Former Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair, a candidate for State House in District 47 next year, has come up with his own idea to help the homeless, after watching his former colleagues on the Board of County Commissioners fail to come up with their own plan.
Blair says he wants to renovate at least one vacant hotel to house those without housing.
From his press release:
"It makes sense, across the board. Hotels are already equipped for sheltering people. And it would, at the same time, help the homeless and create jobs," he added. Blair says the plan would entail selecting a vacant hotel and targeting it for renovation. Then, county homeless people would be moved in-after background checks-with attention paid to grouping them by gender and/or families. Blair said, though, that people wouldn't be able to stay there indefinitely, in order to ensure that vacancies would be created for others.
Last month the Commission rejected a long discussed proposal by Catholic Charities to build a tent-city like structure off of East Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa. After receiving stinging criticism from the editorial boards of both local dailies and from many citizens, Commissioners Kevin White and Al Higgenbotham then simultaneously thought of the Floriland mall in Tampa as a possible site for the homeless.
But that idea went nowhere after the landlord of the property said he had no intention of using the land for such a purpose. Also, local residents weren't happy about the idea, and even less so that they weren't consulted before White & Higgenbotham made their proposal.
During that discussion, Commissioner Higgenbotham stressed that it was important to show the community that "they cared", though absolutely no vetting had been done to actually ensure that the homeless had a legitimate place to stay.
The Commission's rejection of the Catholic Charities proposal made national news, as the New York Times reported on the fine compassionate citizens of Hillsborough such as Linda Hinson of East Lake, who said of the defeat of the camp plan that "I don’t have to go out and get a gun.” She declared that there were already enough shelters.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2009.