Northpinellas: Post office will lock up every night

CLEARWATER -- The downtown Clearwater post office will start closing its doors each night for the first time in its 68-year history, starting in October.

The reason: Homeless people have been using the 1,200-square-foot building as a restroom, urinating on air-conditioning vents.

"It's not pretty," said Debra Gornik, manager of the handsome Mediterranean-revival-style building at 650 Cleveland St.

She said the building's custodian is fed up with having to clean up the mess every morning.

The post office currently is open 24 hours a day. On weekends and after working hours, people can drop off mail, buy stamps from machines and get mail from their mailboxes.

Starting Oct. 1, the post office will be locked on Sundays and holidays, and the new hours will be 5 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 5 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays.

Police Chief Sid Klein, who said he was unaware of the problem at the post office, said he would increase police presence there.

"I just found out about it and have subsequently asked our officers to start checking the post office," Klein said.

Klein is deeply involved in trying to solve the city's homeless problem and led the movement to build a homeless shelter that opened three years ago and is operated by the Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project.

Klein said homeless people used to be able to use the public restroom t Crest Lake Park, but residents objected. It is no longer open to the homeless. There is no other public restroom for them in the city, he said.

Ms. Gornik said police have cleared people out of the post office from time to time, "but they come right back."

Homeless people also use the air-conditioned post office as a shelter from the weather and as a place to sleep.

Some of the homeless have approached people inside the post office for money, Ms. Gornik said, and she is afraid someone is going to get hurt.

"One customer told me today that it's pretty scary when he comes in here on Sundays," Ms. Gornik said Thursday. "He said he usually waits until someone else can walk with him before he goes inside."

Homeless people also use the downtown public library's restroom for bathing, Klein said.

"They continually have a problem, but it's a daytime problem," he said. "(The library) is closed at night."

Tammy Carlson, an intake counselor who runs the day center at the Clearwater Homeless Intervention Project, said the shelter at 1339 Park St. has no public restroom. The shelter provides temporary housing for men and women who are required to get jobs, participate in counseling and abide by the shelter's curfew.

The homeless "would rather use public facilities, but people won't let them," Mrs. Carlson said. "They are so discriminated against. If they use portable potties at construction sites, they're arrested coming out of them."

Mrs. Carlson said a public restroom in downtown Clearwater might help.

And that's just what the city's Main Street program has in mind.

"It's in our plans for downtown," said Diane Smith, the program's coordinator.

The public restroom would be mainly for vendors who work weekdays in the city's downtown park, she said.

But members of Main Street, which includes the city, the Downtown Development Board and other property owners and agencies, are planning to meet with the Police Department to get a better picture of the homeless situation in the downtown area, she said.

"It is sad. There's not enough bed space and resources to deal with the homeless," Klein said. "'It's a legitimate problem with no solution at the moment. But it's getting to be a bigger and bigger problem, and it's an issue that has to be addressed if we're ever going to" succeed with downtown redevelopment.

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