Throughout the nation, civil rights advocates are challenging city ordinances that limit panhandling, public sleeping and giving food to the homeless. This two-part story looks at downtown Jacksonville’s homeless situation and local efforts to control it. See Thursday’s Daily Record for part one.
by Liz Daube
Staff Writer
Elimination
When Terry and Vikki Wilkins opened their UPS Store on Hogan Street more than two years ago, their wallets and hearts were often open to the homeless people who approached them Downtown.
“We used to give them money,” said Terry.
But one day, a man walked into the store and asked customers for cash. Terry gently asked him to leave.
“I said, ‘Have a nice day.’ And he turned around and said, ‘Well, my day is gonna be better than yours because I don’t have to work for a living.’”
Since then, the Wilkins have signed up for JSO’s High Intensity Trespass Zone (HITZ) program. It allows police officers to arrest people trespassing on private property when owners aren’t present, so long as people like the Wilkinses have posted a detailed sign.
“Since I’ve gotten the HITZ program, nobody has gone to the bathroom at my back door,” said Vikki. “They’re going to have to get help or they’re going to have to move on to another city like we’ve been for the last 20 years.”
Vikki spreads out folders filled with information: city ordinances, news articles and printouts of eight sex offender profiles (each listing a homeless shelter address). On her computer, she has organized e-mail complaints to City officials, complete with photographic evidence. In one photograph, a man wearing what appears to be urine-soaked pants is sprawled out on a cement planter. In another collection, weary-looking men shield their faces as they are run off a porch.
Vikki wants social services agencies to run background checks on the people they serve. It’s not just about wasting resources on addicts and criminals, she says; it’s about protecting the women and children living in shelters.
“People that give them a dollar here and there think they’re helping, but they’re financing keeping them on the drugs,” she said.
In a previous Daily Record article, Wally Butler, a Downtown police officer, said the HITZ program and other enforcement efforts are often the only way to break a homeless addict’s self-destructive lifestyle.
“They’ll go from one agency to another and make the circuit so that they never have to buy food,” said Butler. “All the money they can get their hands on goes into liquor and drugs. When they’ve done all the drugs they can do they completely pass out.”
Butler explained that a second misdemeanor conviction requires a person to serve six months in jail or enter a four-month drug treatment program.
“The cruelest thing any of us can do to these offenders is to ignore the problem,” said Butler.
Vikki says she wants to help. She points out a homeless man shuffling by and says, “He should be sitting in a rocking chair. He’s a little old man.” He is, by coincidence, the same man who offered his change to a Downtown ambassador when she offered him a “Helping Hands” brochure. Vikki says she has been trying to help him file for Medicaid, but she hasn’t received much of a response.
“Why would you try to hide them for Super Bowl?” Vikki asks. “Because it’s an event. But every day is an event for us working Downtown. But you don’t want to hide it, you want to eliminate it. How do you fix it?”
Blessings
The clouds above Flash and I have turned dark gray. Drops of rain begin to fall on us, and I wonder where homeless people go when it rains.
“I better get back to work,” I say. “Good luck.” I glance at the churning sky as it gains strength. If Flash wants to ask me for cash again, this is his last chance.
But Flash just smiles at me, his gaze never shifting from eye level.
“All right,” he says. “Hey, hey – God bless you and your family, all right?”
Changes
Sherry Burns, executive director of the I. M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless, said Jacksonville has strengths and weaknesses in its homeless services. Meals are abundant, for example. Beds, Burns added, are not.
“There are always more people on the streets than there are beds,” she said. “On any given day, 3,000 people are homeless in Jacksonville, and there are less than 1,000 beds.”
Wanda Lanier, Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition (ESHC) executive director, agreed with Burns about the meals and lack of beds. She said ESHC believes its 10-year plan can end homelessness in Jacksonville. More than 200 cities have adopted similar plans throughout the country. ESHC’s plan calls for long-term solutions that would combine social services with 565 supportive housing units.
The costs of homelessness sparked the Bush administration to support 10-year plans in recent years, according to a recent article in Seattle Weekly. Studies have found that law enforcement, emergency room services and other crisis care for the homeless costs cities more than affordable housing and regular medical care. Jacksonville spends more than $35 million on homeless emergency services each year.
Lanier said ESHC has been able to gather funds to sustain local social service efforts, but not the loftier goals of the master plan. An “expression of support” for the plan was passed unanimously in City Council on Tuesday.
“The next step is to try to find funding within the city government,” said Lanier. She said ESHC is watching the City’s 2006-07 budget preparation closely.
In the meantime, Burns said women and children have been the fastest growing population at the Sulzbacher Center. The center converted a men’s residence hall into a family shelter a few years ago, and Trinity Rescue Mission is near completion of a new women’s shelter on Beaver Street.
“That’s the changing face of homelessness — it’s now predominantly women and families,” said Burns. “Homeless people really aren’t that visible. Most people who we care for are not proud of their circumstances. They go from not paying their rent to staying with friends to living in the living room of a relative until they’ve exhausted their support system.
“Then they wind up here. In many cases, these are people just like you and me who had lives a couple of months ago.”
Home
As I walk away, the rain starts to come down in earnest. I hold a copy of the panhandling ordinance over my head as I jog down the street, my black flats clip-clopping along in the water.
Ordinarily, I like the rain: the soft smell, the heavy air. But in the city, the rain dredges up the hidden scents of sewers. It tangles with the human waste lingering in the bushes near the bus stop.
I move faster, dodging traffic. I wonder if Flash has a family somewhere, a safe place to return to. I think of my dry cubicle, my soft bed. I want to go home.