Separately, but often in concert, the nonprofit agencies that compose the Hillsborough County Homeless Coalition offer everything from shelter to therapy to Hillsborough's homeless population on a continuing basis.
And once a year, they go out and count them.
On a breezy Thursday late afternoon, at Mental Health Care, Inc.'s "Safe Place" location in Tampa Heights, I climb into an oversized white cargo van with three census takers and a journalist from the Tampa Tribune. A Tribune photographer follows in his car.
Virtually all of Hillsborough's service providers assist in the annual census. The county is divided into five zones; agencies send teams of employees and volunteers to survey ERs, day-labor offices, soup kitchens, documented campsites, libraries and other locations where the homeless are known to congregate. Counting every homeless person in Hillsborough County over the course of one day and night might seem an impossible task, but Homeless Coalition CEO Rayme Nuckles seems certain they've been getting fairly accurate numbers. And, anyway, the bottom line is that the agencies and government simply have to have some bankable figures to work with.
Mental Health Care's Jenine LaCoe, Sonya Bufe and Suzanne Tatum have been charged with checking several campsites in the South Hillsborough area, between the Port of Tampa and Ruskin. (I am asked not to reveal specific locations or nearby streets, as the homeless are often the victims of unreported violence. There also are rumors that arrests for vagrancy are quietly on the rise, something aid advocates obviously feel is no solution to the problem.) We're undertaking our sweep as evening approaches, when people return to the camps to bed down. At the same time, in LaCoe's words, "we really don't want to be walking around out there after dark."
Our first stop is a copse of trees along a residential side street. LaCoe asks the writers to stay in the van while she checks it out; we're able to contain ourselves for all of two minutes before we're across the street. The small, shadow-darkened camp is perhaps 15 feet in diameter, the ground strewn with filthy shredded linens, pieces of mattress, broken glass, piled muddy clothing, and more quart beer bottles than I managed to kill during three years of junior college. There's an overturned shopping cart, like a sad cliché.
No one is, er, home. None of the surveyors are surprised.
We move on, to a narrow road behind various run-down major-thoroughfare businesses. Where the road makes an abrupt left-hand swerve, a rutted two-track car trail continues straight, along the tree line. Three figures, two male and one female, loiter where the trail begins. As the van slows to park, the two men head off down the trail, veering right into the woods. The woman, an exceedingly tired-looking blonde maybe in her late 30s — hell, maybe just a very lived-in 28 — remains, an unlikely gatekeeper seated on an upside-down bucket. The census takers pull several duffel bags (full of hygiene products like shampoo and toothpaste, snacks, and cool-weather clothes) from the van. Bufe engages the woman, who agrees to take Mental Health Care's survey but leads her nervously away from the open street corner and the Trib's lensman. The rest of us hike up the trail a short distance, to the litter that signals the entrance to another camp.
This campsite is much bigger, and neater, than the previous one. Most of the debris is pushed out to the clearing's edges, though the quart bottles are omnipresent. A guy who looks to be in his mid-20s with a thin, triangular face bracketed by a Sean John baseball cap and devilish goatee sits with a heavily tanned older man sporting crazed wisps surrounding his bald spot and a scruffy, just-filling-in beard.
The younger man gives his name as Michael; he's got an easy, wired smile and a makeshift yellow bandage wrapped around the knuckles of his right hand. The older one claims he's not homeless, a somewhat dubious assertion given his appearance and tendency to jarringly shift the conversation to the subject of God.
Michael's been back here two years. He says he became homeless somewhat deliberately, walking off his job as a fishing boat's captain after a particularly frightening storm and never looking back, but he also admits he and his companion ducked back here to smoke a little crack. Michael washes his clothes every three days at a sympathetic nearby car wash, and claims the local homeless population has evolved, out of necessity, into its own community, pooling resources and looking out for one another.
"We don't know each other for shit," he says, "but we've become a family … every Friday we pool our money, go over to [a local restaurant], and eat until we're full."
He removes the bandage on his hand while explaining how he had to defend a fellow tribesman from a would-be thief. The knuckles are mangled in a way that suggests surely more than one of them is broken.
The three girls hand out duffels. I shake both men's hands on the way out, gingerly taking Michael's slender, busted one and ashamed of myself for immediately worrying about scabies, infection, leprosy.
Walking back to the van, I ask LaCoe if anyone's run into violent trouble during a trip like this. She says she can't think of a single incident. While Bufe is the only one who's participated in a previous census, all three of them are obviously experienced and competent at dealing with homeless individuals, exercising a wise combination of courtesy and alertness.
After driving by a few more sites on the list that appear no longer viable (fenced off, on land now seeing development, etc.), we stop at the end of another dead-end road, at the head of another path leading into the woods, marked by another shopping cart. We cross a small, pungent creek on a tired plank and find ourselves in the middle of a full-blown compound.
Tents, one or two handmade from clear plastic and one or two manufactured commercially, ring the now-familiar area of refuse, bottles and bucket stools. A clothesline runs from one tent to a tree, heavy with jeans and shirts.
"You really do feel like you're standing at someone's house back here," murmurs LaCoe.
She's absolutely right — the sense of intrusion is palpable. But while people are obviously still using the site, there appears to be no one around.
Do they hide when they hear someone coming?
"Probably," replies Bufe.
Leaving, our van becomes stuck, its rear wheels spinning in the muck of a shallow drainage ditch. I head back into the woods, looking for something to put underneath the wheels for traction's sake, and notice a thin black man wearing a bright baseball cap standing stock-still at the camp across the creek. He finally raises his arm in greeting; I do the same, then hurry back to inform LaCoe. She goes across the creek, and returns with Wade, who cheerfully answers Bufe's survey ("How long have you been back here?" "About a year." "Are you a longtime resident of Hillsborough County?" "No, I came down with a fair from South Carolina." "Have you ever been arrested for alcohol or drugs?" "Yes." "Would you consider yourself an addict?" "Nope.") while we attempt to get the van back on the asphalt.
None of the subjects we've encountered seem particularly happy to be homeless, a common misconception among people who go to work to pay their rent. At the same time, however, none seem desperate to change their situation, either, but rather are resigned to the inertia of their current lives. This is one of the biggest problems for programs like the ones Mental Health Care offers, programs that work only when the homeless individuals find the motivation to seek solutions themselves.
Finally, the van is freed. We check a few more locations, including the first one we hit. All are busts, so we head back to Tampa Heights and Safe Place to log the girls' findings.
The grand total?
Two males and one female. Of course, we saw evidence of many more people, and several individuals who certainly appeared homeless biked or walked by the van as we shuttled from campsite to campsite, but the team was instructed to count persons at the campsites only. Folks who were not engaged there, or were engaged and reported themselves to be, um, homeful, are not logged by this team.
"I just keep telling myself that they'll be counted by someone else," sighs LaCoe.
Me, too. Because if they're not, it means the Homeless Coalition's figures might be seriously under the mark.
And they came up with a figure around 7,000 last year.
And, Coalition CEO Nuckles expects an increase of around 28% this year.
You do the math.
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2003.