday. That's earlier than other counties, because with thousands of fans in town for a 24-hour race at Daytona International Speedway, advocates said they would have a hard time figuring out who was homeless.

"When you have visitors carrying around blankets and backpacks, how do we know if they are going to the race or if they are homeless?" said Lindsay Roberts, executive director of the Volusia-Flagler Coalition for the Homeless.

Past counts have been unclear. Anywhere between 2,600 and 3,000 homeless have been estimated to live in Volusia and Flagler counties.

Advocates routinely say that about 7,000 homeless live in the metro area, but some agencies claim it is closer to 5,000.

Results of this year's tally, scheduled to be released in March, should include a more firm number.

And with federal money going to communities based on successful programs, not just total numbers, the total will be less important than the details about who the homeless are and what works in helping them.

"The main reason for doing this is to keep the issue on the public agenda," said James Wright, the University of Central Florida professor who will analyze the data. "This issue is not going away."

Neither is Allen. As he talked with an interviewer and reporter, his eyes drifted to construction at a nearby lot.

A backhoe scooped up mounds of dirt, while men in hard hats graded the slope down to a retention pond. Working on heavy machinery, Allen said, was how he had always made a living.

Seeing the work being done all over town reminded him how far he had fallen, working day-labor jobs when he could.

"I look at it every day," he said. "I didn't lose my skills, but I lost my ability to hang in there. I just need a place to go, and I will win this war."


April Hunt
Sentinel Staff Writer

January 27, 2007

If being homeless means you sleep in a different place most nights because your addictions and demons steal your rent and sabotage your job, then David Heath was homeless.

But if being homeless means you have nowhere to go and no one to take you in, then Heath was something else: a drifter, a free spirit, maybe a transient. He had an extensive circle of family and friends, and they say there was always a couch or a spare room for him. He needed only to call.

Either way, Heath's death has helped put the spotlight on homelessness, just as his life illustrates how nuanced and complicated the problem can be.

David Heath spent the last years of his life searching for a program that would finally get him off drugs.

Always he faced a wait to get in, or a dealer waiting the moment he got out, or a fellow addict who waited for "lights out" to light up. He never really got away from the chloroform haze of crack, but he never quit trying.

Heath spent the last minutes of his life bleeding to death in an alley. Police think he was gunned down by the same three teenagers who killed another homeless man nine blocks away. Both died just after midnight Jan. 17.

Heath, 53, will be buried today.

With his family and friends and a thousand-watt smile, David Merlin Heath should have owned a bungalow in Pass-a-Grille or a condominium on Beach Drive. He should have had a job as a midlevel manager and driven a Toyota Camry.

In the end, he had none of those things - not even a driver's license. But the father of three considered himself rich in family, his siblings and parents say.

"He was a good guy. He just had a hard time. He never gave up," said Heath's mother, June Bartke.

In college, he changed

Heath came from a family of prominent restaurateurs. They owned the Causeway Inn, the Rocky Point Dinner Theater, the Careless Navigator Restaurant on Treasure Island, the Red Cavalier on Madeira Beach. Heath often worked at those restaurants as a young man. Baseball teams in town for spring training regularly stopped by, and Heath and his family became friends with ballplayers and managers.

Heath even became a spring training bat boy for the New York Mets, including the "Miracle Mets," who won the 1969 World Series.

He graduated from Boca Ciega High School and briefly attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, where his grandmother paid for him to join a fraternity.

It was while at FSU, Heath's parents say, that he began experimenting with drugs. He was still chatty and friendly, a natural salesman. But somehow he "just wasn't satisfied," said his father, Glen Heath.

Heath married, had two children, and divorced. He worked as a telemarketer and beer salesman. He wandered to Texas, then Hawaii. He married a second time and had a third child before he divorced again.

When things got really bad, Heath would enroll in a drug rehabilitation program. He tried Operation PAR, a church program in Central Florida, Alcoholics Anonymous. He even took a trip with his father to see the Ohio hospital where the AA organization was founded.

He would call up his father and tell him, "Boy, this is going to help me."

Then, Heath would walk away.

"We would always try to get him into a long-term program, but he was never able to put himself through it," Glen Heath said.

Eventually, David Heath developed symptoms of bipolar disorder, a brain malady characterized by periods of depression and mania. Some 60 percent of the homeless and transient populations are mentally ill, according to annual surveys by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and 26 percent are substance abusers.

He tried to do better

Heath's substance abuse and mental illness led to a long string of relatively minor crimes, including cocaine possession, driving without a valid license, criminal mischief, battery, probation violation and shoplifting, for which he served probation and short jail terms.

But Heath also had long stretches of sobriety and sanity, his family said. He'd visit them, spend time with his children, hold down a job, date. He'd travel, see the ocean, listen to music. He'd dream about getting all the pieces put back together.

Then he'd get caught up again in the cycle of substance abuse and he'd drop out of the picture for a while, not wanting to hurt or embarrass his family.

"He had a complicated life," said brother Nick Castrinos.

Heath, who read the Bible regularly, frequently counseled the homeless he met when he did stay at a shelter. He attended AA meetings, sometimes even twice a day. But he didn't talk much about his own problems there, and instead focused on the troubles of others, his father said. He even spoke about becoming a counselor someday and helping other addicts recover.

"He was kind and generous," said Bartke, his mother.

Friends and family say Heath had a talent for getting people to trust and like him.

Billy Rogers, a 43-year-old painter, met Heath outside a convenience store several weeks ago. Heath asked if he could use his phone, and Rogers said yes.

Soon, the two were spending time together regularly. Heath talked about getting a job, and eventually rooming with Rogers in an apartment. Rogers said Heath had a knack for talking to people; when a couple bickered over bills or had some other argument, they could count on Heath to say: "Everything will work out. Things will be okay."

While Heath often talked about a more stable life, he still wandered around and slept wherever he could, Rogers said. He had a lot of friends in the city and stayed on their couches, or in their spare rooms. Heath also frequently stayed at local homeless shelters.

But life was cut short

The night he died, Heath stopped at a Burger King on Central Avenue near 35th Street. An employee there, someone whom Heath had never met, let him use her cell phone. He called friends, asking for rides. Eventually, he began walking. He was headed to Rogers' house, where he sometimes slept on a hammock in the back yard.

He was killed a few blocks away. So was Jeff Shultz, 43, whose body was found nine blocks from Heath's.

But all the friends' couches and shelter cots in the world would not have helped someone like Heath, said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor and national expert on housing and homeless. People whose addictions or mental illness prevent them from keeping their own home need what's called "supportive housing," where residents get counseling and drug rehabilitation.

"Shelters are not an answer," Culhane said. "Once folks have housing, then they're interested in recovery."

Heath may have been on the verge of finding supportive housing. He had planned to visit his father in Ohio in early January. But then he got accepted to a treatment center in Louisiana, and he wanted to go there instead. He was just waiting for Medicare to cut the check.

Glen Heath remembers one of the last conversations he had with his son. "I'm tired of living the way I am," he told his father, "and I want to change."

By ALISA ULFERTS AND ABHI RAGHUNATHAN St. Petersburg Times

Salvation Army's Tanners honored:
About 30 people came out Wednesday for a breakfast of grits and eggs, coffee and juice, and to honor Majors Bert and Teresa Tanner.

Bert Tanner served as area commander of the Sarasota Salvation Army for eight years, and his wife served with him, overseeing some of the nonprofit agency’s programs.

They have been reassigned to Atlanta to serve as territorial and associate directors of a Salvation Army project to build state-of-the-art community centers in the country.

“I hate to be here for this,” said Mimi McAdoo, who has served on the Salvation Army board since 1979.

“I hate to be here for this too,” Bert Tanner responded.

He and his wife were given a proclamation from the city and a plaque from the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, who organized the breakfast.

They were praised for their dedication to helping the homeless in this community and people in need.

Richard Martin, chairman of the partnership, said he was sorry to see Santa Claus leave Sarasota. Each year Bert Tanner grows out his beard to play the jolly elf for senior citizens and children.

Many at the breakfast voiced their appreciation, and said the couple will be missed.

The Tanners spoke lovingly of a community where they hoped to retire.

“My regret is I didn’t find a way to do more for more people,” Bert Tanner said.

He encouraged the community to continue working on finding solutions to the root causes of homelessness.

“I know your heart, and your intent is good,” he said. “You’re an ideal city, and you have the opportunity to be a lighthouse and a beacon on the hill. I think you can find a legitimate solution. I encourage you to look everyday for new ways to do that.”

By PATTY ALLEN-JONES Sarasota Herald Tribune

Police operation leaves city stained:

After St. Petersburg police cut down the tents of homeless people camped beneath an overpass, the reaction was swift and predictable. Replays of the video on local television and the Web site YouTube brought a flood of harsh criticism for the city's heavy-handed tactics. Contrary to Mayor Rick Baker's favorite opening line, it wasn't a great day in the city of St. Petersburg.

Police Chief Chuck Harmon, who approved the raid, stated the obvious: "I think the perception was not good of how and what we did." No kidding. So why couldn't Harmon have foreseen that outcome? Now, people worldwide will view St. Petersburg as a heartless place where police destroy the property of those who have little to begin with. Good luck on reversing that image anytime soon.

Days earlier, Baker had handled the dismantling of a larger tent city nearby with more finesse. County and private social service agencies were brought in to offer the campers help in the form of rent vouchers, bus tickets home or shelter space. Those who refused or failed to get such help formed a new tent city.

Homeless-rights activists behind both tent cities undoubtedly hoped to provoke a police overreaction. Not only were video cameras at the ready, but the tents were quickly replaced. More homeless people are likely to join the cause, which has now taken on the dimensions of a political struggle. People will differ on whether such tactics serve the best interests of the homeless, but clearly there is an unmet need in St. Petersburg despite efforts by the city and charitable groups.

Several groups are working to secure more shelter space for the homeless so that it won't be necessary for them to pitch tents or sleep in the open. That process will take time. Meanwhile, Baker and Harmon need to turn the focus back to providing services instead of slashing tents.

A St. Petersburg Times Editorial

The Great St. Pete Homeless Tent Raid:

"He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise."

- Luke 3:11

Oh, sure, that's the kind of place I want my city to be - a city where, when kind-hearted people donate tents to the homeless, the city stages a raid and cuts them up.

Good grief!

Did they give each other high fives at City Hall afterward Friday? Did they throw each other a party? Bake a cake? Put up a "Mission Accomplished" banner?

Mayor Rick Baker told a St. Petersburg Times reporter on Monday that he didn't know about the raid in advance.

Ah. So that means someone down the chain of command took the initiative and said:

"Hey, I know! Let's go over and roust the homeless and cut up their tents and make unflattering national news, right after two homeless guys got murdered in our city, and after we forced a charity to shut down an earlier tent city! And, furthermore, let's don't tell the boss!"

(Note: The police officers I have seen on the scene have been professional, patient and compassionate. But this decision was not made by them.)

As for the people who had been living in those tents, here is good news.

They all magically disappeared as soon as St. Petersburg sliced and diced their sleeping quarters.

In fact, I heard one of them say:

"I foolishly believed that I, a worthless bum, could just sponge off you suckers in St. Petersburg, but your firm resolve has thwarted me! Now I and all my friends will be leaving your town."

Not.

The people living in the tents didn't magically disappear afterward, and few if any of them left town, because ...

Because they are, for the most part, us.

Everybody seems to have their own stereotype about "the homeless." And it's usually one size fits all.

To the mayor, the homeless seem to be uncooperative folks who won't take advantage of all the Wonderful Services the government and the private sector offer. What else do Those People want?

To some of the angry citizens I hear from, the homeless are lazy bums. They are the reason we can't walk through a park, or get off an exit ramp without being harassed.

But quite a few of the people in those tents work at minimum-wage jobs, or day labor, trying to afford a place to live. It was a small comfort for them to have a tent to sleep in, a place where other people might watch their stuff.

Some are families. About a fifth of the total homeless population is under 18.

Without a doubt, some of the homeless have problems. Some aren't getting treated for mental illness. Our society's answer for that one is to throw them in jail for a while.

And, yes indeed, for those of us looking to feel smug, if you look hard enough, you can find addicts, or burglars, or even just plain old bums.

But there is no one "homeless" population, and so there is no one solution.

But even if there were, it would not be just rushing over and cutting up tents - good grief! What kind of people are we?

