Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

It's tough to track north county's homeless

By JOSE CARDENAS
Published January 30, 2007

CLEARWATER - The makeshift bed in the woods of Cliff Stephens Park was made up of pages from Sunday's newspaper.

"Okay, this is a fresh one here," Dana Slaughter said, examining the site.

Unfortunately, if a homeless person had spent Sunday night by the creek, he or she was long gone by 9 a.m. Monday.

That was bad news for Slaughter, client services director at the Homeless Emergency Project in Clearwater, who was looking for homeless people to fill out a housing survey.

Slaughter and four other volunteers spent Monday hiking through wooded areas of North Pinellas looking for transients as part of the county's annual census of the homeless.

Up to 200 volunteers participated as counters across Pinellas, 40 or so of them in the northern part of the county.

Final numbers of homeless people who filled out surveys would not be available for a few days because the count would go into the rest of the week, organizers said. Last year's census counted 4,710 homeless people in Pinellas, but organizers believe that number was low, because the counting was done on a rainy day.

While the homeless people have well-known outdoor gathering places in St. Petersburg, organizers said they are more elusive in North Pinellas because they don't have spots where they congregate.

So on Monday, Slaughter and other volunteers who trekked into wooded areas found mostly signs of camps, not people.

Most people who filled surveys in North Pinellas were contacted in soup kitchens and shelters, said Libby Stone, director of development for Homeless Emergency Project and one of the organizers of the count.

Cold weather, too, she said, might have also forced the homeless to leave outdoor camps and go into shelters.

"It's a tough task because in this part of the county, it's not a centralized population," Stone said. "You have to look one by one."

In the past, volunteers got a head count simply by asking people if they were homeless. This year, the volunteers asked people to fill out a survey.

This year was also the first time that formerly homeless people were used to identify potential locations where homeless people might live, Stone said.

One volunteer who used to be homeless was Bill Bruhn. He was paired with Tim Hadlow, a therapist with Directions for Mental Health.

They got about 25 people to fill out surveys at two day-labor hiring agencies in Tarpon Springs and Palm Harbor.

"Once they see another homeless person, they are more willing to open up," Hadlow said.

Bruhn also knew the two parks he and Hadlow visited were probably empty because the homeless often stay with friends during the day, panhandle or find work.

"They are all gone from the camps during the day," said Bruhn, 47. "A lot of them go to the work force."

Slaughter worked with three formerly homeless people who now live at housing provided by her agency. They started the day at 5 a.m. by visiting three day-labor agencies near Cleveland Street and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater.

They got 65 people to fill out forms, then headed to the wooded areas northeast of the Philadelphia Phillies spring-training complex.

Slaughter logged the possible camps they found as places that outreach workers could visit later.

In the afternoon, the group headed for the bus terminal in downtown Clearwater. One homeless person who filled out a survey there was Donna Fisher.

Fisher said the housing voucher she got from the county ran out a few days ago. She had to wait until Feb. 6 before she could get another one.

Fisher said she was hospitalized with rheumatoid arthritis and lung disease about a year ago. She lost a house she had rented in Largo.

She and her boyfriend stayed with friends Sunday night, and the night before they stayed on the street in downtown Clearwater.

"We didn't even sleep; it was freezing," said Fisher, 43. "There are a lot of smart people that are homeless. Then the streets kick your butt. You feel like a big loser."

Jose Cardenas can be reached at jcardenas@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4224.

[Last modified January 29, 2007, 20:45:59]