This week, CL contributor Mark Leib wrote about troubles at The Well, a Tampa Heights nonprofit that prepares and serves meals to the homeless. Though the head of the Tampa Heights Civic Association told Leib that The Well's director, Jon Dengler, "is being a good neighborhood member," Dengler still fears that his lease may not be renewed due to past community complaints.
News reports show The Well is far from the only nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless that has come under existential threat — some from neighborhood pressure, others from sensational allegations against their leaders that ultimately fail to pan out.
“There’s a wide narrative, in my opinion, of being harsh toward any public services or ministries that are trying to help the underprivileged survive,” said Reverend Russell Meyers, a longtime social justice champion.
• In October, 2013, CL contributor Kelly Benjamin chronicled the troubles of Bishop Chuck Leigh, who heads Christ the Servant, an Apostolic Catholic Church on Nebraska Avenue. Leigh was the target of an undercover sting during which police informants attempted to get him to commit crimes in exchange for sexual favors and taking child pornography, neither of which he did. Under the stare of a TV news crew that tagged along, police allegedly brought a battering ram to his door. He was arrested on multiple charges, but those charges were reduced to only one (of falsifying documents), and Leigh said he pled no contest only because he couldn’t afford to fight it.
• In December of 2014, the Tampa Bay Times ran an extensive investigative report outlining the financial misadventures of Tom Atchison, CEO of homeless shelter New Beginnings of Tampa, which is situated off Fletcher Avenue. The report suggested he was using the homeless for unpaid labor at stadium concession stands and special events, then pocketing the money from contracts with sports teams rather than giving it to those residing at his facility, many of whom were ex-convicts and recovering addicts. Same went, allegedly, for Social Security Disability checks sent to residents. Even as those he had helped recovery passionately defended him, he was skewered in the media and investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor — only to be cleared months later.
• Homeless Helping Homeless, a defunct shelter with two buildings off East Floribraska and East Oak, was shut down by the city last year for being, as a city spokeswoman put it, “unfit for human habitation.” After the two facilities got shut down within about a week of one another, residents had to sleep outside on cots in tents — in the middle of muggy September. Previously, the nonprofit had sued the city over its panhandling ban, and was successful in getting it partially overturned.
• Two well-known nonprofits, Alpha House, Salvation Army and the Spring, recently lost $800,00 in federal grant money they'd been relying on annually, supposedly because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development now prefers awarding counties that use the housing-first approach. There was also an error on the grant application, which was submitted by the Tampa-Hillsborough Homeless Initiative, a public-private partnership that aims to fight homelessness.
• Recently, Trinity Cafe, which feeds the homeless in the V.M. Ybor neighborhood, has been under scrutiny by neighbors, who see them as a nuisance to the up-and-coming area.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2016.