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Letter to the editor

Tent city opens Saturday

But the homeless have had a mixed reaction to the site so far from downtown.

By SHERRI DAY and CRISTINA SILVA, Times Staff Writers
Published November 30, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Amid the cacophony from earthmovers, work crews and moving trucks, the Rev. Bob Morris offered a blessing and a prayer.

Morris, the vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, asked Thursday for the successful completion of Pinellas Hope and the protection and safety of people working on the project.

His is a pressing request. The temporary homeless shelter, a multiagency response to last year's tent city debacle, opens Saturday.

Located near 126th Avenue and 49th Street N, the project aims to house 225 to 250 homeless adults. Just days before its big debut, Pinellas Hope organizers scrambled to ready the site, a 10-acre parcel of formerly vacant land now abuzz with modular trailers, showers, bathrooms and, soon, dozens of camping tents.

Both critics and supporters are carefully watching to see if the camp will help soothe still-festering wounds over last year's homeless crisis, punctuated by the now infamous tent slashings by St. Petersburg police, NIMBY cries from frustrated property owners and a rash of killings involving homeless men.

The most vociferous detractors call Pinellas Hope little more than a bandage on a homeless situation that will continue to worsen, given state budget cuts, the lack of affordable housing and what appears to be a swelling homeless population.

"If I were a businessman, I would be saying that's a bad investment," the Rev. Bruce Wright, an advocate for the homeless who helped create last year's tent city, said of Pinellas Hope.

Wright and critics like him prefer that city and county officials keep their promises to bring in emergency-management-style trailers for the homeless or to build a permanent shelter. Mostly, they want permanent solutions.

Government officials say a lack of funding forced them to at least temporarily abandon ideas for converting a former transit authority building in Largo into a homeless shelter or purchasing Federal Emergency Management Agency-style trailers.

Still, they say they have been moving to create long-term solutions and cite Pinellas Hope as one example among many.

"I don't know how you could walk through this facility and not believe that we're closer to a long-term solution," St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker said Thursday, as he strolled through the campsite.

He added: "What we've had in the past is a situation where you get to the wintertime, and you can't support the influx from other places. This is designed to do just that."

County officials also point to several other accomplishments, including the creation of 49 shelter beds throughout Pinellas, the mobilization of homeless outreach teams and more than $18.3-million in dedicated funding for homeless programs in 2007.

But local advocacy groups that serve the homeless say the population continues to grow.

At St. Vincent de Paul, organizers report a 6 percent increase in the number of meals they serve. The Salvation Army has turned its recreation room into a sleeping area to meet a bigger demand, and ASAP Homeless Services is doling out more meals, too.

"It's getting worse," said Karen Butler, ASAP's executive director.

The road to hope

A collective of city, county and private partners has donated approximately $1.3-million to fund and operate Pinellas Hope, the brainchild of the Diocese of St. Petersburg and Catholic Charities.

Frank Murphy, Catholic Charities president, approached the city with the idea earlier this year, at the request of Bishop Robert N. Lynch.

For Catholic Charities, it has meant taking on a much larger role than it did last winter when city officials asked it to step in and help provide social services to the homeless after the tent slashings.

Once inside Pinellas Hope, residents will receive a new tent, sleeping mat, bag of toiletries and a plastic container with a lock to safely store their belongings, organizers said. They also can count on at least one hot meal a day, access to social services, job placement help and shower and restroom facilities.

The ultimate goal, Murphy said, is to transition the homeless from Pinellas Hope into permanent jobs and housing.

"If at the end of this whole thing, I tell you only 20 (have been placed), my heart's going to sink," Murphy said. "I would like it to be more like 150. That would be success, but we'll see."

Lynch, the Catholic bishop, already muses about re-creating a similar project throughout the church's five-county diocese if Pinellas Hope is successful.

But first, the homeless have to show.

So far, reaction among the homeless has been mixed. Some have angst about the program's many rules and its distance from downtown.

Transportation also is an issue. Catholic Charities has two buses - one of its own and another on loan from Pinellas County Schools - to transport the homeless to the shelter every day.

Still, outreach teams have referred more than 100 people to the camp and expect that number to grow as word spreads.

"I just hope that the homeless will come," Lynch said. "And that they will feel welcomed, and helped and assisted and unthreatened."

Sherri Day can be reached at 813-226-3405 or sday@sptimes.com Cristina Silva can be reached at 727-893-8846.

[Last modified November 30, 2007, 00:04:38]