FLORIDA: Homeless A Growing Concern
The Tampa Tribune
By Sherri Ackerman
sackerman@tampatrib.com
Originally published March 23, 2005
TAMPA - Hillsborough County's homeless population now tops 11,000, but most alarming to many advocates is the increase in the number of children among them.
A grass-roots census released Tuesday by the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County shows the number of homeless children registered in Hillsborough schools jumped 48 percent in the past two years.
``This one always gets to me,'' said Rayme Knuckles, executive director of the coalition.
Homeless children have more health problems, including asthma and ear infections, and are four times more likely to have developmental delays, he said.
More importantly, Knuckles added, these children are four times more likely to become homeless as adults.
``This is why we need Places for People,'' he said during a news conference behind the Hyde Park United Methodist Church in south Tampa.
The program, created by the coalition, calls for a homeless customer service clearinghouse that would coordinate medical care and find low-income housing and shelter for clients.
With Mayor Pam Iorio's direction, the coalition helped create a task force of city, county and community leaders to find a way to pay for the program. The group is expected to submit a plan to Iorio in June.
``I would not be surprised to see some kind of fee, i.e. a tax, as one of the suggested solutions,'' said Fran Davin, task force member and special assistant to Iorio.
``As you can see,'' Davin said of the new census, ``year by year, this problem still grows.''
Medical bills landed Debbie Payne on the street. The 50- year-old woman from Texas sleeps in Hyde Park.
``Living on the street is safer than in a shelter,'' she said.
Swelling in her legs makes it difficult to get around, but to eat she either walks or takes a bus to daily feeding sites across the city.
Sometimes she longs for a room with a bathroom for a hot shower and maybe a kitchen so she can cook a nice meal.
``We don't have any place to go,'' said Payne, one of Hillsborough's 11,023 homeless.
Coalition members and volunteers conducted the census Jan. 27, counting 3,868 homeless people at soup kitchens, shelters, labor pools and makeshift camps.
They added the tally to the 1,758 homeless children counted by the Hillsborough County School District and the 4,295 people identified as homeless by the Florida Department of Children & Families. The remaining 1,102 were counted in jail.
The total population increased by 36 percent from the last count in October 2003.
``We had already seen the increase,'' said Lesa Weikel of Metropolitan Ministries Inc., a private agency that serves homeless women, men and children.
Since October 2000, when the agency began providing meals off-site with community partners, the number of meals has increased from an average of 3,150 a week to 12,130.
Since July 1, 2004, the number of meal locations has increased from 20 to 36.
The United States has about 3.5 million homeless people; on any given night, there are 800,000 people without a place to live.
Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813)
259-7144.