Later this month, Tampa will host the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney will accept his party's nomination and fifteen thousand credentialed media will swarm the city.
In this week's issue of Huffington, Saki Knafo spotlights a Tampa most of the media will not see during their stay. Hillsborough County, which surrounds Tampa, has 60 homeless people for every 10,000 residents -- more homeless per capita than any other American city or county. As a result, Tampa has become a kind of civic laboratory, with citizens, police, and government grappling with all the problems that accompany homelessness.
Saki Knafo introduces us to several of Tampa's homeless, as well as those who seek innovative solutions to their predicament. Among the latter is Steve Donaldson, a Hillsborough County Sherriff's Department deputy with a lifelong passion for problem solving (it began with a childhood fascination with Donald Trump and evolved into a respect for unconventional thinkers like Malcolm Gladwell). In his first decade with the department, Donaldson was repulsed by what he encountered out on the beat: the drug addicts and derelicts who seemed beyond help. But then, something changed in the way he saw Tampa's homeless, and in the way he went about his daily work. Since then, as Knafo puts it, Donaldson has been "on a mission to convince police and ordinary civilians alike that the answer to the homeless problem lies not in arrests and jail but in something far more subtle, the relationship between a single homeless person and a cop."
Since 2010, Donaldson has helped get more than 100 people off the streets -- including Albert Swiger, who with Donaldson's help traded a life of crime, and more than 200 arrests, for home ownership, a job and a girlfriend. Donaldson has done this by looking to both the public and private sectors. Many homeless people are unaware that they qualify for benefits, and part of Donaldson's relationship with his "clients," as he calls them, is making sure they understand what they're entitled to. He's also tapped his contacts in real estate, convincing property owners to let his clients work on abandoned homes in exchange for staying in them.
As the Republican convention approaches and all eyes turn to Tampa, Saki Knafo puts flesh and blood on the homelessness crisis, and gets an answer from Donaldson about what changed his perception of the homeless: it was the realization that he had "more in common with them than I would like to think."
This story appears in our new weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, available in the iTunes App store.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-fraser/private-prisons-_b_1439201.html
I'm not going to hold my breath.
There is no reason that the government cannot provide the land and resources needed to create free, self sustaining eco villages throughout the country for any American that needs or wants to live there. There is only an artificial scarcity made to drive up profits for the well off. Ask them and you will find that those that are able would be happy to help build and run them if given the resources.
Thanks for the tax break.
take a sampling of how many of tampa's homeless are not from florida. probably 80% or more. it's amazing. we tried a street-to-paycheck program and had a 99% fail rate. we paid for housing, training, and transportation.
it didn't work, you know why? their life on the street was easier. you go down to the beach, play all day and then work your way into some food. but seriously, go to the beach there. the homeless community is amazing. most of the guys know how to cast a mullet net. they're not hungry.
and i'll be honest, ever since that project, i have always wanted to be homeless. it has it's downfalls, there are a lot druggies from the northeast (and they're not nice people) but if you're going to be homeless, tampa is where you move you and your backpack.
Great article. Especially when one considers that some years ago, police cut and destroyed many newly donated tents provided to the homeless in the St.Pete area.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/20/Southpinellas/Police_slash_open_ten.shtml
We often learn of only the negative. So in that respect, it's good to learn that there are indeed Police personnel that do have a conscience,good problem solving abilities and act on those wonderful traits to find workable and long lasting solutions.