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published January 23, 2007

A Fortress For the Homeless:

When an emaciated, gray-haired woman staggered into the ragtag encampment complaining of a toothache the other day, Eugene Simpkins fed her peanut butter sandwiches from the communal kitchen and fetched her aspirin from the makeshift medicine cabinet.

As night fell, the woman slept on a urine-stained couch, while Mr. Simpkins fried batches of cornmeal-dusted fish over a campfire. He pointed out four sick people he had been tending to since joining Umoja, a settlement of formerly homeless people in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, last month.

"I know someday I'll be old like her," said Mr. Simpkins, 43, who said he was an ordained Baptist minister and had lately been serving as Umoja's unofficial cook. "I just hope that when that day comes, there will be someone to take care of me."

Social experiment
With 16 huts cobbled together from plywood, discarded closet doors and cardboard, Umoja is a shantytown in the shadow of the biggest construction boom Miami has seen since the 1920s. Started in October by an advocate for low-income housing, it is part social protest and part social experiment, with nightly meetings where decisions on whether to evict people or how to split up chores are determined by consensus.

Most of the 40 residents said they had been sleeping on the streets before moving into Umoja's colorful shacks. The eyesore has become a warm community, with a resident poet entertaining regularly, and has won over some neighbors, including those who now bring by homemade sweet potato pies, despite previous complaints about trash and noise.

Commissioner's help
The city commissioner who represents the area, Michelle Spence-Jones, had tried to shut the settlement down with an ordinance to require a permit for gatherings on public land. But after several visits to Umoja, she withdrew the ordinance and instead promised to arrange for trash pickup at the site three times a week.

Ms. Spence-Jones stopped short, however, at the group's request for a mailbox. "That sends a whole other message," she said.

Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, is the brainchild of Max Rameau, 37, a stay-at-home father. The shantytown is based on a 1998 court ruling in which a federal district court judge said Miami could not criminalize homeless people for conducting "life-sustaining acts" including eating, sleeping, lighting a fire and building temporary structures on public land if local shelters were filled.

Mr. Rameau and others said the settlement was a symbol of Miami's growing housing crisis.

With apartment vacancy rates at 1.7 percent, down from 4.7 percent three years ago, and rents rapidly rising amid gentrification of poor neighborhoods, a report in October by the Miami-Dade County planning department said the area would need 294,200 new housing units by 2025, 42 percent of them for "very low- or low-income households."

Steep price of housing
A separate 2006 study by Florida International University found that half the families in West Liberty City could not afford a studio apartment in the area.

Michael Stoop, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said shantytowns like Umoja were "indicative that shelters are not the solution, and that homeless folks want to have themselves treated in a more dignified way."

The shacks, many covered by blue tarps, are ringed by a row of earthen plots where residents grow cabbage, collard greens, kale and papaya. A portable toilet, stacks of firewood, and the kitchen and pantry are lined up along one side, and an improvised shower sits in the back.

Mr. Rameau dismissed the notion that Umoja was a publicity stunt.

"There's a protest element to it, but this is fundamentally not a protest," he said. "At a protest, you go to a place, you make your demands heard and then you go home. Here, this is home."

by Laura Rivera New York Times

Police slash open tents to roust the homeless: St. Petersburg city officials raided two homeless camps Friday afternoon, seizing more than 20 tents and further rattling a community still shaken from the slayings of two of its own.

Those who refused to get out of their tents or remove their belongings watched as two dozen police and fire officials sliced the tops of the tents away from their bases, tossed them into a truck and drove off. Some said they didn't have enough time to get out before the officials began to cut with scissors, box cutters and other blades.

"I was in the tent when they started cutting," said Ken Argo, 54, who said he was asleep when police arrived. "It was very reckless of them."

The whole operation took less than 10 minutes.

The raid was the city's latest attempt to deal with the highly visible tent camps that have sprung up in recent weeks and a homeless population that is becoming increasingly organized and close-knit. Last week the city shut down a tent city on Fourth Avenue N after it said it helped about 100 of its residents get social services, including rent vouchers and bus tickets to cities where relatives or friends could help.

Those who didn't get or refused services soon set up their tents at one of two locations, Fifth Avenue N at 15th Street or Fifth Avenue N at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

But fire officials soon observed a host of fire code violations at the two satellite tent cities, said Lt. Rick Feinberg, a spokesman for the Fire and Rescue Department. People were smoking and cooking in their tents, he said. The tents were too close together, too close to public thoroughfares, and they didn't have fire extinguishers, he said.

Feinberg said the homeless also failed to get the required permits for their tents, which were set up on the public right of way.

"They were all in violation of codes," Feinberg said. "No one submitted plans for preparations for these two tent cities."

It's not clear if all the fire codes the city cited indeed apply. The code requiring a permit specifies tents greater than 120 square feet, which is larger than the tents used by most of the homeless. And a state fire statute initially cited by the city doesn't deal with tents, said a spokeswoman for the state fire marshal.

Still, city officials said their job is to protect and that there were significant safety concerns at the two locations, including danger from heavy traffic. City officials also said the homeless were given the chance to remove their belongings from the tents and were offered mats at a nearby shelter.

Rather than arrest or get in physical altercations with those who refused, the officers cut the tents, said Deputy Mayor Dave Metz.

"The tents were retained for evidence," Metz said.

The city's action outraged the homeless community, which said that instead of taking away tents, the police officers should have been searching for the people who killed two homeless men early Wednesday.

"And now they're putting all these people in jeopardy again," said Rev. Bruce Wright of Refuge Ministries. The reason the homeless cluster in tents is for safety, Wright said.

Metz acknowledged the criticism but said the city did what it had to do. "I think you always have those implications, but our primary concern was safety."

Wright said that advocates for the homeless, who met Friday with the city to discuss things like getting fire extinguishers, plan to sue the city over the destruction of the tents and will seek an injunction to prevent another raid.

"We're getting more tents," Wright said.

"We're bringing down the big guns now. We're gonna sue 'em."

by ABHI RAGHUNATHAN and ALISA ULFERTS

Resort-style homeless village or leper colony?

Volusia leaders might explore a developer's proposal for a $100M compound.

DeLAND -- As Volusia County's homeless problem races toward a boiling point, a local urban developer is proposing a controversial solution: a homeless village.

Michael Arth, who compares the project to Celebration or Baldwin Park, wants the county to build a $100 million compound in rural Volusia, far outside DeLand city limits, where transients would live, work and receive counseling.

The proposal instantly became a lightning rod for debate when it was unveiled this week, winning praise from some homeless advocates but drawing comparisons from others to leper colonies and internment camps.

"I have concerns of creating a gulag for homeless people who are not integrated into society, of essentially sending them to a reservation to live," said Lindsay Roberts, executive director of the Volusia-Flagler Coalition for the Homeless.

The project's hefty price tag almost guarantees it will never become reality, but Volusia leaders -- desperate to find a solution to the county's simmering homeless problem -- say they are willing to explore Arth's proposal and consider a modified design.

"I think it's pretty far-reaching. I don't know where the county would get the money," said County Chairman Frank Bruno, who plans to meet with Arth again next week. "I'm going to look at the property and look at possibilities . . .; there may be a need for housing areas like this."

Arth, who won acclaim in 2002 for transforming a derelict DeLand crime zone into the now-trendy Garden District, proposes building a 5,600-bed community on 125 acres near the Volusia County Branch Jail.

"Tiger Bay Village," as Arth has dubbed the plan, would be a resort-style, pedestrian-friendly village, complete with bungalows, dining halls, community gardens, a lagoon for swimming and winding paths for leisurely strolls. It would be the only community of its kind in Florida.

The facility would have on-site substance-abuse counselors, job-training and education programs and other services, Arth said.

"The tranquil and beautiful natural setting will be good for both physical and mental health, giving the appearance and ambience of a resort. Curious visitors visiting from suburbia will be heard to exclaim, 'Wow, I wouldn't mind living here,' " Arth wrote in his proposal.

The proposal offers few details about how to fund the community, which Arth said would cost about $17,500 per resident to build -- a price he says is ultimately less expensive for taxpayers than the cost of jailing vagrants or housing them in mental-health facilities.

"This is a permanent and compassionate solution," Arth said.

The notion of a designated homeless community is not new. Other U.S. cities have tried similar ideas, although when the homeless are segregated in rural areas, the programs typically fail, said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

"I think it's a proposal doomed to failure, and we would never support such a thing," he said. "Shipping the poor out of downtown areas is not the solution. . . . Most homeless would not leave the cities, no matter how fancy a place this place would be."

Stoops said the only time such efforts are even moderately successful are when they house the homeless in urban areas, where they can be part of the community and services are already in place. Programs in New York, Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, have been the most successful, Stoops said.

Arth's proposal comes at a time when residents and businesses are increasingly complaining about the homeless. Recently, Daytona Beach police Chief Mike Chitwood proposed offering free bus tickets to send the homeless out of the city.

Last year, officials counted about 2,667 homeless people in Volusia County, up from 2,450 in 2003.

In DeLand, Agape Clubhouse fed 15 to 20 people a day last year; now, at least 35 people a day come in for meals, said Linda Brown, director of the homeless mission.

"It's become so large [that] we're having trouble handling it," said Brown, who added that she supports Arth's plan.

In the city's Garden District, where Arth lives, homeless people routinely sleep under residents' porches, panhandle in the streets and camp out in the neighborhood's vacant lot, frustrating the area's homeowners.

"I have had enough of these people. The sleaze in this neighborhood needs to end," said Maggi Hall, a Realtor who is leading an effort to crack down on panhandling in the Garden District. "These people don't want to work. They want drugs and booze, and we're living in fear here."

The problem is not going away, Roberts said. Arth's proposal, while far from perfect, is at least a step in the right direction, she said.

"People are so frustrated and so tired of the status quo," said Roberts. "The very idea that people recognize this as an issue is a very positive thing."

by Rebecca Mahoney
Sentinel Staff Writer

Area churches join forces to help homeless families:

As homelessness continues to plague the county, a few area churches are banding together to launch a network that would feed homeless families and put a roof over their heads.

Seven Manatee County churches hope to launch the Interfaith Hospitality Network this year, which would house homeless families while focusing on getting them back on their feet.

"These people are often invisible to others," said Bert Panganiban, a member of Lakewood Ranch's Harvest United Methodist, one of the churches involved. "That doesn't make less important their needs."

The network would be a part of the nationwide Family Promise organization, also designed to fight homelessness, and be titled Family Promise of Manatee County.

"The idea is to get these families on their feet as quickly as possible, then bring in another family," said Diana Shoemaker, who is the president of the Family Promise board of directors for Family Promise. "Our goal is to help families regain their independence."

Each church would host 14 people for one week at a time. Families would be fed, and a van would take children to day care or school, while adults would be driven to work. If unemployed, they would be taken to a day center at Central Christian Church in Bradenton, where a social worker would help them find a job.

Only homeless families would be selected for the program and would be referred by organizations such as the Salvation Army or the Community Coalition on Homelessness.

"They're expected to be looking for jobs and for work," said Shoemaker. "We're looking for families who are committed to getting back on their feet."

The selection process allows for a smaller chance that churches will not have to deal with housing drug addicts or alcoholics, Shoemaker said.

Churches that have committed to the program include Harvest United, Kirkwood Presbyterian Church, Westminster Presbyterian Church, First Assembly of God, Palma Sola Presbyterian Church and Trinity United Methodist Church.

The group needs support from three other churches to launch the network, as well as the help of a social worker, a 15-person van and monetary donations.

To help fund the initiative, Harvest United is holding a fundraiser square dance at 6 p.m. Jan. 20. The event is free to the public.

"The more we have, the less somebody else has," said Kurt Fowler, a Harvest member who is hosting the square dance at his home at 1230 136th St. N.E. in Bradenton. "People are supposed to love and help one another. We need to take care of each other."

For more information on the square dance, call Fowler at (941) 748-4890.
by MAURA POSSLEY
Herald Staff Writer

Group aims to educate public on homelessness:

Adrienne Lazeroff has a very tough job.The former public policy analyst for Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C., is the new executive director of the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness.

Her task: Help more than 100 providers of homeless services in Manatee and Sarasota counties come up with a long-range plan to move the homeless to permanent shelter

Her top responsibility: Coordinating the Homeless Census on Jan. 29 in the two counties. The results will be critical in determining how much money Manatee and Sarasota get from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for homeless programs.

That level of funding will help determine how much money the two counties get from local and state coffers.

Her biggest challenge: Educating the public on the true face of the homeless in our area.

In an interview with the Bradenton Herald, Lazeroff talked about the work ahead.

