My Word: Let’s row in same direction

OrlandoSentinel.com
My Word: Let’s row in same direction

By Richard T. Crotty

November 25, 2009

Scott Maxwell’s recent column asserting that Orange County was “AWOL” on the Central Florida Regional Commission on Homelessness followed by Friday’s editorial accusing us of being “miserly” toward the homeless are shameful displays of fiction posing as fact. Because the Orange County dollars in question are really taxpayer dollars, it’s important to set the record straight.

Orange County has had a long-standing commitment toward mitigating the causes and effects of homelessness. This year, the county targeted more than $7.6 million to assist the homeless and those on the cusp of homelessness. This includes $1.1 million to the Health Care Center for the Homeless to provide medical, dental and pharmacy services, and $3.6 million in housing and shelter assistance.

This doesn’t include our $4 million contribution toward the new men’s service center at the Coalition for the Homeless. Our Youth and Family Services division also dispensed more than $1.9 million in rent payments and utility assistance, a program that clearly prevents homelessness. The sum of $7.6 million may not satisfy Sentinel opinion writers, but tax dollars are limited, and the demands for services are many. We do our best to address needs in a compassionate and fiscally responsible way.

The Regional Commission on Homelessness was predicated on the idea that a group of community leaders could bring a fresh perspective on homelessness and provide the leadership to leverage resources. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and I did not form the commission, but when asked to serve as co-chair, I was proud to do so. This was not supposed to be another group to fund, but one that could maximize the funding that is already here.

The community organizations that service the homeless have developed independently over time to address specific issues. The Homeless Services Network of Central Florida apportions close to $5 million in federal funding to these varied organizations.

The new paradigm being advanced by the regional commission is consolidation and coordination. This model has shown great results in our community with collaborations such as the Primary Care Access Network, which increased primary care medical services from 8,000 individuals in 2000 to 125,000 today. Another fine example is the county’s Central Receiving Center, which has assisted more than 30,000 individuals who are in mental-health crisis.

Far from being a “last ditch plea for help,” merging HSN with the regional commission is a culmination of thoughtful design. The HSN board understands how to provide services for the homeless. The regional commission understands community planning, leveraging assets and streamlining processes. Uniting these forces under one umbrella makes sense.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness calls such an effort “rowing in the same direction.” I invite the Sentinel to get on board and row with us.

Richard T. Crotty is Orange County mayor.

From Orange County, frames the issue well for what SACSON might face in Seminole County

Homeless advocates want to speed search for east Orange center

David Damron, Orlando Sentinel

November 23, 2009

Edward Moore sleeps in a tent on a forested lot off Colonial Drive a few miles east of Semoran Boulevard, surviving on $200 a month in food stamps, church food banks and the free heart medicine he gets from a health-care ministry that walks a winding, wooded trail to bring it to him.

The Health Care Center for the Homeless, or H.O.P.E Team, is a vital link to his survival, and the volunteers for the nonprofit health clinic started by doctors guard the exact location of his camp so he won’t be run off or robbed. But the 44-year-old from Toledo who gets around with a cane and a bike says that’s not enough if he is to make his way out of the woods and into a home again.

“We need food, clothes and a place to get clean,” said Moore, who has been at the camp since April and living in the woods for the past three years, since he suffered a series of financial, mental and health setbacks, including a massive heart attack.

Moore is among the estimated 500 to 600 people living in the camps that dot the woods of rural Orange County, as far east as Christmas. Some host more than a dozen tents.

Experts say the numbers are growing as the economy worsens, and many homeless flee what they describe as harsh police treatment and shelter conditions in downtown Orlando.

So advocates are pressing the county to build a drop-in service center in east Orange, to provide food, job and housing assistance and a place to do laundry, shower and get mail. An $800,000 federal grant arrived in May to build such a facility.

But county officials say it’s been a struggle to find the right site. And the patience of some commissioners is wearing thin.

“I don’t know what’s taking so long,” said Commissioner Linda Stewart, who along with Commissioner Mildred Fernandez is pressing for the site-selection process to move quicker.

