This past Sunday, I attended a conversation about the homeless at a church in my hometown, St. Petersburg, Florida. We have been having quite the time with the homeless here in St. Petersburg lately, and this church was trying to do something to help. The church was holding an open house to discuss its plans for helping the homeless in our community. It was the conversation that took place outside the church, in the shade of the pine trees that I want to share with you.
For the back story, the church's plans and the conversation, follow me...
The last couple of months have been interesting times in St. Petersburg, Florida, my hometown. St. Petersburg is a beautiful community of about 250,000 on the western shore of Tampa Bay. It has been a mecca for winter visitors since the Orange Belt Rail Road was brought to St. Petersburg before the turn of the 20th Century. It has also typically seen an upturn in its homeless population during the winter months.
But something very different has happened here this year. We've had homeless tent cities spring up. They've been evicted from one location. They have been rousted from and had their tents slashed by police at another location. You can watch some video of this atrocity here.
This is not the kind of image our city wants to project - besides, it was a terrible thing to do. Meanwhile, activists delivered new tents to the homeless who set up camp a few blocks away. The city then convened a "Homeless Summit". More than 300 citizens spent a Saturday morning at a charette devoted to the current homeless situation. They were seated at about 30 separate tables with their flip charts and marking pens. They were given reports from the County Homeless Coalition, from the police department, Catholic Charities and the City Attorney. Each table was then asked to first develop their three top issues related to the current homeless situation, which after some discussion, each table reported in turn. Nearly every table had affordable housing listed as one of their issues.
Next came the hard part - what are your proposed solutions? Eventually a three pronged approach was developed. The first prong was to , believe it or not, get the homeless tent city moved back to its original location. It is closer to needed human services - showers and toilets - and social services. This is meant to be a temporary solution as the second prong is made ready. That prong is to create more emergency shelter space available so that the homeless would not have to live in the tents. This is going to take approximately 90 days to set up. When it is ready, the tent city would be shut down and the homeless could stay in the new emergency shelter spaces.
In the meantime, the City Council would be looking to enact new ordinances. These ordinances would be modelled after another community's that so far has seemed to pass constitutional muster. The key part to survive constitutional scrutiny is that there must be shelter spaces available. If someone camping in the public right away refuses the offer of available public shelter, they could then be arrested for an ordinance violation. If there is no available shelter, arrest is not an option. The citizens desire is twofold:
First, to provide sufficient emergency (short term) shelter space for the homeless;
Second, to prevent more tent cities from springing up.
This is where the church comes in. The church has decided that they wan to provide space for additional tents on their property. Unfortunately, the church decided it wanted to do this after the City had decided on the program described above. Since one of the goals of the City's plans is to eliminate future tent cities, the church's plans put it squarely at odds with the city. On top of that, the church property is not zoned for a tent city or camping for that matter.
In an attempt to gain neighborhood support for their plan, the church held an open house. There was a more or less formal discussion in the church fellowship hall. the real action, however, was to take place under the pine trees outside the hall. There the leading activist for the homeless and a primary enabler of the church plan was talking quietly with a former neighborhood association president. This gentleman also fancies himself as a mover and shaker behind the scenes in the local Republican party.
The conversation started out civilly enough. Our Republican friend announced that he had all the compassion in the world for folks who found themselves suddenly homeless. He related how he had once taken in a young man who needed help and assisted him to get back to self sufficiency. We all agreed that the main problem was one of affordable housing.
Then the conversation started taking divergent views. While saying he had yet to make up his mind about the church's plans, our friend reported a list of problems as to why the church should not be allowed to move forward with its plans. Mostly, while some of these issues were true enough, the bulk of his argument was all about NIMBY. The homeless advocate admitted that they intended to "cherry pick" the subset of tent city residents to move onto the church property. There was a screening process in place to choose only homeless folks who had a good chance of becoming self sufficient during the limited time frame envisioned in the church's plans. Neighborhood doubters were asked if they wished to participate in the screening process. They were "too busy".
The conversation really started to deteriorate when a dear friend of mine spoke up. My friend, a world renowned photographer barely got two words out of his mouth before he was personally attacked by our Republican friend. My photographer friend was cut off by the Republican who dismissed him as embracing every "liberal" cause which came down the pike. My friend protested that his antagonist knew very little about him and that it was premature to make that sort of judgement about him.
Our Republican friend became adamant and started shaking his finger very close to our photographers face. He vowed that he would "do everything within my power" to defeat any elected official who voted in support of the churches plans. He made a similar threat about any neighborhood association officials who did likewise. These threats were all the more ludicrous because:
1)Our Republican friend was already committed to doing everything in his power to defeat the incumbent Democrat City Council Member for that District.
2)The District is heavily Democratic, being the most successfully integrated area in our shamefully self segregated city.
3)The Republicans have so far been unable to produce a viable challenger.
The finger shaking incident was pretty much the end of the conversation. My friend and I left pretty much at the point that things started turning ugly. My friend is a Jewish Quaker. His wide had already left because even the civil conversation was too confrontational for her. I followed my friend to his home to provide him cover from his wife's disappointment. For some strange reason she likes me, and we had not seen each other for a while.
The homeless situation in St. Petersburg remains unresolved. The city's longer term plan for more emergency shelter space is running into funding snags. This is beginning to look a lot like the spent nuclear fuel storage fiasco.
But that, as they say, is another story.
Police slash open tents to roust the homeless
http://www.sptimes.com/...
The Great St. Pete Homeless Tent Raid (Video and Troxler Column)
http://www.sptimes.com/...