What prompted your move from Planned Parenthood advocacy to working with the homeless?

Some people see it as a shift in causes, but I don't. All of those issues lie under the bigger umbrella of social justice issues protective of human rights, reproductive rights, the right to health care, the right to affordable housing, the right to be free from violence.

What's your role in the upcoming Homeless Census?

The Suncoast Partnership is charged with handling all of the homeless data in our area. The census is required by HUD every two years and this is the first year Suncoast is leading the charge.

Is the Suncoast Partnership competing with other homeless coalitions for federal funds?

Yes, we are in competition with other areas that have much larger homeless populations than we do. That's why everything we can do to report the homeless in our community is critical to bringing down those funds.

Some homeless advocates criticize HUD's definition of homeless as too narrow. What's your view?

That is a fair assessment. HUD focuses on chronic homeless, people who are homeless for either a long period of time or who fall into homelessness regularly. HUD's guidelines are not family-based.

Narrowing the definition is a good way to reduce numbers, which I think is misleading.

Give us some examples.

This year, HUD will not count people who are in residential mental health or substance abuse facilities, or correction facilities who when released have nowhere to go. . . . We are very interested in those numbers to give us a real picture.

Will your count include people in treatment facilities and jails?

Yes, we will count the people who fit HUD categories as well as people we know are homeless who may be in jail or treatment or doubled up. HUD only counts young children who are in runaway or homeless shelters. HUD does not count young children who are doubled up with other families.

Will HUD count young children living with parents in motel rooms?

Only if they have a voucher from a homeless provider to pay for the night's stay. If they have enough money to pay for a motel room the night of the count, HUD does not consider them homeless.

Our data analysis that we will release the end of March will show the chronic homeless individuals in the HUD count as well as the larger picture of who we really think is homeless.

Are you counting homeless students?

Yes, we are partnering with Project Heart in Manatee schools and YMCA in Sarasota, which tracks homeless students, to get those figures in our counts. HUD is not interested in those counts, but we are.

Do you have enough staff and volunteers for the count?

We are partnering with 25 organizations like the Salvation Army or Our Daily Bread. We need volunteers who are bilingual, who can be at day labor, even at shelters because their staffs are so busy because the surveys are actually read to people. It's a one-page, front and back form with 27 questions that takes five minutes to complete. Anyone interested should go to suncoastpartnership.org and click on "How to Help."

What are your impressions of the homeless situation in Manatee and Sarasota counties?

This is a community that is really engaged in this issue. There are folks from government, from the private sector, from nonprofit organizations, private providers who are all working together to fight and reduce homelessness, more so than I had anticipated coming from Washington D.C.

What's your strategy for reducing homelessness?

We want to bring the 100 partners we work with from Manatee and Sarasota to think about a larger bi-county plan. We know Manatee County has a 10-year plan in place, but we want to establish a longer-term plan to address employment, housing through partnering with the business community and the criminal justice system. I'd like to think that Manatee's plan will be a springboard.

What is the most critical homeless issue in our area?

The need for housing. A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition revealed that a person must make $16.35 an hour to afford housing in our community. The minimum wage just went up to $6.67. That is more than a $10 discrepancy.

The need in transitional housing is huge. People who have done everything right and are about to get out of homelessness have nowhere to go.

Last year, Sarasota was named the "Meanest city in the nation" in regards to homelessness and yet you say we have strong homeless programs? Where is the disconnect?

I think that ranking is based on Bradenton and Sarasota's anti-camping ordinances that ban people from sleeping on the streets.

Some folks think they are effective in connecting homeless people with needed services. Others think that the ordinance causes homeless to use the jails and other correctional facilities as shelters. The services we provide in the two counties are tremendous. We are lucky to have support from the government in both counties. That alone shows that we are not the meanest city.

Many homeless advocates say the average age of the homeless is 9. Where did that statistic come from? Is it true?

It comes from an organization called Homes for the Homeless. Honestly I don't know if that applies to our communities, but I do know that this year alone our homeless providers provided services to more than 4,000 children and that is a low number because we know there are other children who aren't seeking services. Over 3,000 families were served by our homeless providers in the two counties last year.

We know the real number is a lot higher.

BY DONNA WRIGHT
Herald Staff Writer

The first national estimate in a decade found there were 744,000 homeless people in the United States in 2005 and almost 61,000 of those are living in Florida.
A little more than half of the nation's homeless were living in shelters, and nearly a quarter were chronically homeless, according to the report from National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group.
A majority of the homeless were single adults, but about 41 percent were in families.

California led the nation with more than 170,000 homeless people. New York was second with just over 61,000, followed closely by Florida.
The group compiled data collected by the Department of Housing and Urban Development from service providers throughout the country. It is the first national study on the number of homeless people since 1996. That study came up with a wide range for America's homeless population: between 444,000 and 842,000.
Counting people without permanent addresses, especially those living on the street, is an inexact process. But the new study is expected to provide a baseline to help measure progress on the issue.
"Having this data brings all of us another step closer to understanding the scope and nature of homelessness in America, and establishing this baseline is an extremely challenging task," HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said. "Understanding homelessness is a necessary step to addressing it successfully."
HUD is preparing to release its own report on homelessness in the coming weeks, Jackson said. In the future, the department plans to issue annual reports on the number of homeless people in the U.S.
Some cities and states have done their own counts of the homeless, providing a mix of trends, said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. For example, New York City and San Francisco have seen decreases, while the number of homeless in Washington, D.C., has increased, Roman said.
"In the last 12 to 18 months, the homeless population has essentially exploded in Philadelphia," said Marsha Cohen, executive director of the Homeless Advocacy Project, which provides free legal services to the homeless in Philadelphia. "We are seeing big increases in singles and families, both on the street and attempting to enter the homeless system."
"It's a whole influx of new people, and that's the really scary part," Cohen said.
In Columbus, Ohio, workers are scrambling to help an increasing number of people living under bridges and in wooded encampments near rivers and streams, said Barbara Poppe, executive director of the Community Shelter Board.
"We're very concerned about the health and well being of those people being out in the elements," Poppe said. "We had an encampment set on fire, and we had a woman struck by a train."
California was the state with most homeless people in 2005, about 170,000, followed by New York, Florida, Texas and Georgia, according to the report.
Nevada had the highest share of its population homeless, about 0.68 percent. It was followed by Rhode Island, Colorado, California and Hawaii.
"The driver in homelessness is the affordable housing crisis," Roman said. "If we don't do something to address the crisis in affordable housing we are not going to solve homelessness."
She said many of the chronically homeless have mental health and substance abuse problems. Others, she said, simply cannot afford housing.
On The Net: National Alliance to End Homelessness

St. Pete Evicts Homeless Inhabitants Of Tent City: On Friday morning a young woman made the first of several trips out of the makeshift community of homeless people that has come to be known as "Tent City."

Clutching hangers and plastic supermarket bags filled with clothing, she made her way to a spot beneath Interstate 275, two blocks away. The woman later returned to the encampment for her tent. She dragged it down the street, accidentally leaving one of the tent's metal stakes behind on a sidewalk.

"We have to leave by this evening," the woman said, pushing strawberry-blond hair out of her eyes. "I don't want to have to do it at the last minute."

Anyone who remained on the 4 acres at Fourth Avenue North and 13th Street had been told by the St. Vincent de Paul Society that they had until noon Friday to leave.

The charitable organization never planned to physically remove the site's temporary inhabitants, however, said Sophie Sampson, the society's executive director.

That left a second deadline of midnight Friday, when St. Vincent de Paul was expected to be in violation of city codes prohibiting tent cities anywhere in St. Petersburg. City police on Friday evening said anyone with a tent still on the property could remain there for the night. Today, however, they will be asked to leave or face arrest on trespassing charges, police spokesman Jim Haley said.

Winter Produces Tent Cities
Tent cities often appear in Florida communities during the winter. The Rev. Bruce Wright, a local advocate for the homeless, said they have risen in Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Sarasota.

Tent cities give homeless people a sense of community and safety that they lack while fending for themselves on city park benches, in doorways and beneath highway overpasses, Wright said.

As Friday's deadlines loomed, Pinellas County social services employees and St. Vincent de Paul workers scrambled to find temporary shelter, bus fare or gasoline money for the homeless people who remained at tent city. The site's population, which peaked at about 150 people, had dwindled substantially by Friday morning.

Assistance Offered, Taken
County officials issued roughly 40 rent vouchers, said Cliff Smith, assistant director of Pinellas County's Human Services. Another dozen tent city residents were offered mats to sleep on at a local shelter. Twelve more received various forms of travel aid. One man, for example, accepted a ride to Tampa, where he boarded a bus to West Virginia, where his brother lives.

There were complaints. A man with a back ailment said sleeping on a mat at a shelter would be painful. A woman who breathes with the help of an oxygen tent first was told the $623 stipend she receives for her disability disqualified her for a rent voucher.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society, as the property's owner, could have asked police to evict the tent city dwellers as trespassers on Friday. Instead, the society gave police the authority to prevent anyone who moved out from returning, Sgt. Tim Montanari said.

Sixty people remained at the site Friday morning, he said.

One of them was Tiny "Little Dirdy" May, 32, who recently was released from jail after being detained on crack cocaine charges. May had no intention of leaving, but if she had to do so, she said, she would move her tent down the street to a spot beneath the interstate overpass, just as the woman with strawberry blond hair had done.

FLORIDA TENT CITIES
1999: Fort Lauderdale's tent city, set up in the mid-1990s across from city hall, closes. Homeless people are taken to Broward County's new Homeless Assistance Center.

2004: Pasco County sheriff's deputies evict two dozen homeless people from a tent city near U.S. 19 and State Road 52.

2004: Monroe County and Key West officials agree to build a safe zone, or tent city, to provide shelter for homeless people in the island city.

2007: A Miami city commissioner withdraws a proposed ordinance that would have made it illegal for "Umoja Village" to remain on city property in Miami's Liberty City. The tent city also was established to protest a perceived lack of affordable housing for low-income Miami residents.

By STEPHEN THOMPSON The Tampa Tribune

Housing instead of Jail cells:

A pressing need for jail beds has convinced Sarasota County to subsidize "sober houses" for graduates of local substance abuse programs who have no place to live, and face the prospect of being incarcerated because they are homeless.

On Tuesday, the county commission allocated $320,000 to help finance rents, security deposits, utilities, furnishings and other start-up costs for non-profit groups that lease and supervise group homes for up to six unrelated tenants in recovery.

While the pilot project envisions only 50 beds in a handful of homes that would provide a safe environment for up to 24 months, Commissioner Paul Mercier suggested the community's need for such facilities is probably closer to 500 beds.

"This should include condominiums and apartments," he said. "Our staff recommendation is that First Step of Sarasota [a rehabilitation organization] administer the funds, but my recommendation would be the Salvation Army because it's where people look for help."

The county has philosophically grappled with how to address homeless people who have substance abuse issues, but are not lawbreakers. Many of them are booked into the county jail because there is no other place to provide them with safe shelter.

Ironically, the county is currently in a legal jam with the U.S. Justice Department because it tried to close five Warm Mineral Springs group homes for residents who are recovering from alcohol and mental health problems. It has been charged with Fair Housing Act violations.

While the county's actions in the Warm Mineral Springs case were in response to complaints from unhappy neighbors, its motivation to put recovering substance abuse residents somewhere other than jail is directly related to the absence of available cells.

The county jail in downtown Sarasota is filled to more than its capacity of 1,050 inmates, and extra beds have recently been placed in cells to accommodate the overload. A county consultant has been hired to study the situation and make recommendations.

Last year, Sheriff Bill Balkwill requested a new mid-county jail outside the city limits for between 200 to 300 sentenced prisoners to relieve the crowding situation. The problem is where to locate such a structure without angering neighbors.

In 1998, the county commission considered locations outside the city and listened to complaints from residents who felt threatened by a jail near their neighborhoods. It reluctantly agreed to construct a 329-bed addition to the downtown facility.

Now the expanded jail is overcrowded. Absent plans for providing additional cells, the county commission has asked for relief from a state "zero tolerance" policy on the arrest and incarceration of probation violators because there is no place to put them.

The $320,000 allocation by the county commission will help fund a program called the "Community Alternative Residential Treatment Initiative," which also includes detoxification and stabilization services and a 10-week substance abuse program.

It has been endorsed by two organizations that deal with law enforcement and substance abuse issues, the Criminal Justice Commission and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Stakeholders Consortium. Both groups support interim housing for program graduates.

