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City looks south for homeless solutions

St. Petersburg and Pinellas officials are impressed with programs in South Florida.

By CARRIE JOHNSON
Published July 4, 2005

MIAMI - They called it "The Slab."

It was 1994 and each night the homeless would huddle on the sidewalk outside a row of storefronts on Miami Avenue.

Randolph Hall, 51, would press himself against the buildings, hoping the awnings would shield him from the rain. He was so numb from cocaine and other drugs he didn't really understand where he was.

"I had come to the end of my rope," said Hall, who grew up in Ybor City and played drums in a band before drugs took over his life. "There was nothing else for me to do."

In 1995, the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust opened the Homeless Action Center facility down the street from The Slab. It was a one-stop shop where people could find shelter and the tools to rebuild their lives.

Hall found his way there shortly after it opened. Today, he is an assistant in the center's kitchen and leads Narcotics Anonymous sessions. He's also preparing to buy his first house.

"These people, they saw something in me," Hall said. "They gave me back my hope."

Last week, a group of Pinellas County and St. Petersburg officials traveled to Miami-Dade and Broward counties to get ideas for addressing the growing homeless problem.

They visited homeless action centers in both Miami and Fort Lauderdale. They talked to police officers about building relationships between the homeless and law enforcement. And they discussed fundraising with leaders of the business community.

"There are a lot of interesting ideas out there," said St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, one of about 30 people on the trip. "This gives us a chance to think about the problem, talk about it and formulate our own plan."

* * *

By the late 1980s, Miami was overrun by the homeless, who built massive tent cities along Biscayne Bay and camped beneath expressways in cardboard boxes.

In 1988, 5,000 homeless people filed a class-action suit against the city, saying they were being harassed by police to drive them out of the city. A federal judge directed the city to establish two "safe zones" where homeless people could sleep without fear of arrest.

In 1992, Gov. Lawton Chiles approached Alvah Chapman, the chairman and CEO of Knight Ridder, a national newspaper chain then based in Miami. After some urging, Chapman agreed to lead the Governor's Commission on the Homeless.

Early on, the commission decided it needed a dedicated source of money. So the members proposed a 1 percent sales tax on large restaurants in Miami-Dade. The Legislature signed off on the idea in the last six minutes of the 1993 session.

Elected officials, business leaders and social service providers joined together to create the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, which administers money from the tax and advises the County Commission. The tax generated about $9-million last year.

But trust members decided there should also be a private sector branch. Under Chapman's leadership, a nonprofit group called the Community Partnership for the Homeless Inc. was created, and the two organizations formed a public-private partnership.

Members of the partnership toured the country, searching for ideas to solve Miami's problem. In the end, they created the Homeless Action Center, which houses people temporarily while they search for permanent housing, enter drug rehabilitation or mental health facilities or look for a job.

One center is in downtown Miami and the other in Homestead.

"From the beginning, we've always said we'll never eliminate homelessness," said Alex Penelas, the former mayor of Miami-Dade who was the first chairman of the Trust. "What we're trying to do is provide people with an alternative."

* * *

It was 2 p.m. and the downtown Homeless Action Center was nearly deserted. The approximately 100 children who live there were at day camp. Older residents searched for jobs.

"They're not allowed to sit around on their beds all day," said Al Brown, deputy director of the CPHI, who led the Pinellas delegation through the facility. "They can stay here if they're working on a job application but they need to be doing something."

The 70,000-square-foot facility has an open courtyard with dormitories along the perimeter. The walls are brightly colored and the facility is completely free of litter or graffiti.

There's an onsite day care, a dining hall, health clinic and several classrooms where instructors from the Miami-Dade public school system teach graduation equivalency degree classes or trade certification. The center doesn't accept walk-ins because they don't want lines forming outside the building. Instead, outreach teams of two people, one formerly homeless person and a case worker, find people who want to stay at the center. The case worker continues to work with them while they're at the center.

Residents can stay up to 60 days, although families are sometimes allowed to stay a little longer. The facility averages about 402 people per night.

Since 1995, 47,083 people have been served by the two Miami-Dade centers. Brown said about 60 percent now have jobs and more permanent housing. The tent cities are gone.

But it doesn't always work the first time. Residents have been known to return to the center two, three or even four times. They are never refused care.

"It's like anything else," Brown said. "Sometimes you need a little practice before you get the hang of it."

Broward County has a similar facility in downtown Fort Lauderdale, which opened in 1999. The building houses approximately 200 people and offers many of the same services. It also has a library, a fitness center and a free clothes closet, all stocked with donations from the public. It uses gas taxes to pay for it.

* * *

About 4,500 people are homeless in Pinellas County. The number is small compared to Miami-Dade, which still has about 7,000 people on the streets, or Broward, with 10,000 homeless. But Pinellas officials fear it is growing.

Last year, the St. Petersburg City Council made helping the homeless a priority and held a series of workshops to discuss the problem. Since then, they have joined forces with Pinellas County, which is crafting a 10-year plan to combat homelessness.

St. Petersburg City Council member Virginia Littrell, who has been very active on the homeless issue, said she was impressed with several aspects of the Miami-Dade and Broward programs, particularly sending case workers into the field to establish contact with the homeless.

The biggest potential hurdle: money.

Some in the local business community may not be as willing to donate money or pay a tax to help the homeless, particularly since Pinellas' homeless population is smaller than Miami-Dade's, said Don Shea, president of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership.

"We just don't have the kind of crisis situation they have down there," Shea said.

But Jeff Parker, a local businessman who helped organize the trip and a longtime friend of Alvah Chapman, was optimistic Pinellas could accomplish anything with the right leadership, he said.

"They may say homelessness isn't a crisis here right now," Parker said. "But try telling that to the family who spent last night on the street. It's a crisis to them."

--Carrie Johnson can be reached at 727 892-2273 or cjohnson@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 4, 2005, 01:42:23]