City commissioners reallocate $700,000 to homeless services, address downtown encampment

Nora O'Neill, Gainesville Sun
·3 min read
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Gainesville commissioners voted Thursday to allocate $700,000 in funds to help curb the issue of homelessness in the city.

The topic of homelessness was added to the city meeting agenda amid concerns about a growing homeless encampment on Southeast Fourth Place that began to proliferate about a month ago after police cleared a similar camp across South Main Street at Haisley Lynch Park. Around 20 to 30 people are living at the encampment, according to Grace Marketplace Director Jon DeCarmine.

“It is incredibly hard for folks who are living on the street, nobody is discounting that in the tiniest bit, it's incredibly hard for people who live and work next door to those folks,” said Mayor Harvey Ward. “If we don't handle a problem that we see getting out of control, or already out of control, it gets worse. It doesn't get better on its own.”

After the clearing of a homeless camp at nearby Paisley Lynch Dog Park, tents began popping up on a sidewalk across the street on Southeast Fourth Place in Gainesville, Fla.
After the clearing of a homeless camp at nearby Paisley Lynch Dog Park, tents began popping up on a sidewalk across the street on Southeast Fourth Place in Gainesville, Fla.

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The $700,000 comes from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that were previously allocated to a housing development plan and city administrative services that were not used. At the meeting, commissioners also voted to reallocate $150,000 in ARPA funds from administrative services to gun violence prevention programming.

City staff broke down the homeless services Gainesville currently provides at the meeting including funding Grace Marketplace, public safety emergency response, Gainesville Police Department’s co-responder program and Gainesville Fire Rescue’s community resource paramedicine program.

Other local services come from Alachua County’s support services, funding of Grace’s outreach team and permanent supportive housing efforts as well as community support including St. Francis House, Helping Hands Clinic, Peaceful Path, Meridian Behavioral Health and more.

Funding for homeless services has been a longstanding contentious issue between the Gainesville commission and the Board of Alachua County Commissioners. City leaders see homelessness as a county-wide issue, while those at the county point to the high proportion of homeless people within city limits.

“I will speak briefly to other community leaders who may be watching. We need you in this process. We don't need you to send your thoughts and prayers, we need you to send checks, we need you to step up,” Ward said on Tuesday. “If you're an elected official in Alachua County, you are partially responsible for this. This ain't just a City of Gainesville issue.”

The County Commission voted unanimously in August to provide $150,000 to Grace Marketplace’s shelter after Gainesville officials were in talks with DeCarmine about slashing the shelter’s budget in half and completely defunding the street team.

City leaders, however, were able to restore some funding and allowed Grace to convert a grant for shelter operations, leaving just a $150,000 gap for shelter operations that the county agreed to fund along with the street outreach team.

Now, the city has announced again it may need to entirely defund Grace this year as the Gainesville Regional Utilities Authority board debates dramatically decreasing funds it gives to the general government each year.

As far as the growing downtown encampment goes, Gainesville Police Department Public Information Officer Brandon Hatzel said Tuesday that the department is aware of the encampment and that they have received complaints. He also said that officers have been dispatched to the area in the past.

However, the city is unable to force people to move unless they have a place for them to go. Beds at Grace are limited, DeCarmine said, and funding new beds is an ongoing expense.

“There is nobody in a homeless camp more fed up with the theft and the violence and the drug use than the other people in that camp. There is nobody who wants less violence than the people who are living there,” DeCarmine said. “That is an ongoing struggle in every homeless camp in this country that I have worked with.”

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Gainesville commission allocates $700,000 to address homeless problem