The concept of "sober homes" scattered around a community is based on the Oxford House model, which was established in Silver Springs, Md., 32 years ago and has been widely copied. Variations on the model are operating in Charlotte and Manatee counties.

Residents of the all-male or all-female "sober homes" typically sign a lease agreement for a maximum stay of 24 months, although some are allowed to remain indefinitely. Rent is typically $175 a week, with vouchers available for those who are unemployed.

The program described to the county commission includes a $10,000 annual payment to the provider of each home, plus $2,000 per resident. It includes about $100,000 for vouchers, which would be available for unemployed program graduates.

by Jack Gurney from the Pelican Press

Can a city code make homeless vanish?

The temporary village that has sprung up on a vacant lot on Fourth Avenue North in St. Petersburg has about 50 tents.

Some of these are really just tarps tied to the chain-link fence running along the back of the lot, toward the interstate overpass.

Of the tents proper, some are of the smallest and most modest pup variety, just pieces of plastic and a stake. But others given by donors are nicer, modern camping rigs, and here and there stands a big, multioccupant affair.

Four blue portable toilets stand in a row just east of the tent city. At the southeast corner is a row of communal tents, where occupants can register, perhaps pick up a piece of donated clothing, or even get a haircut in a makeshift outdoor barber's chair.

This site is the property of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and since a week ago Friday it has been the relocated site of a gathering that previously existed beneath the overpass.

But last week St. Vincent de Paul got a notice from the city of St. Petersburg that it was violating city codes. Either the tent city must go, or St. Vincent de Paul will start being assessed fines.

On Friday morning, the Fourth Avenue site had taken on a bit of a circus atmosphere - not caused by the occupants, who for the most part went about their own affairs, but from everyone else.

St. Petersburg police officers conferred with St. Vincent de Paul representatives. They agreed that only the people already there and on an approved list could stay.

Maybe a dozen or so advocates for the homeless, representing various groups and philosophies, wandered around, conversing with occupants on a first-name basis.

I talked to a few occupants. They were happy to have a place to keep their stuff without it being stolen. They were glad to be able to get a full night's sleep without being rousted or attacked.

Several said they had minimum-wage jobs. I heard the term "first and last," meaning first and last month's rent, the ticket to nonhomeless status. "I'm working for my first and last," is the way to say it.

But some are mentally troubled or physically sick. There also have been a couple of burglaries in the neighborhood, which neighbors naturally attribute to the camp, although the occupants told me they are quick to point out troublemakers. They sign a code of conduct to stay there.

A sociology class from Eckerd College was on hand but was not allowed inside. The students stood on the sidewalk, conversing with occupants through the chain link.

Some of the advocates were upset, even at St. Vincent de Paul, for the rules keeping out newcomers and trying to discourage well-meaning citizens from pulling up on Fourth Avenue to make contributions. But St. Vincent de Paul was trying to balance the concerns of the city with its assistance to the occupants.

A retired engineer from Largo pulled up curbside with a trunk-load of blankets, jeans and shoes, and was upset when the police told him he could not enter. He had to park across the street and wait for word of mouth to travel. Soon, occupants were crossing the street to see him.

This week everybody will try to find places to relocate the occupants. But this is not going to go away magically. The city cannot wave a wand or cite a code and make the homeless disappear. Neither is there is enough room, not even a fraction of enough.

What would you do?

By HOWARD TROXLER, St. Pete Times Columnist
Published January 7, 2007

Homeless Women in Bradenton: Hit with car repairs and medical bills, Leticia Longoria could not make her rent in November. Faced with the terrifying prospect of life on the streets with two children, Longoria, sought help at the Salvation Army family shelter. Two months later, she's still there, trying to save for a place of their own. Longoria, who makes $7.25 an hour, can stay as long as she is willing to work hard to get out.

Longoria's situation is typical, said Ashley Canesse, Salvation Army spokeswoman. As wages have not kept up with housing costs, affordable housing options decline. Those forces, Canesse said, result in longer shelter stays, which lower the number of people the shelter can serve. Five years ago the average family shelter stay was three weeks. By 2006, the average stay stretched seven months. "We took 1,640 calls from families and women last year who had no place to go," said Joanell Greubel, family shelter director. "But we had to turn away 1,401 because the family shelter was full."

The Salvation Army put some of those families in motels until a shelter vacancy opened. Others were referred to local social service agencies. The Salvation Army also runs a separate men's shelter, which housed more than 1,700 last year.
The shelter crunch is particularly hard on women without children, because women with children have priority, Canesse said. That policy has led to a misunderstanding among some local agencies that the Salvation Army will not take women without children.

But last year, nearly half of the 243 people housed in the family shelter were women without children, the majority of them between 31 and 61. The family shelter count included 45 mothers or grandmothers with 87 children, half younger than age five."To take in more, we would have to make some leave, but where would they go?" Canesse asked. "Our first task is to eliminate economic obstacles, then get money for transportation and then money for housing," said Greubel.

Four shelter occupants shared how the Salvation Army is helping them reach that goal.

Leticia Longoria, 32
"It's hard to live here, because there are so many rules, but the Salvation Army has helped me so much," said Longoria, whose husband abandoned her and Yareli Jessamine, their 1-year-old daughter, in Texas in October, 2005. Longoria was one month pregnant at the time. Her husband didn't return even when his son, Felix Jesus, was born.

A licensed hair stylist, Longoria worked in a J.C. Penney beauty salon.

"My family helped as much as they could, but life was hard," she said.

She filed for child support, but the money never came.

In late August, she moved to Manatee County to join two of her cousins.

But she couldn't work as a stylist until she got a Florida license. That meant more classes. To get by, Longoria took a job on an assembly line, earning $7.25 an hour.

From August through October, she rented a room from her cousins, and then from two co-workers. But it never worked out. Too many people in too tight space, she said.

What little she saved was then wiped out by medical bills, car repairs and a trip to Texas for a child support hearing her husband failed to attend.

Greubel and her staff have helped Longoria complete her classes and file papers for her hair stylist's license, arrange for subsidized child care and set up a budget.

Longoria is determined to get out.

"If my kids don't get sick and my car doesn't break down, I will be OK," she said. "I have set a goal and I am sticking to it because my kids need me."

Tye Brawn, 23

Brawn entered the family shelter Nov. 29 on a referral from Catholic Charities. She was eight months pregnant with a child whose father is in jail on a drug charge. Complicated family situations made living at with relatives impossible, she said. Other shelters in Sarasota and Bradenton turned her down.

"Because of my drug arrests, nobody would take me," Brawn said. "But I stopped doing drugs when I found out I was pregnant. I don't want any part of that life any more. I am making a new life for me and my baby."

Greubel believed Brawn and gave her one of the few beds available for single women.

"She told me, 'Yes, you had trouble, but you are doing something about it, aren't you? You wouldn't be here, if you weren't looking for help.' "

If Greubel had not believed in her, Brawn doesn't know what would have happened.

"I've found out that when you stop fighting the world, the world stops fighting you," said Brawn, who is scheduled to have a delivery by Cesarean section Wednesday.

After the birth, Brawn said her mother has agreed to take her and the baby in until she is well. Then, Brawn hopes to return to the shelter with her new son.

"I - we - are going to be OK, with their help," Brawn said, laying her hand on her belly. "Someday I am going to wake up in my own place, and I will have done it on my own because they helped me."

Nancy Guzman, 36

Nancy Guzman completed six job searches Thursday, just as she has done every day since she entered the family shelter a month ago.

Guzman, mother of five, is confident that one of her prospects will come through, now that she is off her crutches and can walk easily.

Guzman lost her job as a cashier this fall when she broke her foot.

She says she had no benefits and no sick leave. Out of work, she was afraid to renew her lease on her apartment when it came due Nov. 30.

Her three oldest children, who are 18, 17 and 15, live with their stepdad, she said.

Her 11-year-old son is with a friend in Tampa.

Guzman's 9-year-old daughter is with her at the shelter.

This is Guzman's second stay. She sought help in September of 2005 when battling a drug addiction. During that first stay, Guzman was enrolled in an out-patient drug treatment program at Manatee Glens.

"I have been off drugs ever since," she said. "They wouldn't have let me back in here if I wasn't. I chose to be here because I didn't want to return to old friends and old habits."

With the shelter staff's help, Guzman has applied for subsidized housing. They have helped her work out a budget so she knows how much she needs to earn.

Michelle Besina, 36

Michelle Besina has been living at the family shelter with four of her five children for the past three weeks. Her oldest lives with a friend.

Her husband, Elgin Besina, is a construction worker and stays in the men's shelter. Like other shelter residents, he must complete six job searches a day until he finds work.

"It's hard to be separated from him, but we are lucky because the children and I are lucky to have a room of our own," Besina said.

"But we get to see him when we eat," said Scott, 7, as he cradled a plastic dinosaur in his arms. His sister, Tashina, 9, played with colored beads on the floor. Their older sisters, Felicia, 13 and Cheyenne, 12, were out for the afternoon.

The kids have adjusted, said Besina, but she worries about the future.

They came to Manatee County from Texas with her sister hoping to find work. But her sister left without them. They stayed in a motel until their money ran out. Then they turned to the Salvation Army.

Greubel and her staff are trying to help find them a place to live once her husband finds work.

"They have been so helpful," said Besina. "They gave the kids toys and clothes. We get to be all together during meals and outside. We are safe here, until we can get back on our feet."

Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com.

Story by Donna Wright

Fair market rent in Manatee County for a two-bedroom apartment is $857. To afford this apartment:

• A household must earn $34,280 annually, or make $16.48 an hour.

• A minimum-wage worker at $6.40 an hour must work 103 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. (Based on 2006 minimum wage.)

• A worker earning $10.62 an hour (the average wage of renters in Manatee County) must work 61 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

• An apartment costing $857 a month is out reach for 29 percent of Manatee County families.

SOURCE: National Low Income Housing Coalition and U.S. Census Bureau

Federal officials have designated $5.8 million in additional funding to help Florida counties with homelessness.

While Charlotte County wasn't named among the counties to receive a share of the money, the county could find itself eligible to receive some of the $440,000 unallocated balance.

In early December, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, announced that federal funds totaling $5,816,077 were awarded to Florida to help prevent homelessness and to feed and shelter the state's "hungry and homeless."

According to a press release, Congress made the money available to the National Board of the Emergency Food and Shelter Program. EFS grant funds can be used to supplement food, shelter, rent, mortgage and utility assistance programs for people with non-disaster-related emergencies.

The National Board of Charities -- which includes American Red Cross, Catholic Charities, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., The Salvation Army, United Jewish Communities and United Way of America -- decided how the money was to be allocated.

The board allocated money to 40 of Florida's 67 counties.

Among the specific allocations, Lee County received $146,639, DeSoto County received $11,141 and Sarasota County received $99,884. The three largest allocations were $936,055 to Miami-Dade County, $660,294 to Broward County and $467,287 to Palm Beach County.

"It is worth pointing out that FEMA did not decide which Florida counties would receive portions of that $5.8 million dollars," FEMA spokesman Josh Wilson said. "The funding decisions (were) based on a formula involving criteria such as current populations, unemployment and poverty levels."

However, a $440,000 balance was placed under the purview of the state "set aside committee," Wilson said.

Scott Morris, director of FEMA's Florida Long Term Recovery Office, sent a letter to the state committee, encouraging it to consider applications from counties, including Charlotte County, that may still have residents struggling to recover from hurricanes.

Bob Hebert, the county's recovery director, recently returned from Tallahassee and said the Florida Department of Community Affairs officials he spoke with didn't know about the $440,000.

Grant funds for homeless come out of the state's Office of Homeless and the state's Web site does offer grants up to $100,000 for emergency shelters. Since the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition is the county's lead agency, Hebert said Friday, he would suspect that the coalition is aware of the funds.

However, from his meeting with DCA officials, Hebert said he learned that a new program is being approved that could bring $2.2 million to the county and could help low- to moderate-income residents and business owners to harden their homes and businesses from wind and flood damage from future storms.

New homeless tent city emerges in St. Petersburg:

For weeks, the cluster of donated tents under the Interstate 375 overpass at 5th Avenue N and 15 Street has provided a sense of community for those who, by definition, don’t belong.

Like a majority of their fellow Floridians, most of the 30 or so homeless people gathered here hail from somewhere else, like New Jersey, Vermont or Missouri.

They came to St. Petersburg to join family or friends or because here is where the car broke down. Many struggle with substance abuse or mental illness; they are paradoxically hardened and fragile.

