It’s 6 p.m. Thursday and about 50 men and women, many of them homeless, are seated in an outdoor area behind an old brick building on Tampa Heights’s Florida Avenue, waiting for dinner.
First, Charissa Stepp, 23, the director of what is called The Banquet, asks everyone to keep silent while she says a prayer of thanks. Then the serving begins: In the indoor kitchen of this building called “The Well,” three volunteers pile plates high with beef, zucchini and rice (prepared by Metropolitan Ministries) and hand them to four other volunteers who, acting as waiters and waitresses, distribute them to the hungry.
Most of the diners say “Thank you” or “God bless you,” but a few are so focused on some private anguish that they barely acknowledge the food in front of them.
Most eat avidly — for some, it’s their only meal of the day. There’s laughter now, and conversation, and the occasional friendly argument. By 6:15, plates are empty and the waitstaff comes by with full bowls, offering seconds to whoever wants them. Then, if Metro Min has provided, there’s dessert: cookies or cake.
Their bellies full, the guests wander back to their lives on the street or at the Good Samaritan Inn while volunteers collect the plates and glasses and hand them to others who wash them in big metal sinks. By 7, the chairs and tables are folded up and the eating area is mostly deserted. Another Banquet has come and gone.
The Well has served Tampa’s poor once again.
Not everybody is comfortable about this.
“He told me that he’d be crucified if he renewed our lease,” says Jon Dengler, The Well’s visionary director, about landlord Pawan Rattan. Dengler explains that Rattan told him the pressure from businesses and private citizens in Tampa Heights was simply overwhelming: This home for the homeless was marring an area that’s on the rise socio-economically. Rattan tells me he doesn’t remember making such a statement, and adds that he won’t decide for a few more months whether or not to renew The Well’s lease.
But Dengler knows what he heard, and is already thinking about how to carry on when he loses the building in mid-2017. One thing is certain: He won’t give up on the poor. He’s profoundly committed to serving them — sees it as a religious obligation — and nothing like a gentrifying community will stop him.
Still, it’s an admirable enterprise that he’s in danger of losing. At the moment, The Well provides a large family room in which the homeless can meet each other, eat, watch TV or even sleep. There’s a free grocery that distributes food to the hungry, a bicycle shop, outdoor vegetable gardens, and, not unnecessarily, a shower and a clean bathroom. Once a month, there’s a free medical clinic, and on occasion, free haircuts. On Tuesdays, The Well serves dinner at the Good Samaritan Inn up Florida Ave., also with food from Metro Min; on Thursdays, there’s The Banquet. About 100 people use The Well’s services every day, and some of them depend on the place as the only home Tampa offers them. Without it, they’d have nowhere to go.
The sailing isn’t always smooth, though. Rick Fernandez, genial president of the Tampa Heights Civic Association, notes that a few months ago, he alerted Denger to “multiple complaints” he’d fielded about the The Well. There were sightings of people drinking, selling drugs, and even “people having sex back in the back areas — generally, the kinds of things you don’t want to see in your neighborhood where your children live.”
But after Fernandez conferred with Dengler, the Well’s founder held a “town hall” with his population, and Fernandez says the problem was solved — there’s been only one “minimal” complaint since. As to landlord Rattan’s decision whether or not to renew The Well’s lease, “that’s between him and his tenant,” says Fernandez. “As far as I’m concerned, Jon is being a good neighborhood member at this point.”
If The Well goes, it’s the poor and hungry who’ll feel it most. Consider Tom Logan, a regular denizen of The Well who lives in a house rented by Dengler. Tom is 64, a tall, thin Caucasian man with a bushy blondish beard and glasses. He tells me he’s been coming to The Well for about a year now.
“I got here because when I first was in Tampa, I was living under a bridge in downtown. The police gave me a warning, told me if they caught me again in the next year, I was going to do some jail time. So basically, they pushed me north, away from downtown… They want to make downtown look better.”
Logan was sleeping in a vacant lot when another homeless man told him about The Well. Now “I volunteer, I straighten up the pantry, I’ve got my driver’s license back so I do pickups for The Well.” He uses the food pantry at least once a week, but usually eats only one or two meals a day: “If there’s breakfast available, I’ll eat breakfast. If they serve lunch here, I’ll have lunch.” What will he do if The Well closes and he loses his housing? “I’ll be back on the streets.” Or, if the police catch him, in jail.
Tom’s concerns are echoed by Dwayn Gregory, 51, known as “Shorty,” an African-American man missing most of his front teeth, but radiantly smiling when he discusses The Well.
“This is my favorite place to be at, man. It’s a beautiful thing what they’re doing for people.” Shorty goes to The Banquet every Thursday night, and says he comes not just for the food but “for the people. It’s beautiful, man. It’s amazing to see somebody that’s so kind and giving to people to make sure the homeless is fed. It means a lot to my heart.”
What would happen if The Well ceased to exist?
“There would be a whole lot of hurt people out there… The majority of the people that I know are right out on the streets today. And this here is a big progress for them.”
It’s not clear just what can be done to save The Well. If some philanthropist doesn’t come along with the money to buy the property (smaller contributors can donate at welltampa.com), Dengler, Stepp, and the few other underpaid staff members of this home for the homeless will have no choice but to move on. Dengler says he’s working on it: “We’re looking toward maybe some mobile models where we can put some of our services on trailers, buses, whatever, and actually be able to… work with communities in poor neighborhoods. We would love to find partners to help invest in the work we do, whether it is helping to purchase this property or another property, or helping us to finance and go mobile.”
Beyond that, he mostly wishes for a change in the consciousness of area residents.
“The Well is nothing but an effort to help the poor, so in my mind, anything that anyone can do to love the poor, to stand with the poor, to shoulder the weight and pressure that is on the poor in the community… I feel like it’s on all of us to take some personal responsibility for what we see in our city and the struggles of the vulnerable. And see that this is a byproduct of the kind of community that we’re building.
“And we have to look out for them.”
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2016.