“It should move faster,” Fernandez said, who like Stewart is a candidate for county mayor next year, “but you’re dealing with government.”

Creation of a center — which would not provide overnight accommodations like a shelter — has caught the attention of area residents, some of whom fear that panhandlers and drug users will congregate there.

Commissioner Bill Segal said that’s reason enough for the county to take its time finding a site and not buckle to politics. “You want to be careful where you put it,” said Segal said, who along with Fernandez and Stewart, is also running for mayor.

Last month, Stewart held a community meeting to reassure concerned residents that the center would be built in an industrial or commercial area and away from homes. A key factor, she said, is proximity to a Lynx bus route, so it’s accessible to those who need it.

The county is working with Converge, a coalition of churches and homeless advocates, to find a location. So far, the county’s real-estate division has looked mostly along the Econlockhatchee Trail, Rouse Road, Alafaya Trail and East Colonial Drive.

“In the beginning I never would have been open to something like this in our community,” said Ken Frenden, a retired beverage salesman who lives in the area and volunteers to deliver day-old bread to area churches to hand out. “When you hear homeless, you think of bums. But a lot of these people are there due to health-care issues and foreclosures. They have nowhere else to go.”

A key problem is that many services and health-care options are located in downtown Orlando — a place many homeless say they would rather avoid.

This year, Orlando ranked third nationally as the “meanest” city toward the homeless — behind only Los Angeles and St. Petersburg — according to a report by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“If you don’t want to go to jail, don’t go downtown,” said Moore’s campmate, a 43-year-old Florida native who declined to be identified. “They’ll arrest you for no reason at all.”

Nancy Martinez, a H.O.P.E team outreach specialist, said it’s that attitude drives many to the woods in east Orange.

That’s true for Doris Boltz, a 59-year-old who has lived in the woods for seven years with her dog, Lucy. Aside from $200 a month in food stamps, she scrounges for cans and scrap metal that she sells for $4 or $5 a day.

Like many others in the woods, Boltz isn’t always able to renew her food-stamp benefits easily because she doesn’t have a phone or mail box. A drop-in center would help with that, she said.

But when money is so scarce, Boltz said the main thing she needs help with is the basics.

“We need a place to wash our clothes,” Boltz said. “I use a bucket and water.”

David Damron can be reached at ddamron@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5311.

Jobless and homeless, blogger scores Elle job

A really good read … inspires us to all keep doing what we do to give folks hope and opportunities to turn their lives around … success stories happen!

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press Writer Leanne Italie, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 31, 1:58 pm ET

Six months ago, Brianna Karp found herself living in an old truck and camper she inherited after the suicide of a father she barely knew.

On Monday, her life became a 21st century fairytale when she turned her blog about homelessness into a plum internship for the fashion bible Elle magazine.

This is a story about love and Twitter, hope and the relative safety of a Walmart parking lot. Bri is our star, but there’s also Matt, her trans-Atlantic boyfriend who found her on the streets of Orange County, Calif., as she wrote about her predicament at girlsguidetohomelessness.com.

And there’s E. Jean Carroll, a popular advice columnist for Elle who reached out with a $150-a-month job after Bri touched her in a letter, signing off Homeless, But Not Hopeless.

Click anywhere on the article for the rest of the story or go to: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090831/ap_on_re_us/us_fea_lifestyles_homeless_blogger

Homeless center plans draw east Orange opposition

OrlandoSentinel.com

Some say they don’t want a drop-in center near their neighborhoods

Víctor Manuel Ramos

Sentinel Staff Writer

Plans for a homeless center in east Orange County are upsetting some residents who don’t want it in their back yards.

As the county searches for a commercial building to house the center, some people in the largely Hispanic neighborhoods east of Semoran Boulevard are having meetings and lobbying against it.

“We are not against the homeless, because they need help, but they should be helped without hurting other residents,” said Elías “Rico” Piccard, who heads the advocacy group United Front 436. “Many of them are alcoholics, drug addicts — and we just don’t want to attract them to our community.”