They’ve never had much, but ever since several church groups handed out tents earlier this month, the homeless of St. Petersburg have had each other.

“It’s like a big family out here,” said Richard “Bigginz” Carlson, 23, who spends his days in an overstuffed chair someone dragged onto the sidewalk for him.

Yet for city officials, the sudden cluster of tents adds visibility and legal complexity to a problem that has swelled in recent years. That’s not expected to change even after Friday, when the tenters moved away from the overpass to a nearby lot owned by the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

The result of the makeshift metropolis is a new effort by the city to find a vacant building to use as an emergency shelter and a partner to help run it.

“This will be a first for us,” said St. Petersburg City Councilman Jamie Bennett, who said he and other local government and volunteer groups have made this a priority.

Bennett said the camp’s location - near the soup kitchen and a public mental health clinic - is better than other places in the city where homeless have congregated in the past. There are meals and showers. Possessions can be kept in order within tents. In one case, a homeless man organized his tent according to the principles of feng shui.

But despite the good will of some of the tenters, who dance to drums and flutes and offer each other comfort, there’s no mistaking this homeless camp for a feel-good hippie commune.

The tents have put the area - across the street from the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen and St. Anthony’s Hospital - on the map for drug dealers who drive or pedal by to exploit the addicts. And it has put the city’s police on guard, as they try and guess what’s going on behind the opaque nylon and struggle to balance safety with personal property rights. At least one assault has been reported.

“We’ve never really dealt with a tent situation before,” admitted Lt. Sharon Carron of the city’s downtown patrol unit.
But the tent situation is here, and it’s putting St. Petersburg in the same league as other cities like Portland, Seattle and Ventura, Calif. that have permanent or seasonal tent cities for the homeless.

The cities have names like Dignity Village, River Haven and Sanctuary City. (“Whistle City” has been suggested for the St. Petersburg camp, in honor of the pan flute its residents enjoy playing).

And, along with the numbers of homeless themselves, the camps are on the rise - not just because they give shelter but because they get attention, said Michael Stoops, acting director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“It has made homelessness more visible and it’s got more people talking about it,” Stoops said.

Another reason for the increase in camps is their popularity with the homeless. They offer safety in numbers and a chance to self-govern, Stoops said.

“There’s a sense of community. Homeless folks are so tired of having social workers tell them what to do or religious people preaching at them,” Stoops said. He said some homeless “just want to sleep and eat and do their day labor or panhandle and we can’t really force them to do what we want them to do.”

Indeed, there has been some tension among some of St. Petersburg’s homeless and between them and the advocates who are trying to help them. Some homeless mutter the word “snitch” when referring to those who have challenged the methods Rev. Bruce Wright of Refuge Ministries or even the St. Vincent de Paul Society itself.

Wright helped secure the lot for the camp to move. He says it’s just a temporary solution until more shelter beds can be secured. And despite the concerns of some homeless, Wright says the new camp will be fair.

“It will be democratically run,” he promised.

Brad Bradford isn’t convinced. He’s a former accountant who came to the streets courtesy of a daily crack habit, but who has since cleaned up. He says he stays on the streets to help out those who need him, and was even elected an “elder” by some 30 homeless who signed a petition.

Bradford says too often the homeless aren’t given a seat at the table when their future is being discussed - by the city nor by nonprofit and faith-based advocates.

“They’re not communicating back to the people,” Bradford, 55, said of the city officials and advocates. Furthermore, officials don’t like it when the homeless organize themselves, Bradford said.

“Every time we get leadership, they get a bus ticket out of town.”

By ALISA ULFERTS, Times Staff Writer
Published December 29, 2006

Half of Manatee County homeless are families:

Families account for almost half of the homeless population in Manatee County - and the number of households in trouble is on the rise, homeless advocates warn.

That includes the most vulnerable segment of the homeless population: women with very young children, said Adell Erozer, director of the Manatee Community Coalition on Homelessness.

The problem, Erozer said, is twofold:

Many parents - especially single moms with children - are afraid of stepping forward for help out of fear authorities will take away their children.

And many homeless families go unnoticed because of the federal government's ever-narrowing definition of homelessness.

In its annual homeless survey next month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will count only unsheltered people living in cars, parks, abandoned buildings, on the streets or sidewalks or people staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing for homeless people who were once on the street.

Manatee County has no shelter facilities for single women without children who are not in an abusive situation, and only very limited family shelter capacity at the Salvation Army.

"That means HUD will miss the families doubling up in motel rooms, or the homeless people in jail or in mental health facilities," said Erozer.

The count determines how much federal funding Manatee homeless agencies will receive.

And funding is all the more crucial, advocates warn, because the caseload is exploding. The data support their fear: The Salvation Army of Bradenton has seen a 30 percent increase over the last year in the number of people seeking help.

Most of those new clients are families - many headed by single women, new to the streets, said Ellen Potrikus, who screens applicants for emergency assistance.

From Jan. 1 though Nov. 30, 8,904 people sought help from the Salvation Army, compared to 6,849 for the same period the year before.

"These are families whose household incomes have not kept pace with living expenses," Potrikus said. "All it takes is a big expense or accident for them to fall behind."

Most of the families are about to be evicted, Potrikus said. Some face late charges and attorney fees that have put them thousands of dollars behind in housing costs.

A few years ago, most people seeking rental or utility assistance were paying an average of $500-per-month rent, according to Salvation Army records.

Today, the average rent of those seeking help in Manatee County is $800.

Potrikus lays the blame on a lack of affordable housing and rising rents. Some at-risk families are paying rents as high as $1,300 a month.

The Salvation Army helps at-risk and homeless families with rent, utility and mortgage assistance through a $100,000 Emergency Shelter Grant from the state, plus donations from supporters.

But with rising rents and utilities, the funds cover fewer people in need.

From Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, Potrikus and her staff helped 159 people with rental assistance. A year ago, 168 people received aid in the same period. In 2005, 206 people received help with utility bills; as of Nov. 30, only 168 have received utility aid.

"Higher bills and rents limit the number of people we can help," Potrikus said.

Although HUD does not count homeless children, local advocates make the attempt.

They try tracking through the Homeless Management Information System, a computerized record that HUD requires from local agencies receiving funds. The local agencies that filed in 2005 served more than 9,000 people - and 23 percent, or 2,070, were children.

And that count, Erozer warned, is a fraction of the real number. Homeless parents try to stay invisible for fear the state will take away their children, homeless advocates say.

Teen moms, who have been left on their own by the fathers of their children or their own parents, hide because they have no place to go.

The League of Women Voters and Anne Melton Family Resource Center are trying to remedy that situation by establishing a Second Chance Home for teen parents.

Deb Bailey, director of Project Heart, helps homeless students within the Manatee County School District.

Already this school year, Bailey's homeless student count has topped 1,200.

Erozer puts the actual figure much higher.

"We know from Project Heart figures that there were 2,860 students identified as homeless during the 2005-2006 school year," Erozer said. "But when you realize that these numbers are for just 10 months out of the year and don't include children too young to be in the school system, we could easily have more than 3,000 children a year who are homeless."

That number represents the population of nearly four elementary schools in Manatee County.

written by DONNA WRIGHT Bradenton Herald Staff Writer

Sally: Still alone, still feeling lost

"Where is Sally now? Where is that person who felt so desperately alone last holiday season that she wrote to a newspaper? What has become of the 'lost soul' who was so determined to create an existence of self-worth that she shared the secrets of her inner demons?"

Thus begins a letter received this week from none other than Sally herself, the recovering sufferer of schizophrenia and formerly homeless person who wrote poignantly last year of the plight of the lonely and destitute, those who feel only "aloneness and pain" during the holiday season. Sally's heart-rending letter and the Bradenton Herald's appeal for her and the thousands of mentally ill like her brought cards, presents and $875 in contributions, some earmarked for her and some for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Manatee Chapter.

One year later, Sally reports, "I am still alone. I still feel lost in a world that no matter what I do, I just can't seem to find a place to belong, a place that accepts me, an individual, a person with many talents. A place that will place 'faith' into the potential of a person who appears like a discard, but is really a gift of gold, waiting to be unwrapped . . ."

The past year has not been a great one for Sally. It was a year of "overwhelming medical and health problems, an endless search for outside help during many days and weeks of physical disability, (while) unable to perform many basic tasks," Sally wrote.

But in those bad times the memories of last Christmas sustained her, Sally wrote, "the memories that, if only for a few temporary days, I was validated, I and my life had meaning, that people are still kind and generous and that I generated a response that in the chain of life also helped others. The few minutes it took for people to reach out to me had more power than my 'inner demons' that feel like life is not always worth living."

Surely there again is a lesson about the true meaning of Christmas in Sally's soul-baring update. Once again she speaks for legions in writing of the rejection she feels when seeking help, especially in church settings, and of trying to "not personalize how awkward it is when I show up at a pot luck asking for the leftovers."

How many like Sally have we walked past with averted eyes? How many needy strangers have we turned away with a dismissive shake of the head? How many kind deeds will we perform this holiday season that will be sufficient to "nourish the spirit and feed the soul" of a stranger, as last year's response did for Sally, throughout the whole of next year?

Sally was delighted to learn that the editorial about her plight won a prestigious journalism award for its author from the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association this fall. Though she remained anonymous, which was her wish, "my reward was the kindness of strangers, something that nourished my spirit and fed my soul." The gift of love far outlasts a bottle of expensive perfume, new tie or scarf that people spend so much money buying but which are quickly forgotten, she said.

"Although I still feel alone, and I still have yet to overcome many obstacles, deep in my heart I still believe that maybe tomorrow . . ."

The letter ends there. Maybe tomorrow, other kind strangers will again reach out, to make one sad and lonely person feel loved.

Candlelight vigil honors homeless who have died
by April Hunt Sentinel Staff Writer

December 22, 2006

Leslie Stephens only discovered she had Stage 4 breast cancer when she moved into the Women's Residential Counseling Center in Orlando with her three children.

She immediately began treatment when she entered the shelter in November 2005. It wasn't enough.

Stephens was 33 when she died Sept. 30, one of 14 people from the three-county metro region who died this year, in part because of being on the streets and without proper care.

"If she had a stable home setting, she could have gotten access to medical care sooner, and that might have made the difference," said Cathy Jackson, who heads the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. "It could have been different."

Jackson led more than 50 people Thursday evening in a candlelight vigil at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Orlando.

Homeless Persons' Memorial Day -- part of a nationwide event on the longest night of the year -- is designed to draw attention to the needs of the homeless and to give them a public memorial after often-invisible lives.

Two of those being honored, August Felix and Ronald Klaas, were murder victims.

Five teens were arrested and accused of kicking and beating Felix "for sport," according to Orlando police records. He was 54 when he died May 1.

Klaas, whom friends called Gumby because of his missing teeth, was shot before dawn on a May morning as he headed to the downtown bus station to go to work. He was 51.

Some of the others died in relative obscurity.

"A lot of people don't believe that other people live in the woods," said Nancy Martinez, whose job as outreach specialist with Health Care Center for the Homeless is to traipse into the encampments and encourage the homeless to get medical care.

She knows many of the people in the woods and on the street by name.

She met Severo Vazquez early in her four-year stint as part of the center's Hope Team. Vazquez was a military veteran who lived alone in a camp on W.D. Judge Boulevard. Martinez found him there one Monday morning, dead from a heart attack during the weekend.

Joe Mazur lived just down the road from Vazquez, in a camp of about 20 other homeless people near Princeton Street and John Young Parkway. Martinez said Mazur was doing well in getting healthy when he fell into a depression and wouldn't stop drinking.

"He drank himself to death," Martinez said. "We found him alive but severely dehydrated. He died at the hospital."

Advocates have squared off with Orlando officials this year over issues such as where charities can feed the homeless and the city's efforts to clear encampments near the Sylvia Lane feeding site.

Also on Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted to the city clerk declarations from many of the homeless, listing what they lost in the evictions. Among items taken were clothes and medicines, as well as family photos, work tools and documents, said Jacqueline Dowd, the attorney who compiled the affidavits.

"A lot of those people are still there," Dowd said, of the Sylvia Lane area. "For most of them, there is no place else to go."

Jackson emphasized that the region has only about 3,000 beds available for an estimated 8,000 homeless people. Some homeless refuse to go to certain shelters, but those who do often find the facilities full, she said.

Advocates and political leaders who attended Thursday's rally pledged to work together on a solution. Ideas being discussed are more transitional beds for people ready to leave shelters but not life on their own, and more affordable housing for those able to work but not pay market rate.

