Homeless shelter's Street Outreach program at risk of elimination due to City Hall cutbacks

When the Grace Marketplace Street Outreach team approached Thomas Mya on the streets of Gainesville in January, he said he instantly felt like he was finally going to get help.

Mya, 60, hitchhiked to Gainesville from Jacksonville last year after finding the people in the region to be kind and courteous.

Grace's outreach team found him on the streets and swiftly began working to get him housing, he said. There was an immediate sense of trust between Mya and the team and he listened when they told him to stay in one place so they could find him. Within three months, they helped him get a copy of his birth certificate, get on Social Security and food stamps (or SNAP benefits). By April, they found him a place to live.

“It took them three months to get me off the street," Mya said. "I signed the first lease in my whole life. They work wonders. They go straight to the people, they know where and how to find them, and they check up on them.”

But after a successful trial run, Grace Marketplace’s Street Outreach program − an expansion of the northeast Gainesville homeless shelter services − is at risk of being shut down entirely due to budget cuts over at City Hall.

While the city of Gainesville has funded $1.35 million of the necessary $1.5 million needed to operate Grace’s shelter, homeless advocates say they still need to find $350,000 to fund its community outreach program.

Earlier in the year, Gainesville officials were in talks with Grace’s Executive Director Jon DeCarmine about slashing the shelter’s budget in half, which includes completely defunding the street outreach team. Commissioners were able to restore some funding and allowed Grace to convert a grant for shelter operations. But without the rest of the money, the street outreach team plans to cease operation on Nov. 30.

“Street outreach is quite possibly the most important piece of our entire homeless system,” DeCarmine said. “I couldn't imagine what our community would begin to look like in a world where we're not working to get unsheltered people off the street into housing.”

Cutbacks at Grace

Bracing for budget cuts, Grace announced earlier this week plans to reduce hours, capacity and meals beginning on Oct. 2.

The shelter will reduce its hours of operation on campus from 12 to eight hours a day, reduce shelter beds from 100 to 90, and divert unsheltered guests eating breakfast at Grace to the St. Francis House, another Gainesville homeless nonprofit. Historically, Grace has offered meals to anyone who showed up.

The cutbacks come at a time when the city is also scaling back its own services due to its $1.7 billion debt and demands from state lawmakers, who berated city leaders about oversight of the municipal utility that will soon be under the control of a board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“If we can't identify a source of local funding, the outreach team will cease to exist by the end of November. That's when we'll run out of funding, and that's going to put us in a really precarious situation as a community that I don't think we're prepared for,” DeCarmine said. “We're talking about people who will be dying on the street.”

More: Gainesville expected to cut funding for homeless services in half. What does it mean?

Mark Watson, the director of Grace’s outreach program, said he has called emergency medical services eight times over the past two weeks to save people from dying of heat. He said he’s lost count of how many times he’s called EMS over the years. There is one man who has disability and mobility issues that make even walking 50 feet a massive struggle, Watson said. The outreach team brings him water and other things he needs each day,

“If we weren't there to just check in with this guy, he could easily just die in the woods and nobody would ever know he was there. And he's not the first guy that we work with who is like that,” Watson said. “We've kept them alive during the cold weather, the hot weather, the rainy weather and stormy weather.”

It wouldn't be the first time, either. Over the years, law enforcement officers have found several dead homeless people in the city's lightly wooded areas.

After the 2020 closing of Dignity Village − a homeless encampment of about 300 people surrounding Grace Marketplace's gates − Grace workers found it vital to hit the streets to find people in need. For almost two years, outreach staff would travel on foot, through woods and streets, to find areas where people were known to gather.

That workload got easier when the team secured a van in May.

The Street Outreach team now drives out into the community six days a week. They provide cold drinks on hot days and hot drinks on cold days along with packed lunches, over-the-counter medicine, toiletries, deodorant, toothpaste, clothes and more.

On Wednesdays, they are able to bring along a psychiatrist who can prescribe medication when necessary. The route varies by day, but the team generally hits the Millhopper Plaza, areas off Newberry Road, Archer Road, Waldo Road, downtown Gainesville and Williston Road.

On average, they provide 140 meals a week.

Having worked in homeless services for 12 years − two years with Grace − Watson seems to remember the names and stories of everyone he speaks to in the community, from the names of their partners to where they’re at in their quests for housing.

Earlier in August, while handing out lemonade, one man sitting at a picnic table asked Watson for help getting a cell phone. Watson agreed to meet him at the same park the next day to work on getting one together.

The daily outreach is an essential part of the program, but ultimately the goal is to find permanent housing for those who want it. Getting people who have experienced trauma and homelessness to trust you is difficult, Watson said, and simply showing up with a drink and a meal can be a crucial step in building that relationship.

“An iced drink on a hot day can change your life,” he said.

Grace helps people obtain essential documents, such as birth certificates, to get back on their feet. The team holds onto the files and helps set up Google Drive folders so people can access important information anywhere. The goal is to get people “document ready,” Watson says, so that when affordable housing becomes available the process goes quickly and smoothly.

Liz McCulloch, a 76-year-old volunteer of five months, rides along in the van with Watson.

When Watson steps out to greet people, she quickly assembles bags of food, hygiene products and water to hand out. When someone requests shampoo or a pair of socks, she locates the items in its organized and labeled bin and hands them off with a smile.

“We’re going to save the world,” she said.

More: Grace Marketplace to reduce homeless services amid looming city budget cuts

For now, the staff at Grace is optimistic that they can still get the funding from the local government needed to keep the street outreach program alive.

Gainesville city commissioners will meet with the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners on Monday for a special joint meeting where the future funding of homeless services is expected to be discussed. City officials are hopeful that county leaders to help bridge the necessary funding gap.

“Do not get rid of the street outreach people,” Mya said. “If they do, it's a very big mistake. Find something else to cut and not that. I'm saying that because I lived it.”

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Grace Marketplace's outreach team brings services to Gainesville