Proponents say those complaints are rooted in a misunderstanding of what they are trying to accomplish.

The county is working with a coalition of churches and volunteers, known as Converge, to establish a drop-in center where many of the estimated 500 homeless people in east Orange could go during the day for a warm meal, a shower and a change of clothes.

Advocates say they hope the center will also become a place for others to get counseling as they struggle with poverty.

“We don’t want it to be strictly a homeless drop-in center,” said the Rev. Jeff Linman, pastor of Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church. “We want it to be seen as a housing assistance center, because the reality is that the overgrown lots of foreclosed homes in our neighborhoods are a clear sign that more than just chronically homeless people need help.”

The county has about $800,000 in federal funds to buy a building along commercial routes. Although it has not settled on a location, it’s looking near bus routes along Econlockatchee Trail, Rouse Road, Dean Road, Alafaya Trail and East Colonial Drive, mostly in County Commission districts 3 and 4, said Donna Wyche, manager of the county’s Mental Health and Homeless Issues Division.

Commissioner Mildred Fernández, a center proponent who represents District 3, said that many homeless people “are sleeping in the back yards of houses and behind local restaurants or in the woods” and that the community would not be better off ignoring the problem.

The issue has been the talk of Spanish-language radio, where callers have railed about already having a methadone clinic for recovering addicts, a treatment center for at-risk youth and a halfway house for former convicts near their east Orange neighborhoods.

William Diaz, a business owner and host of the morning radio show Cara a Cara on WONQ-AM (1030), said he agrees with listeners who don’t want another eyesore. The area is the county’s stepchild, Diaz said, “because anything that nobody wants ends up here.”

Víctor Manuel Ramos can be reached at vramos@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6186.

Homeless: Orlando could be the most violent metro area in Florida, survey finds

OrlandoSentinel.com
By Willoughby Mariano

Sentinel Staff Writer

August 20, 2009

The nation’s third “meanest” city for the homeless may also be the state’s most violent toward them, say survey results being released today.

Forty-six percent of homeless people questioned in Orlando and Orange County in an ongoing local survey said they were physically attacked in the past four years by someone they thought was not homeless — well above Florida’s average of 27 percent, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The same organization last month ranked Orlando as the third “meanest” city in the country, behind Los Angeles and St. Petersburg. A coalition report released earlier this month said that in 2008, Florida led the nation in violence against the homeless for the fourth year in a row.

This year alone, at least two homeless men have been slain in Orange County.

“To me, the statistics are shocking. It shows the problem is much worse than we thought,” said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Orange County’s results in this most recent survey are preliminary. There were 35 Orlando respondents and 1,350 statewide. However, in Orange Osceola and Seminole counties there are about 3,800 homeless people at any given time, according to the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida.

The network is in the midst of a more extensive local study that aims to survey 650 homeless people. It plans to release results this fall.

Here’s more about the coalition’s survey, and what it means.

Click anywhere to read the full article

Drop-in center will offer 1-stop services for the homeless

Some inspiration in this story. Click anywhere to read the full article.

Orange County joins with Converge coalition to unite homeless services under one roof

Víctor Manuel Ramos

Sentinel Staff Writer

8:08 PM EDT, August 3, 2009

Dean Stadtlander had the first spot Monday among the couple dozen homeless people who stood outside the Woodbury Presbyterian Church in Waterford Lakes for their twice-a-week food ration.

He got a loaf of challah bread, some pastries, bottled water and canned cranberry sauce, which he hates but eats anyway. The 51-year-old Army veteran, who said he ended up homeless when construction work ran out, seeks out free meals from churches and volunteers. He panhandles near the Alafaya shopping area and sleeps under a tarp in the woods.

“It’s a hard life, but it’s what I have left,” Stadtlander said.

Stadtlander is one of an estimated 500 homeless people in east Orange County who sleep in woods or behind shopping centers because there is no shelter there. The county is partnering with Converge, an eastside coalition of churches and volunteers, to bring under one roof the hodgepodge of homeless services that serve people like him.