Stephens would have approved of anything that made those options available.

Even while receiving treatment for cancer, she completed coursework that let her take the test to become a licensed practical nurse, said Jose Irizarry, housing director at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida. The coalition operates the shelter where Stephens lived with her daughters, ages 14 and 6, and 4-year-old son.

Stephens took the exam. But by the time the results arrived in an envelope, she was so ill that she didn't want to face the possibility she didn't pass.

"She didn't want anything that might depress her," Irizarry said. "Even when she was in a nursing home, she begged me not to exit her from our program. Of course I didn't. That's how important it is to have a place of your own."

April Hunt can be reached at 407-420-6269 or ahunt@orlandosentinel.co

ALSO
Dozens honor homeless with vigil

By DAVID HUNT
The Times-Union

They vanish from society, leaving behind a few scattered belongings and the friends they'd met trying to get their lives together.

They have heart attacks. They get into accidents at day labor sites. For one man, a stabbing took him.

Rain drizzled at Hemming Plaza as nearly 30 people gathered Thursday to light candles, pray and listen to the stories. Wanda Lanier, executive director for Jacksonville's Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition, said deaths among the city's homeless total around a half-dozen each year. Events like the vigil downtown serve as a eulogy for those who couldn't afford funerals.

"It's to recognize that homeless people are part of this community, and when they die they're not just some animal you pick up off the street and cremate," said event organizer Stan Grenn, a Catholic deacon with New Hope Ministry.

The venue for Jacksonville's memorial was a section of downtown where police have increased efforts to deal with aggressive panhandling and trespassing. Advocates for the homeless have been critical of the plan, arguing it lumps homeless people and criminals into one category, creating an unwelcoming environment for people in need near the region's greatest concentration of services.

Police say they're working to make downtown safer.

Among the 30 people who attended the service, a few live on the streets.

Ron Nester, a contractor who just Wednesday lost his job and place to live, broke into tears as he listened to the story of a friend who'd fallen to his death at a work site this year.

"I had the honor and the privilege to work with him on quite a few jobs. He was real easy to get along with and he had a real excellent personality," Nester said.

Similar events were scheduled in Nassau and St. Johns counties among hundreds throughout the nation. Since 1990, the National Coalition for the Homeless has sponsored the memorials on the first night of winter.

A crowd of about 50 people gathered Thursday night outside First United Methodist Church in St. Augustine for a candlelight vigil. They sang Silent Night and then shared a holiday meal.

Organizers of the event said there were at least 11 homeless people known to have died in St. Johns County this year.

Home Sweet Home of Their Own



BRADENTON - Tommy Henselder is thrilled with his new condo at Mirror Lake.

It literally gave him a new lease on an independent life.

He's in it thanks to Community Affordable Supportive Living, a nonprofit coalition that provides housing for people with developmental disabilities. CASL owns 31 homes and condos that house about 70 disabled residents in Sarasota, Manatee, Lee and Alachua counties.

John Johnson, a life coach from Manasota ARC - a local agency that assists developmentally disabled children and adults - helps clients like Henselder adjust to their new homes.

"It's my job to work myself out of a job by helping him be independent," Johnson said. "Tommy has great concentration. Once he locks onto something, he's got it."

The 60-year-old Henselder was so excited a visitor was coming to see his new digs that he eagerly waited in the parking lot, ready to begin the tour.

"I've got a bus stop right out front and come and look at this," Henselder said as he threw open his front door.

"This is the living room," he said proudly. "And this is the couch and here's the TV . . .

"And look at this," he said, scurrying through the dining room into his bedroom. "This is my brand new TV - a Magnavox - 24 inches."

He traced his finger across the screen.

"Have you ever seen one like this before?" Henselder asked, pointing at the built-in DVD and video tape player.

"All I do is punch this button here, and the little door pops open for the movie and then . . ."

He spun around and plopped down on his bed with the big, green pillows.

"Here comes the movie."

The music had no more than started when Henselder jumped up and ran to his aquarium. He reached in and shifted a big rock.

"And guess who this is . . . Tommy, my turtle."

Independent living

And possibly the best part about the new apartment: The affordable $250 rent Henselder's paying from his disability income. When his roommate moved out of apartment he was in earlier this year, Henselder was stuck with a $700 rent he couldn't afford.

That's where CASL comes in.

The coalition was founded about 10 years ago by Charles E. Richards, a former Sarasota County commissioner who wanted to help those with disabilities to live independently in clean homes in safe neighborhoods.

Using a combination of state housing funds, community foundation grants and private contributions, the group buys properties, then serves as the real estate owner while the tenants receive services from in-home support service groups like Manasota ARC.

Richards was impressed with Henselder when they signed the lease.

"Tommy was a real gentleman," Richards said in a phone interview. "He seemed really happy to be in his new home, which is so much better than his previous arrangement."

'She'd be proud'

Now, Henselder shares the two bedrooms, two-bath condo with a young woman who is also disabled. As clients of Manasota ARC, they receive support services daily and on weekends.

Henselder has a tight daily schedule, beginning at 8:15 a.m. when the agency's bus picks him up for vocational training. At 4 p.m. the bus brings him home where he has two hours to himself. Johnson arrives at 6 p.m. to work with Henselder until 8 p.m.

Dozens of pictures sit on top Henselder's bureau in his bedroom. One of his favorites is a big picture of his family, his sisters with their husbands and children and, in the center, his mother, who passed away in March.

He picked up the photo and gently touched his mother's face.

"She's up there now," he said, pointing to the ceiling, "in heaven."

When asked what he thought his mother would say if she could see his new home, Henselder beamed.

"She'd be real proud of me," he said.

by
DONNA WRIGHT
Herald Staff Writer

FUNDING SOUGHT FOR ONE-STOP RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE HOMELESS

Manatee County's legislative delegation met Friday with community leaders to map out priorities for the 2007 state legislative session on Friday.

The Community Coalition on Homelessness is seeking funds for a recently approved project--the one-stop resource center for the homeless.

The one-stop center, approved by the city of Bradenton in December 2005, has a capital campaign led by former state Sen. John McKay. The coalition is seeking $1 million in state funding to outfit a building at 701 17th Ave. W. with dining services, health services and job searching services among other resources to help low-income and homeless people. The campaign expects another $2 million to come from local government and private donations.

McKay noted that most of the homeless population are children.

"It is unconscionable that we don't address those needs and help those children," McKay said.

source:
MELANIE MARQUEZ
Herald Staff Writer

FEMA releases $5.8 million to help Florida's homeless

By Miami Herald staff
browardnews@MiamiHerald.com

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced today that federal funds totaling $5,816,077 have been awarded to the state of Florida to help prevent homelessness and feed and shelter the hungry and homeless.

Congress made the funding available -- including $936,055 for Miami-Dade County and $660,294 for Broward -- for the National Board of the Emergency Food and Shelter Program to support social service agencies in more than 2,500 cities and counties across the country.

EFS grant funds are used to supplement food, shelter, rent, mortgage and utility assistance programs for people with nondisaster-related emergencies.

''The continued success of the EFS program affirms the willingness of the American people and the federal government to answer the call when others are in need,'' Region IV Director Major P. May said in a news release. ``This comprehensive program would not be a reality without the service provided by those working throughout our region's communities.''

Volunteers Needed in Sarasota and Manatee for "Point in Time Survey"

Do you want to help the homeless individuals and families in our community?

Hundreds of volunteers are needed to gather census information about the homeless individuals and families in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. Information gathered on people experiencing homeless will help us provide better services to meet their needs.

WHERE: Sarasota and Manatee Counties

WHEN: Monday, January 29, 2007 at noon through Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at noon

WHY: To reduce homelessness and meet the needs of those experiencing homelessness

VOLUNTEER TRAINING
All volunteers must attend one volunteer training session. Trainings will take place in Sarasota County and Manatee County.
Manatee County Volunteer Trainings
Thursday, January 18th, 10:00-11:00am, Manatee United Way, 1701 14 Street West, Bradenton
Monday, January 22nd, 6:00-7:00pm, Manatee Glens Hospital , 2020 26th Avenue East, Bradenton
Sarasota County Volunteer Trainings
Tuesday, January 16th, 10:00-11:00am, Sarasota United Way, 1445 2nd St., Sarasota
Thursday, January 25th, 6:00-7:00pm, Sarasota Salvation Army, 1400 10th St., Sarasota
To volunteer or for more information, contact Jackie at 941.955.8946 or Jackie@suncoastpartnership.org

NPR Series “Homelessness in America”
National Public Radio did an excellent series on homelessness in America in 2006. Two stories of particular interest are “Homeless alcoholics in Seattle find a home” and “Miami offers lessons on handling the homeless.”

llink to whole series
Homelessness in America
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5565348

Or, search on Google: NPR Homelessness America

Students protest treatment of area homeless

By LATISHA R. GRAY
latisha.gray@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- More than a dozen college students slept outside the courthouse Friday night to protest the treatment of the homeless. They just didn't expect it to be so cold.

The students bundled up and tried to keep moving as the temperatures dropped into the 40s and the wind ripped through their layers of clothing. Some students had sleeping bags and others made makeshift beds out of miscellaneous clothing.

They say it made the experience of being homeless for a night even more realistic.

"I'm a doctor's kid," said Vincent Castillenti, a 20-year-old University of South Florida student. "I've never had to sleep outside on the street, but it's people that have to do this every night whether it's boiling hot or freezing cold."

More than 50 people gathered at Five Points Park on Friday afternoon and marched to the courthouse on Ringling Boulevard to protest the city's no-camping rule, which they say has led to arrests and harassment of the homeless.

A group of students got the idea for the protest while spending Friday afternoons feeding homeless people at Five Points Park.

"It makes me feel good that they are out here," said Reginald Sykes, who has been homeless for two years. "It's good that they want to make a change, and I wanted to be out here to let my voice be heard."

Sarasota was named the "meanest city in America" by the National Homeless Coalition for the no-camping ordinance. But city leaders agreed that the rule works, and it was upheld by a circuit judge as being constitutional.

"We wanted to do an act of civil disobedience to let people know this was going on in our city," said Dell MacLean, a 26-year-old New College student.

Sleep-out to protest ban on camping

Students and the homeless plan to sleep outside the judicial center tonight.

By MIKE SAEWITZ
mike.saewitz@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- A group of college students served dinners to the city's homeless population every Friday for the past two months at Selby Five Points Park, and realized something: The stories were the same.

The students say virtually all of the homeless people they fed complained about the city's no-camping rule, which they say has led to harassment, arrests and fines.

From those weekly meetings emerged an idea to make a statement against the ordinance, to stage an act of civil disobedience.

This afternoon, the college students will march with homeless people across downtown streets on their way to the courthouse. They plan to sleep outside the judicial center all night, right next to police headquarters.

"We're not interested in getting arrested, but we understand that might happen," said Marlon Kautz, a homeless rights activist who helped organize the park dinners and the march.

The protest comes at a time when city leaders are pointing to the no-lodging ordinance as a success. The twice-overturned rule has recently been upheld by a judge. It now includes a clause that they say proves their intent to help, offering first-time violators a free ride to a shelter.

City officials said they have no plans to arrest protesters.

"Our intent is to respect the people's right to peaceably assemble," said City Manager Michael McNees.

Sarasota Police Lt. Paul Sutton, who spent all day Thursday at a retreat with the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, said that simply sleeping in public is not outlawed by the no-lodging rule. He hopes to use the protest to educate the public about the rule, and how it is designed to offer homeless people help instead of jail.

"It's a great opportunity to promote the public awareness of what we're doing," Sutton said. "I don't think that's the spin they (the protesters) are looking for."

Kautz said that the city's homeless people do not feel that the rule is helping.

He and others have gotten to know many of them through the weekly meals in Five Points Park, which are hosted by the Sarasota chapter of "Food Not Bombs," a worldwide group dedicated to social change.

He said the idea for the sleep-out came from Sarasota's homeless people themselves, although students and activists will join them. The goal is to encourage city leaders to drop the ordinance and provide needed housing for the city's poorest residents.

Through fliers and word-of-mouth, many of Sarasota's homeless people have been spreading the news of today's protest.

The protest is being staged nearly a year after Sarasota was named the "Meanest City in the Nation" toward homeless people by a national advocacy group. Officials have continually rejected the title.

This week, city commissioners supported an ordinance that put closing times on city parks. In the eyes of some citizens, it was another attempt to control the city's homeless.

