by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Tough economic times have driven record numbers of First Coast families to the city’s largest homeless shelter.
According to representatives from the I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless, the number of children alone needing a night of shelter at the center has nearly doubled from 56 in May of last year to 107 today.
“We’re way over capacity,” said Sulzbacher spokesperson Jordan Boss. “And when I say over capacity, I mean we’ve gotten to the point where there are too many people sleeping on the floor.
“And these people are local. They didn’t come here from other cities and it has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina.”
Boss said male dorms at the Center have been converted to accommodate the influx of families and children, but neither that temporary fix nor new on-site facilities coming in the next year would be enough if the upward trend continues.
“No, and I wish I knew how to better explain the increases we’re seeing,” she said. “We saw a similar rise last year, but this is worse. It’s disturbing.
“People come here for so many different reasons — medical, job-related, physiological reasons — but when they arrive we do our best to accommodate them and it’s getting much more difficult.”
Sulzbacher director Sherry Burns and several board members are scheduled to meet with Mayor John Peyton and City Council President Kevin Hyde today.
Burns said the group would discuss the “new trend over the past year” as well as a “long range plan to make improvements.”
“We do have a lot to talk about,” Burns said of the meeting that was requested by the Sulzbacher board. “Yes, there are more families and children coming to us today, but the reality is that the homeless population in Jacksonville is continuing to increase dramatically and we’re not keeping in pace in terms of funding or City services.
“We need to make (City Hall) aware of that because this is their center.”
Burns was also unable to pinpoint any specific reason behind the ever-expanding homeless population saying, “there aren’t as many programs to catch people as there could be.”
“And when you combine that with the way the economy has been, people are being left without the means to stay housed. We need to be able to respond in kind.”