Studer Community Institute

City supports change in helping homeless

May 13, 2015
/ Mollye Barrows
/ government

Timothy Jones was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy more than 10 years ago, but it wasn’t long after he left the service that he made the first of three suicide attempts. Most likely, he says, the result of post-traumatic stress disorder. “I was assaulted, raped by another service member during my tour in Japan and there was no support from my command,” Jones remembered. “I was harassed and hazed by other service members. “When I was honorably discharged there were no resources. I’ve battled drug addiction and alcohol issues. My family asked me to get treatment, but because of the treatment I had experienced from authority I was reluctant to do that.” As a result Jones “couch surfed” for 10 years, relying on the support of family and friends. Eventually a moment of clarity and a stint in jail pushed him to choose a different path. “When I got out of jail, the support ended,” said Jones. “When I didn’t have a place, I started researching what help was available for homeless veterans.” Jones spent four months trying to find a job and a place to live in Escambia County. When he couldn’t get a housing voucher from the Veterans Administration, he found placement in a two-year program supported by Volunteers of America. “One thing I found, there are a lot of services here, but not a lot of people know about them,” said Jones. “It’s not very coordinated.” Jones' story was one of several heard at a special Pensacola City Council workshop on homelessness, Monday night. Community members, activists and city officials all spoke as the community tries to grapple in a meaningful way with homelessness and the issues that surround it. “We’re here at least in part, because we routinely receive complaints about individuals who establish camp sites on city property and about individuals who panhandle.” said City Administrator Eric Olson. The complaints include trash, concern for personal safety, public drunkenness, monopolization of public space, verbal abuse, violence and illicit adult activities. The areas primarily affected are the downtown Palafox corridor, the area around Wayside Park & 17^th Avenue CSX train trestle, the Hollis T. Williams greenbelt under Interstate 110, and the Target retail complex by Cordova Mall. The city wants a long-term solution to a longstanding problem. Pensacola got a lot of negative press in 2014, after passing the so-called “blanket ban” in attempt to discourage people from camping in public places. Pensacola leaders hired national homeless consultant Robert Marbut and formed a task force to review his findings and make recommendations. Among them was a recommendation to change the culture of giving, as well as repeal or amend ordinances including a ban on solicitation and overnight camping. Olson encouraged the council to keep the ordinances as effective tools to handle complaints and adopt a resolution supporting a change from “enablement to engagement” when it comes to charitable giving. "We want to prevent people from falling into homelessness and offer a hand up to those who find themselves in homelessness," Olson said. "We want to see people graduate off the street, not remain on the street.” Challenge of 'street graduation' Getting people off the street remains a challenge in Northwest Florida. There are about 1,000 homeless individuals, both sheltered and unsheltered in Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties. There are thousands more, including children and families, who don’t have a permanent place to call home. Some homeless service providers say there needs to be a fundamental change in our area’s approach to charitable giving to address the root causes of homelessness. In the majority of cases, that means finding affordable housing. To help start the conversation, the Studer Community Institute is partnering with the EscaRosa Coalition on the Homeless, the lead agency representing around two dozen service agencies, on a panhandling prohibition and homelessness awareness campaign. John Johnson, the Coalition's executive director, helped outline the campaign to council members. The effort includes discouraging people from giving to panhandlers, encouraging them to give to a homeless trust fund, and raises awareness about the many different faces of homelessness. [caption id="attachment_23202" align="alignleft" width="300"]

The “A Better Way to Give.” campaign is introduced during a Pensacola City Council Workshop in Pensacola, Fl. Monday, May 11, 2015.(Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)

The “There's A Better Way to Give” campaign is introduced during a Pensacola City Council Workshop in Pensacola, Fl. Monday, May 11, 2015.(Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today)[/caption] “There’s a loss of dignity when someone asks another person for help,” Johnson said. “We need an approach to engage those who are willing to get help.” Johnson says that approach should be coordinated assessment. It is mandated by the federal government, and, Johnson says, is a more efficient and proactive way to address homelessness. A similar effort launched in Mobile has resulted in getting chronic homeless and homeless veterans off the street. “If you don’t have coordinated assessment, you have uncoordinated assessment that may not place a person in the right program,” Johnson said. “In order to do this and make it effective, we need engagement and outreach to inform them about services within the community.” Eric Jefferson, executive director of Housing First, the homeless coalition in Mobile, spoke about that program. It’s a web-based and allows the coalition to coordinate efficiently with service providers, collect data, and measure the results of their efforts. “We found 90 percent of those assessed, if they had affordable housing they wouldn’t need any other services,” Jefferson said. 'A Better Way to Give' The Studer Community Institute’s, “A Better Way to Give” campaign aims to raise awareness about the various needs of the homeless and encourage a coordinated, community approach to charitable giving. One that engages instead of enables, coordinates service agencies, and ties funding to outcomes and street graduation rates. Longtime outreach worker Kathy Strader told council members a coordinated approach is needed. She works with a faith-based ministry in Brownsville that helps those who are homeless. “We have clients who will go to a feeding site downtown for breakfast, they ride their bikes to Brownsville and have lunch with us and will go to another agency to get food to take home,” said Strader. “They have routines and they know where to go for services, but we can’t continue to do it. We have to change the way we serve and change the way we spend money.” Most of the council agreed to support the campaign and Homeless Coalition’s efforts to move towards a coordinated assessment approach. There are tentative plans to continue the discussion with Escambia County leaders once the campaign is finalized and a budget and plan are outlined for a coordinated assessment center. That’s great news to some homeless advocates like Timothy Jones, who found housing, counseling and a new life through the Volunteers of America program. “Today I’m a student at UWF and a board member of the African American Chamber of Commerce,” said Jones. “This is a conversation that needs to happen to move from enablement to empowerment. The man that I am in today is born out of Escambia County and Pensacola, because before that I didn’t have hope. Now I have hope."

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