"This is another issue of homeless people and where they sleep," said resident Diana Hamilton. "The issue is, we need to have better facilities for these people."

City officials say the ordinance boils down to a public safety issue.

"All our neighborhood parks deserve to be safe for everyone to use," said City Commissioner Mary Anne Servian.

Major Bert Tanner Leaving Sarasota?

I am hearing that Major Bert Tanner of the Salvation Army has been reassigned. If this is true it will be a huge loss for the community. Major Tanner has done so much to help those in need. He understands the people and challenges of Sarasota and has never backed away from either. Major Tanner I salute you!

Property owner requests shutdown of homeless camp

Deputies arrest four for trespassing

PORT CHARLOTTE -- Four homeless people will now be served three meals a day and have beds to sleep in -- at least until they make bail.

At the request of a property owner, Charlotte County Sheriff's deputies made four arrests Tuesday for trespassing after warning at a homeless campsite in Port Charlotte.

At the request of Mango Development Group, which owns a 40-acre tract at 19530 Cochran Blvd., deputies issued the trespassers citations on Thanksgiving and told them to leave the wooded area near Home Depot.

On Tuesday, the deputies returned to the area on three different occasions during the day and found the same four people living there.

They charged Timothy Milton Peters, 49; Gary Dewayne Cooper, 48; David Alan Carr, 44; and Mary Joanne Johnson, 39; with trespassing after warning and took them to the Charlotte County Jail, where they all remained Wednesday on $1,000 bonds each. Carr was also charged with an outstanding warrant for violation of probation for criminal mischief.

In the report, deputies said the group had established residency on the property and "created a mess by littering a camping area."

The property is worth $7,760,649, according to the Charlotte County Property Appraiser's Web site. Representatives of Mango Development, which is based in Sarasota, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Charlotte County Sheriff's spokesman Bob Carpenter said the homeless problem is one that affects the whole county.

"If there is a complaint, we have to react to it," he said Wednesday. "We aren't the bad guys in this. We warned them once."

Carpenter said the Sheriff's Office has received several complaints about the homeless camp from other business owners in the area but unless the property owner files the complaint, there is little they can do.

Ian Ocasio, street outreach worker with the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition, said the homeless population has grown rapidly since Hurricane Charley.

"I know of at least 65 people who are living in areas not meant for human habitation," he said Wednesday.

The coalition is building a 52-person shelter that is expected to be finished in July 2007.

"That will help the situation some," Ocasio said.

One of the problems, according to Ocasio, is when homeless people are told to relocate, they don't have anywhere to go or the means to move.

"One of the men who was arrested (Tuesday) is disabled," he said. "He can barely walk."

Ocasio said the previous land owners of the 40-acre tract were more tolerant of the homeless who would stay there. He said the Sheriff's Office is just doing its job, but all that's happening is that taxpayers are paying to house them.

"They are just warehousing the poorest of the poor and the mentally ill, and they are the first ones to tell you they are tired of it," he said. "Our jails are filled with nonviolent, mentally ill and poor people."

Funding is needed to help build more shelters, Ocasio said, but that in itself is a huge hurdle.

"Animal shelters get more funding than we do," he said. "We barely have enough money to put gas in our vans."

Just a thought . . .

The end of the 2006 hurricane season leaves lots of Floridians with unused supplies stored up in case of a major blow. The plywood and water can keep another year, but most people don't like to keep food, even nonperishables, around that long.

Here's a suggestion: Give that unused hurricane food to the food banks and soup kitchens that are desperately understocked as they head into the busiest season. Our Daily Bread, Meals on Wheels Plus and the Salvation Army are all low on supplies. The packaged tuna, beef, macaroni, beans and rice could help needy families avoid going hungry for a few days and could help feed the homeless who show up for a hot daily meal.

Plus, food donations to the needy would fulfill the spirit of the holiday season.

(a suggestion from the Bradenton Herald Saturday December 2, 2006)

Volunteers Needed To Survey Homeless

By Rick Rousos
The Lakeland Ledger


LAKELAND - The Homeless Coalition of Polk County is looking for a hundred or more compassionate people to volunteer for at least one day in January to count Polk's homeless people.

The pay is lousy - there is none. But, says Judy M. Loud, coordinator of the Point in Time survey of the homeless, the real reward is the satisfaction of volunteering. "It's all about helping others," she said.

The survey is important because the amount of federal and state money budgeted for outreach programs depends upon how many people are counted.

The count will take place Jan. 22 through Jan. 26. Five Polk County areas will be surveyed for one day each during that week.

Last year, 150 people volunteered to help with the survey. So far, the Homeless Coalition of Polk County has recruited 40 people.

The coalition recently held training for new volunteers. With an office near the three downtown homeless shelters, the volunteers didn't have to look hard for homeless people, many of whom have arrived here in the past few days because of cold weather.

The next volunteer training is Dec. 12. Volunteers learn how to approach and communicate with the homeless and fill out a form for each person they interview. Some homeless people are difficult to strike up a conversation with, and the Homeless Coalition tells its volunteers that people living in shelters or in homeless camps want what everyone wants - to be treated with dignity and respect.

In the 2005 Point in Time survey, volunteers submitted forms for 749 people. In January 2006, they counted 801.

Counting the homeless is not an exact science, said Mark Spiker, the executive director of the Homeless Coalition of Polk County.

Some of the data on the homeless collected the past few years doesn't make sense. In Sarasota County, the count went from 431 in 2005 to 7,253 this year. In Hardee County, the 2005 count of 24 people jumped to 725 this year.

Spiker said the Homeless Coalition does the best it can to count accurately.

"Some people are counted twice,'' he said. "And a lot of others don't want to be counted."

Dislodged

The homeless community fights the anti-lodging ordinance.

By Joel Rozen

Published 11.29.2006
http://sarasota.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=105666

Since a circuit court judge declared an anti-lodging ordinance constitutional in both Sarasota and Manatee counties earlier this month, the homeless have been left to wander the night streets, unable to rest in any one location.

They're tired. And fed up.

The homeless and their advocates say this is just the latest affront by local government, and they are beginning to mobilize, holding regular planning sessions and organizing protests. But they've got their work cut out for them.

"Since 2002, we've been tracking criminalization of the homeless across the country," says an audibly irritated Michael Stoops, executive director of the D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless. "And clearly, tourist cities are the worst." Last January, Stoops' group declared Sarasota the nation's "meanest city," and the acts against those with no place to sleep haven't stopped.

"We were struck by Sarasota's persistence," Stoops says, alluding to the area's latest anti-homeless measures: a soup kitchen that was shut down last month, a mess of zoning restrictions limiting the Salvation Army's expansion options. And now the anti-lodging ordinance. When it was upheld after two previous rounds of protest, the decision was interpreted by many as a final, decimating blow to the estimated 3,000-plus who, according to advocates, have already requested emergency shelter in Sarasota and Manatee counties this year.

The ordinance bans loitering citywide and enables police officers to arrest those caught sleeping outside. Many on both sides of the issue expect a number of homeless people to leave as a result.

"I really think this speaks to a lack of compassion for the less fortunate in this city," says Cat Christensen, a volunteer counselor at local homeless resource center Resurrection House. "Putting someone in jail costs a certain amount of money, and I can't think that's the only answer."

Her office, shared by a few of the other volunteer counselors, is modest in size, almost swallowed by the rest of the massive building. Dwarfing most of the neighboring structures on Kumquat Court, the nearly 20-year-old Resurrection House logs almost 33,000 visits a year. Its directors claim they can't afford to put up homeless clients for the night -- the Salvation Army handles that responsibility -- but since the ordinance passed, Resurrection has been seeing far more tired faces.

A frail, frustrated-looking man dressed in a tattered sport coat and slacks pushes his walker right up to Christensen's doorway. Albert Montes de Oca, 54, wants to check on the status of his Greyhound bus out of the city.

"This is no place for me, man," he says. De Oca explains that he fractured his hip last month and doesn't know why the Sarasota Hospital won't take him back in.

"It's been three months of hell ever since I arrived. Money disappears like boiling water." His eyes widen as he signals steam in the air with his hands. "Now all I want is out."

That may be the ordinance's goal -- to push homeless people away. But several lawyers and activists contacted by CL think the counties have a responsibility to help those in need. Local media have been awash with news of Fort Myers-based attorney Chris Cosden's appeals at the district courts against the ordinance -- the latest reports quote a disgruntled Cosden vowing to take this month's verdict to the Second District Court of Appeals -- but there are grassroots fighters as well.

Some of them know the issues at stake firsthand. "They force you to crawl under crevices at night," Resurrection House regular Brian Smith, 35, says of patrolling police officers. "But they always seem to find you. And it's so cold out, you'll be shaking when they slap those cuffs on."

Smith is eager to divulge some of his plans for resistance. "I'm not running away from this," the Cleveland native says. For the past month, he and numerous other homeless citizens have convened at Five Points Park next to Selby Library for what he calls "protest planning meetings" and hot meals.

The events are sponsored by local chapters of activist collective Food Not Bombs, and led by students from Ringling and New College.

"It's a sight, we've got hundreds of homeless people there, all ready to storm the city courthouse," Smith says of the meetings. While he admits the Dec. 8 protest is still in the planning phase, he and other members of the group are determined to spread word of the ordinance's injustice.

Currently serving as intermediaries between the local homeless and the National Homelessness Coalition, Jackie Wang and Reva Castillenti, 18 and 19 respectively, are the Food Not Bombs organizers from the two colleges. Both from St. Petersburg, they serve as voices for the homeless, but are adamantly not the only voices.

"We didn't want our role [at the meetings] to be like, 'This is for you,'" says Wang, sitting in the Ringling School's cafeteria. "We just want the homeless to be aware of their fundamental rights."

Castillenti agrees. "We want to put the homelessness situation in a larger context," she says. "We also believe the city should take more responsibility for its homelessness problem -- they should abolish [the ordinance] until they can provide more shelters." With the aid of several other organizers, the two now have a website (homelessrights.co.nr) advertising their agenda and encouraging other concerned citizens to help them rally on Dec. 8.

"Right now, we're looking into getting it all OK'd by local officials by securing a permit," says Wang. "We want this to be as civil as possible; we mean no harm."

Not all homeless advocates agree that abolishing the ordinance would be the right way to go, however. "This whole anti-lodging thing has gotten a lot of press recently," concedes Adrienne Lazeroff, executive director of Sarasota's Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, "but I'm not sure getting rid of it will prevent the situation, and that's what we'd like to do."

Lazeroff sits in the United Way building that has housed the Partnership since its inception last year. "Really, what we should be doing is getting to the root of the problem, with meetings to brainstorm ways of finding jobs for these people and financing aid organizations."

But Christensen, having assisted at Resurrection House for just over a year now -- reconnecting families, digging up birth certificates for job hunters, even helping out patrons in the free laundry room -- is already seeing the anti-lodging law's effect.

"The ramifications of this type of ordinance are obvious," she says, pulling her chair up to a desk lined with fliers and notepads. "People now have to walk all night long, there's no place to hide; I've come in here in the morning and found people sleeping while in line for breakfast."

EDITORIAL Orlando Sentinel November 30, 2006
Help the homeless
Our position: Communities across Central Florida need to work together on solutions.

Let's be frank: The challenge of finding solutions to the homeless quandary is overwhelming.

There is no "silver bullet," as Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has said. But without a clear directive, all those enthusiastic plans about the revitalization of downtown Orlando will crumble.

The framework of solutions begins with the ability to address homelessness as a community, and by establishing coordination among various governments, agencies and church groups within Central Florida. This is not simply an "Orlando problem."

Local advocates estimate that within Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, there are about 7,500 homeless people. Most of the emergency and transitional beds are in Orlando, numbering about 2,200. But in Osceola alone, estimates range between 1,200 and 1,500 people without homes. Most other people without homes are scattered throughout the region, living temporarily in motels, with friends, in cars, or in the woods.

It's an issue that extends well beyond the concentration of indigent men in the downtown area and the hub around Lake Eola, where a dispute continues among city officials and advocates over group feedings. It would better serve our community if both sides could get past that pettiness and look for ways to address root causes -- domestic violence, mental illness, a lack of family structure and financial distress, among others.

Within the framework of a regional approach, a logical step would be the appointment of a point person to establish goals. That person should be independent of all government entities, avoiding conflict-of-interest issues, but should be able to coordinate efforts among various social-service agencies and church groups to avoid duplication of efforts and find a more effective means of reaching out to the homeless.

