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Official: Move homeless to public housing

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published February 8, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG — City Council member Jamie Bennett is pushing a plan to temporarily relocate more than 150 homeless residents into empty apartments at the city’s largest public housing complex.

There is enough room at the 486-unit Graham-Rogall to close the city’s scattered tent cities, Bennet says.

He has asked the St. Petersburg Housing Authority, which owns the Graham-Rogall, to sign on to the idea. The issue could come before the authority’s board this month.

There are 179 vacant apartments at the complex.

“This could be a huge solution,” Bennett said, adding that the units could also be used for people now living around Williams Park.

The apartments would be paid for using 90-day emergency rental vouchers, which already are available through city funding, Bennett said.

In the meantime, officials across the county would continue looking for permanent shelter space. Mayor Rick Baker says a new shelter with up to 200 beds should be ready by next winter.

Housing authority and city officials said Thursday that many details of the proposal still needed to be sorted out.

Chief among them: The housing authority has stopped accepting new residents into Graham, the portion of the complex where there are now vacancies.

The housing authority is considering whether to sell the Graham-Rogall to a private developer, who wants to redevelop the complex into about 300 condominiums.

Officials closed Graham to new residents in order to start the process of relocating the building’s current residents.

Housing authority executive director Darrell Irions was not available for comment, according to a spokesman, but said in a statement he would bring the matter to the agency’s seven-member board.

“Mr. Irions said he would try to help in any way possible, but he hasn’t finished researching it,” Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis said Thursday. “It’s not the simplest thing.”

Apartments also likely would need maintenance as well as furnishings.

And it was unclear how an influx of homeless residents would affect other Graham-Rogall residents, many of whom are disabled or elderly.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said they would agree to the temporary housing. But the housing authority must first change its procedures to move homeless people to the front of its waiting lists, officials said. Nearly 1,500 people are waiting for federal subsidized housing in the city.

Social service workers have been attempting to identify temporary housing for the homeless, but finding landlords to accept the emergency vouchers has proven difficult, officials say.

The partnership with the housing authority seems a natural fit, says Bennett, who added many in the community have drawn a similar conclusion.

Count local neighborhood activist Karl Nurse among them.

“Right hand,” he said, “meet left hand.”

Aaron Sharockman can be reached at asharockman@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2273.

[Last modified February 8, 2007, 22:28:38]