by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Those who believe they’ve seen some new faces among the knots of homeless people downtown are right. The numbers are up; the ages are down.
“There has been growth in the numbers of the homeless from last year,” said Linda Lanier, executive director of the I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless on East Adams Street.
“Just anecdotally — and this is very unscientific — my staff would tell you they have seen more new faces and remarkably young faces in the downtown area,” she added. “That’s just based on observation, but the numbers seem to bear it out.”
When members of the Center’s Hope Team go around downtown in their van, they talk to the people out on the street, finding them shelter, trying to get them services.
“They’ve been struck recently, particularly during the early morning runs, to find so many who are young, in their 20s,” said Lanier. “The average age of a homeless person is in the 30s and 40s.
“They are almost all male, and we find quite a few of them sleeping on the Riverwalk.”
In keeping with historic trends, she said, “Some of them have been coming in from out of town, but not to a big degree. That’s pretty normal.
“We find that about 75 percent of the homeless in Jacksonville are from Jacksonville. It may be a couple of points up or down, but it’s generally in that neighborhood.
“The homeless we see mostly are people from Jacksonville who have fallen on hard times.
Lanier believes the economy has been, and remains, the main reason why the city sees spikes in the number of people on the street.
“We noticed an upswing in the number of homeless about six months before the economists said we were in a recession,” she said.
If there were other reasons, she suggested, the city would see wider swings in the numbers at predictable times.
“This is not like Miami or someplace else,” said Lanier. “If we were really seasonal specific, we would see an influx in the winter. We don’t.
“Those who are looking for warm weather go straight through Jacksonville and on to Miami.”
Although none of the homeless should ever go hungry in Jacksonville, “there really is a capacity problem with the shelters,” said Lanier. “It’s been way over 100 percent of capacity for 30 months. The low actually was around 100 percent. More likely, it’s been at 102, 107 percent.”
Lyn Briggs, director of marketing for Downtown Vision, Inc., said her impression has been that the new faces haven’t added significantly to the overall population.
As some leave the homeless ranks, others — including transients — take their place, she said.
“They’re often not even homeless,” said Briggs. “Some will just come through on their way to someplace else.
“And when we do see some people disappear, we hope it’s because they have gotten jobs and homes of their own.”
The perception that there is a big homeless problem in downtown comes from the city being the only urban center in about a 200-mile radius, Briggs said.
“It’s all relative,” she said. “Homeless people are part of the fabric of every city.
“From our perspective, there are not a lot of homeless people here, especially when you look at the numbers in other cities. And, as we get more people downtown, working and living there, there won’t seem to be so many homeless.”