The buy in may not be an easy sell for neighboring communities and counties. But to echo the sentiments of Orlando City Commissioner Robert Stuart, each jurisdiction must understand the impact of homelessness on its community -- on health care, public safety, schools, the demand for housing, among other issues.

There have been many well-intentioned efforts by officials to curb homelessness, but not much in the way of substantive action over the years.

This agenda belongs on the laps of many folks. It's far beyond the scope of what Mr. Dyer and city officials can do or have done.

It is much easier to embrace the vision of a downtown renaissance and think of the possibilities. But if this community does not wrap its arms around the homeless and find some solutions, all of Central Florida will suffer beyond the empty seats one may find at a new arena and performing-arts center.

Lawmakers have neglected mentally ill

Letter to the Editor (St. Petersburg Times)
Published November 28, 2006

Mentally ill people in jails

Thank you for bringing the plight of this most vulnerable group of people to the attention of everyone. I am the executive director of a nonprofit agency that has provided treatment and rehabilitation since 1988 for these individuals who are currently in jail as a result of their mental illness. These men and women are in desperate need of an advocate as their voices are not being heard.

It would not serve them to jail the head of the state Department of Children and Families. Rather it draws attention away from the ongoing issue, which is the closing of our state mental hospital, G. Pierce Wood in Arcadia. The mentally ill now live in alleys, under bridges and on park benches throughout the state. The closing of hospitals such as this one are in direct relation to the dramatic rise in the homeless population.

The Legislature in its haste to "do something" has created a maelstrom statewide by not providing for the ongoing needs and services that are required to support this population. As a result of legislative inaction for the past several years, we have created local unfunded mandates to provide mental health services in our county jails.

These mentally ill people are not getting better. They will not make the transition back into our communities without treatment, and they will continue to cycle through arrest, incarceration, jail and back to the street, on and on, unless we provide residential settings for them.

When the state's lawmakers cut the funding in 2005 to this population, they created an environment that is dangerous to those individuals and the community.

Sara Romeo, executive director, Tampa Crossroads Inc., Tampa

Posted on Thu, Nov. 23, 2006



Home for the hungry

RICHARD DYMOND
Herald Staff Writer
BRADENTON - Jamey-Lee and her little brother, Corbin, were off from school Wednesday and looking forward to today's Thanksgiving holiday.

Jamey-Lee, 7, who started at Ballard Elementary a week ago, spent Wednesday brushing the blond hair of her Barbie doll and showing off her new T-shirt, which showed young girl cartoon characters known as "The Three Amigos."

Corbin, 5, wearing a shirt with tiny, colorful dinosaurs on it, played endlessly with a brown-and-white stuffed bear that, for some reason unknown to everyone but him, he named James.

Melissa McCann, 26, the children's mom, who is six months' pregnant, smiled and took a deep breath.

"I think we have landed," McCann said.

McCann's small family is homeless and moved into the family lodge at The Salvation Army last week.

The Salvation Army provided the Barbie doll, the bear, Corbin's dinosaur shirt, Jamey-Lee's cartoon shirt and the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings that the family will enjoy with 500 to 600 other people today, their mom said.

For most of Manatee County, turkey is expected.

McCann said she no longer takes it for granted.

"I'm so happy that we will have a place to have Thanksgiving," she said. "It's been a tough few months."

The family has been homeless and living out of a suitcase since September, when McCann said she left a situation of domestic abuse that started eight years ago.

Without a car, she has been living in shelters and motels in Michigan, Sarasota and now Bradenton, getting some financial help from her mother in England.

"I can see the childhood is slowly returning to my kids," McCann said. "Corbin's temper fits are decreasing. He has separation anxiety."

McCann is completely estranged from other family members, she said.

"Wrong decisions," explained McCann, when asked to sum up how a pregnant woman with two children ended up homeless. "I am so thankful we are here now, that they took me in. My kids and I had a desperate need for a warm place."

Jamey-Lee is bright and sensitive.

She has to decide what to tell her classmates at Ballard when they start asking her where she lives.

"I think I will say, 'I don't know,' " she said.

She talks in a whisper about the last few months, but brightens up when asked about her interests.

"I love singing, all music, going to fairs, hanging out and talking," she said, proudly.

She also gets frustrated with Corbin, who has suddenly become afraid of the dark, she said.

"But you have to be his big sissy," McCann told her.

Asked what Thanksgiving meant to them, the children blurted out, "Turkey!"

Because people care

Jim McKee owned the Bridge Street Pier Cafe on the fishing pier of Bradenton Beach for 10 years.

Like many others, McKee, 63, was so busy making a living, he gave little thought to those who have no family or who are homeless.

But a few years ago, McKee took a look at his life and decided he needed to give back for the blessings he has had.

He accepted a job as kitchen manager at the Salvation Army last year, a position that has been life-changing, he said.

"I had no idea there was such a homeless problem in this county," McKee said. "I was amazed and I am still amazed."

Salvation Army officials estimate there are between 3,000 and 3,500 homeless people in Manatee County.

McKee had three fellow kitchen workers and 50 volunteers prepare and serve 75 turkeys, mounds of instant mashed potatoes and gravy, pounds of corn bread dressing, heaps of green beans and many pumpkin and cherry pies today to those who otherwise may have no other place to go for the holiday, McKee said.

"I'm older now and about to retire and this is all about giving back," he said. "I love it here. It's the greatest bunch of people I have ever been associated with. All they do is care about other people. They work themselves to death solely to help others."

Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at rdymond@HeraldToday.com or 708-7907.



© 2006 Bradenton Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.bradenton.com

From: Thewindisalady on Live Journal

I’m heavily involved with Sarasota Food Not Bombs, and Sarasota homeless rights. Sarasota Food Not Bombs distributes food weekly at a park in downtown Sarasota. The people doing homeless rights work are directly organizing with homeless people, students and community members to plan demonstrations, teach-ins and work on getting the anti-lodging ordinance thrown out. I think it’s really important for New College students to get out more and get involved with the community. I really enjoy organizing with the homeless because they are such a dynamic group of people. People often overlook the problems in the Sarasota community at large because New College is very insular and pretty utopian compared to other places. There are many battles to be fought off campus including the fight against gentrification and unjust laws that target the homeless.

Article published Nov 15, 2006
Homeless agencies feel the pinch
Advocates say recent events make it harder to feed the needy
By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com
BRADENTON -- Mary DeLazzer remembers a time when her momma gave bread and cheese and water to the men who rode the rails.

They would come calling nearly every day, and the DeLazzers didn't have much to give. So her momma would scrounge through the cupboard, DeLazzer recalls, and most times the best they could come up with was bread, ice, tapwater and a slice of cheese.

So it is today at Our Daily Bread, where DeLazzer, 75, has spent the better part of two decades feeding the homeless. Like many other soup kitchens and food pantries in Southwest Florida, however, a cascade of events has agencies struggling to keep up with demand.

From Charlotte to Manatee:

An outrageous housing market has priced more and more families out of homes and into transitional living arrangements, such as the dour motels of Tamiami Trail.

Twin homeless ordinances in Sarasota and Bradenton are slowly driving transients to places they had never been before.

A large grocery chain decided to limit perishable items given to agencies.

nA Sarasota soup kitchen that fed thousands each year closed.

To some, the events have created a perfect storm that threatens to cripple local social service agencies on the cusp of the holiday season -- traditionally the time of year when there are more mouths to feed and resources are spread among dozens of organizations.

"There is enough wealth in those counties to keep these agencies alive," said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "This just should not be happening."

The first hit came early this year when Sarasota officials rethought the way it designated homes and businesses in a thriving downtown core. A rezoning initiative means certain businesses -- liquor stores, pawn shops, topless bars, food pantries -- cannot open shop downtown, and one of the area's longest-running soup kitchens felt pressure to get out.

St. Vincent de Paul, the small soup kitchen tucked on Adelia Avenue, was not forced out, because the rezoning affects only new businesses.

Still, St. Vincent de Paul organizers say they felt like they couldn't compete with the resources of one of the country's largest development firms -- Benderson Development Co., which plans a sprawling hotel complex on Main Street and paid nearly $500,000 in April for the soup kitchen's property.

When Benderson offered St. Vincent de Paul $500,000, they took the money, hoping to find a new place downtown. But the group hasn't found a home yet.

And some worry that the city -- dubbed the "meanest in America" for its treatment of the homeless -- has been pushing transients out, as exemplified by an ordinance that makes it a crime to camp on public or private property.

The law, twice ruled unconstitutional and recently upheld by a circuit judge, was followed by a similar measure in Bradenton, where city officials claimed it was a move to "look out for the taxpayers."

To critics, however, the ordinances are an easy way to couch a difficult dilemma, one that pits homeowners versus the homeless. Some say the cities characterized homeless people as drunk, lazy ne'er-do-wells looking for a handout -- and they had to go.

"This assumption is just not true," said Maj. Jack Repass, of The Salvation Army. "These are people who sincerely need help. There is a small population with mental-health problems, or drug and alcohol issues. But most of these people are genuinely down on their luck."

Now, agencies are struggling to feed them. Part of the problem, according to Ana Romillo of the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition, is the rising price of just about everything: homes, gas, food, taxes.

Many social service groups are finding children and families, or the working poor, on their doorsteps in need of a break.

"Everything is so expensive," Romillo said. "The rent is up, taxes are up, insurance is up. What are these people to do?"

Making matters worse for soup kitchens such as Our Daily Bread is a decision by Publix Super Markets to prohibit perishable goods from being delivered to agencies. For years, DeLazzer and Robert Eikill, an administrator at the Tamiami Trail facility, could count on fresh fruits and vegetables from local stores.

But a recent decision by Publix changed all of that, Eikill said, and food pantries were cut off from one of their biggest benefactors. Publix did not return phone calls last week seeking comment.

"They don't want the risk of something being contaminated," Eikill said. "But it hurts to see places -- Wal-Mart, schools, hospitals -- to just throw away food. Especially when we need it so bad."

Amid the din of dishwashers and the hustle of kitchen workers, DeLazzer patted a toddler on the head last week and handed the boy a cup of juice. It was a shade before 11 a.m., and three tables were full at Our Daily Bread, which served more than 6,000 meals last month alone.

On this day, the menu included a sandwich, corn, salad and dessert. It's more than the bread and cheese DeLazzer's momma used to serve, but with more mouths coming in each day, she worries where the next meal will come from.

"We'll find it somewhere," she said. "Even if I have to boil a pot of rice and serve that, we'll keep serving these people."

Each year, one week before Thanksgiving, National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness co-sponsor National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. During this week, a number of schools, communities and cities take part in a nationwide effort to bring greater awareness to the problems of hunger and homelessness. If your community has already joined this effort, this guide can serve as an evaluator for past efforts and possibly offer fresh ideas for the future. If this is your first time participating, this guide will explain how your community can get involved!

Why?

Organizing events will not seem very substantial if you do not stop to ask: Why is National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week so important? Participating in National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week not only brings greater awareness to your community, but also helps to promote the national endeavor to end hunger and homelessness. The plight of those without a home can be both lonely and difficult. Addressing their struggles by organizing and participating in this week may bring greater solidarity and understanding, as well as promote future involvement. Events, such as "One Night Without a Home," help people realize the difficulties that homeless persons daily face. Talk about these issues with your coordinators and discuss what impact such an event might have on your community. It is imperative to dispel myths that label homelessness as someone else's problem or claim that an end to homelessness is impossible.

Disenfranchised homeless

In the flurry of discussion around disenfranchised voters, let us not forget the most disenfranchised in our community, those without homes. This week is National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, a time to learn more about our neighbors and friends who do not have a home.

The safety and security of a home is something many of us take for granted. It is the place we put our feet up, our escape from the rest of the world after a hard day. On a more basic level, a home is shelter from the sun, wind, rain and a safe place free from harassment and violence. Without the physical and emotional protection a home provides, life is filled with a different set of struggles. The things many of us take for granted, like a hot shower or knowing when our next meal will be, are only hopes for those without a place to live.

Families with children are among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. This year alone, almost 150 local children have had to sleep in a homeless shelter. In addition to children and families, those without homes in our community include domestic violence survivors, veterans, mentally ill individuals, and people suffering from addiction. People experiencing homelessness do not fit one general description. They do not share one profile. But they do share basic needs such as affordable housing, living wages, and health care.

People who become homeless are someone's friend, sister, brother, or child. As a community, we must come together to create solutions to prevent homelessness and to meet the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness.

Adrienne B. Lazeroff
Sarasota