Regency Square in Brandon is the last place you'd expect to find homeless kids.
Every Friday night, the shopping-plaza parking lot overflows with Lexus SUVs and Mercedes. Many more pour in from Highway 60 (Brandon Boulevard) from subdivisions all over central Hillsborough County. Soccer moms clutching Frappuccinos and cell phones troll for parking spaces. Scores of kids in the latest Hot Topic fashions sit on the benches next to the AMC Regency Theater, screaming, spitting, smoking and swearing. And there are at least three police officers holding sentry over said teens. It's just another weekend night in a U.S. suburb.
To Jennifer Padraza, 26, and Jenna Hammer, 20, it's also the best time and place to find homeless youth.
"We have met a lot of kids here," Padraza says. "They tend to blend in. Most of them have only been kicked out for several days at a time. But some of the older ones have been out here longer."
For the last five months, Padraza and other volunteers with the Tampa chapter of StandUp for Kids — a national homeless youth advocacy organization based in San Diego — have come to this shopping center to provide street children with food, clothing, hygiene kits and, most importantly, a sympathetic ear. They build relationships and trust while helping homeless youth with the necessities for street survival. The organization's ultimate goal: Lead these teens to services or self-sufficiency, and get them off the street.
It's a tall order for a 3-year-old nonprofit with less than 20 volunteers and meager funds. Despite the chapter's connection to the established national entity, the locals are left nearly autonomous, forced to raise their own money and collect food and clothing donations. They can't enter into coalitions with other service providers because there are no other groups providing relief to street children, except for a few religious groups not popular with the kids. The already tiny group of outreach volunteers is split between Brandon and St. Petersburg. They don't have much clout with other nonprofits or with local law enforcement.
"We've been having problems with the police," Padraza informs me as we walk along the shops adjacent to the theater. "You can't just loiter. You have to be patrons."
So we stop in a café to grab drinks and head back out into the hormone-charged atmosphere, looking for kids in need.
Padraza and Hammer circle the shopping center, meander near the Dollar Tree (another hot spot for youth) and cut through the back parking lot, always watching for cops and any children who seem to be homeless.
This is a tricky undertaking. As Padraza explains, homeless youth rarely look like their adult counterparts: They dress fashionably, stay clean and don't panhandle openly. So volunteers talk to all the kids at the shopping center and hand out bright green cards with the executive director's cell phone number. "Call the number," they explain, "if you or a friend need our help."
Padraza and Hammer don't see any kids, homeless or otherwise, on this side of the strip mall. They wonder aloud if the police have scared some of them off.
"There were some incidents a couple months ago," Padraza says, describing bloody brawls and acts of shoplifting. "So the police have been more strict about moving [the kids] along."
We head back toward the theater. Pandraza approaches two young girls on a bench and introduces herself. The teens look up quizzically. They aren't homeless, but Padraza gives them a bright green card anyway and thanks them. They nod.
It will go on like this for the next three hours. They won't find any homeless kids. They rarely do.
So maybe they're just looking in the wrong place? Brandon's child poverty rate is one-fifth that of Tampa's. The city, while not affluent, is solidly middle class — its median family income is higher than any of its close neighboring communities.
But homeless children do walk the streets of Brandon. The lucky ones find friends' couches to sleep on. The others sleep in construction sites, wooded thickets behind the Brandon Mall, abandoned houses, or in one recent case, under a portable classroom at one of the high schools.
According to the Hillsborough County Homeless Coalition's 2005 census, 25 percent of all homeless in the county are under 18. (It's unknown how many are on the street alone and how many are accompanied by families.) The Hillsborough County school system, through their Homeless Education and Literacy Project (HELP), logged 1,600 homeless children still attending school in the county; school officials estimate more than 2,000 will be logged before the end of the school year.
"You can't come up with a school that doesn't have homeless kids," says Cathy Wiggins, program director of HELP.
Brandon is no exception; school records indicate there are 77 homeless youth in Brandon area schools. Wiggins estimates there may be more hiding their homelessness.
Wiggins, like Paraza, says homeless children are not visible on the streets. They don't live under bridges or hold up signs at intersections. And they're a lot less likely to admit homelessness.
"They're embarrassed," says Mike Gallant, Florida director for the five StandUp for Kids groups in the state. "They still have that sense of pride. They don't see themselves as homeless."
They also don't want to be found, Gallant says.
"The last thing they want is to run into a police officer or someone that might turn them in," he says.
William Hogan, program manager of the Haven Poe Runaway Center in Tampa, agrees.
"It's a lot more common than people realize, because it's so well hidden," Hogan says. "Kids will find somewhere to go, especially the young girls. People will take them in and, well, you know why."
But even if homeless youth could be readily found, there's little that can be done for them.
"There are very little services for them," laments Wiggins from the school district. "That is probably one of the hardest populations to serve."
The reason? Government money goes to certain subpopulations of homeless — battered women, families and chronically homeless single men and women — but not youth alone on the street.
Padraza points to two brothers, 13 and 17, she met a few weeks ago at Regency Square. The kids' mother had kicked them out.
"It sounds like she can't really provide for them," Padraza says of the mother. "But they'd rather be on the streets instead of foster care."
It's a common refrain from the homeless youth the volunteers have talked to. And if children are not willing to turn themselves over to the county, their chance of receiving services is almost nonexistent.
"It really is an issue where there are no programs for kids on the street," Padraza says. "It's really, really lacking."
Padraza, Hammer and I have already made two more loops around the center before we end up back at the theater. We approach a group of eight teens sitting on a bench talking loudly and comfortably about their bad home lives. Most are dressed in black, chains dangling from their cargo pants and their hairstyles either goth or emo. None of the kids are homeless, but most of them have at least one street tale from when they ran away or were kicked out by their parents. More importantly, though, they know several homeless peers.
"I know like 20 kids," says Josh, brushing back his long black bangs. The 17-year-old from Riverview was homeless two years ago and only recently moved back in with his parents after he was arrested for a felony.
His girlfriend, 18-year-old Teri Cooper, provides all the help her homeless friends ever receive.
"I had friends live in the woods behind the mall," she says, pointing across the street. "Half of them have problems at home. Most of them call me and I give them other numbers to call. I see if they can stay at my house all the time, but usually they can't."
Cooper says they come to her because she's been in the same situation. Last year, she "couch-surfed" for months before ending up staying with two older men in Tampa. "They were cool," she says, but knows that's not the norm.
Right now, Cooper is helping a close friend, "Mark," who has camped in the woods off Brandon Boulevard for almost four months. She gives him money and food.
"Clothes I can't help him out on, 'cause he's a guy," she giggles.
Padraza gives her a stack of cards for her friends. It's 10:30 p.m., and the last movie is starting. A police officer walks his rounds, clearing teens from benches and moving them along. Padraza and Hammer wave to the kids and head toward their cars.
They'll be back again next week.
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2007.