Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

If homeless ignored, problem will fester

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published January 30, 2007

Local and national audiences have seen and read about the recent clashes between St. Petersburg officials and a large, increasingly organized population of homeless people. There have been protests and press conferences and tent cities erected and then destroyed by police.

North Pinellas residents who have followed the news coverage may have shaken their heads and been grateful the problem is down in south county.

But it isn't just in St. Petersburg. While the issue of homelessness has not exploded into the headlines in North Pinellas as it has in St. Petersburg, the area between Ulmerton Road and the Pasco County line has a substantial population of people who have no permanent shelter.

In North Pinellas, homeless men, women and children are sleeping in tents or cardboard encampments in patches of woods, in public parks, in cars, or on the sidewalks.

They emerge when daylight comes and the sun begins to warm the air. Some aren't difficult to spot because they carry all they own on their backs, but others slip unnoticed into the milieu of daily life in North Pinellas.

Lacking a home to anchor them, they spend their days in places like libraries, sunny parks, at centers that help the homeless, or working jobs, trying to earn enough to support themselves and their families.

As indicated in the letter to the editor today from a Palm Harbor resident, homeless people are living close to neighborhoods and businesses because they have nowhere else to go in fully developed North Pinellas.

They increasingly rely on feeding programs, which themselves are stretched thin because of recent decreases in donations of cash and food.

And with housing costs rising quickly, little affordable housing, and wages stagnant, the problem of homelessness is going to grow. A count of the homeless population, now under way in Pinellas, will assign some numbers to the problem but likely will underestimate how many people are trying to exist without a roof over their heads.

North Pinellas is fortunate to have the CHIPS center in Clearwater, which provides food and other services for large numbers of homeless people, and other fine assistance programs operated by churches and nonprofit social agencies.

However, they need more money and more volunteers, and more support and recognition for the difficult work they do.

Local governments in North Pinellas have not ignored the issue of homelessness, but they have not treated it like the social crisis that it is or devoted the time and dollars to it that are needed.

Those governments have a lesson to learn from St. Petersburg's pain.

[Last modified January 29, 2007, 20:45:43]