If there's anything participants took away from last weekend's Homeless Summit in St. Petersburg, it's that solutions to the city's homeless crisis will not come fast or easy.
There are no concrete plans to move any of the tent cities. Any ordinance to prohibit public sleeping cannot be enforced until more shelter space is available, and that much-needed shelter space is at least 90 days away. The other pressing issues — affordable housing and expanded mental health services — could take years.
In fact, the only consensus of the 300 business owners, residents and homeless people who showed up for the four-hour brainstorming session was that tent cities were not the answer to St. Petersburg's homeless woes. How to actually move the tent-city campers away from homes and businesses, without another tent-slashing debacle, was the bigger, unanswered question.
This was not what residents like John Davenport, who lives 300 yards from the 18th Street tent city in the Grand Central District, came to hear.
"I convinced my wife to move here," Davenport said. "Now we essentially have a conference of homeless people down the street from us."
His patience is thinning.
"It's not OK to sleep in Williams park, but they can [sleep] in front of my house?" he asked. "I'm sure the mayor wouldn't allow it by his house."
Yet there are no quick fixes to the complaints of public sleeping, panhandling and people handing out food in city parks and streets — issues that business owners said threaten their livelihoods. And city officials, from the mayor to the police chief, are treading carefully on questions of law enforcement.
"The mere act of being homeless is not a crime," City Attorney John Wolfe told summit participants. "The ordinances we have don't address the specific problems we have now."
Wolfe explained the city would have trouble with any ordinance banning public sleeping unless shelter space is made available for violators. Public feeding, most often done by churches, presents a religious freedom dilemma. And most panhandling is protected by the First Amendment.
"The real key [to a successful ordinance] has been having shelter space around," Wolfe said. "If you don't have shelter space, your ability to regulate is limited."
There's no timetable on how long it will take for more shelter space to open up in the county. Officials said it would take at least 90 days to finalize a proposed 150-bed shelter at the former Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority headquarters in Largo. Securing the building is just one aspect; funding the shelter presents the biggest challenge.
"Even if we got [the shelter] up tomorrow, it's going to cost $2-2.5 million a year to run it," said Sarah Snyder, executive director of the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless. "The funds are probably going to be the number one issue."
Even then, convincing St. Petersburg's homeless to move to a Largo-based shelter could be tricky.
Kathy Hines, the "mayor of tent city," agrees. "You can't push people out of the city," she said. "I've lived here for six years, and I wouldn't know how to get around Largo."
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2007.
