Activities and Opinions

Today - more cabbage for Food Not Bombs, St. Francis House and ESHC's Transitional Housing Program plus a few other hungry people.

Approximately 25 people attended the ESHC General Meeting at the First Methodist Church on King and Riberia. Jimmie Harden opened the meeting at 12:09 and George Gardner gave the invocation.

Visitors introduced themselves including Lisa Duncan from Healthy Families St Johns, Rev Arian Martin from Jesus’ Ministry International, Josh Staton, ESHC worker, Betty Melon, RN and Wildflower Clinic speaker and Maureen Tomasello, observer.

No one from the county per se, St Francis House, Betty Griffin House appeared to be present.

Jimmie noted copies of the ESHC balance sheet were available at the front.

Laurel ran over the minutes from the last ESHC general meeting updating the group on the Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant, mentioned the as yet unknown amount of money coming to SJC from the stimulus and reviewed the point in time survey count. For the first time I can remember the minutes were then approved by the members.

Jean Harden reviewed some correspondence about homeless children statistics from the National Center on Family Homelessness.

Speaker Lynn Baker, RN, gave a presentation on Good Samaritan’s 10 year history in our community and it’s current project of raising 250K for the expansion of the Wildflower Clinic currently operating in West Augustine. They have 170K now and will continue fundraisers like yard sales. Betty Melon, RN, is the clinic coordinator at MLK and Lovett Street. Currently they want to expand services at both clinics which depend on volunteers. They need one medical doctor/nurse practitioner and a nurse per shift. Hours currently are 6-8 PM on Thursday and 9-11 on Saturday, with pap smear clinic on Tuesday by appointment. Call 904.829.1962. Services are first come, first served with SJC residents served first. Patients must be uninsured or cannot get government assistance. The dental crisis is really serious with a current wait list of 11 months! Betty said even Medicaid patients would qualify for dental services. They are seeing a huge increase in demand due to the publicity surrounding their fundraising.

Rev Arian Martin from Jesus’ Ministries International presented a packet detailing their services to the community including free miracles, signs and wonders, healing and deliverance (casting out demons), hospital and nursing home visits, emergency transportation, emergency housing, rental assistance. Six double sided pages of sins they assist with is included in the packet. They are located at 255 W King Street and operation is from 9AM to 5 PM. Website is www.jesusmi.org and phone is 904-377-9351.

Lisa Duncan spoke of the Children Home Society of the Healthy Families program. They provide parenting skills to pregnant women and parents with kids under 3 months. It is a country wide program, free and voluntary and they get most of their clients from referrals through an assessment tool used by other agencies.

Ann reported the 4 new transitional houses are going up on Smith Street and invited anyone to come by and see them. They will be ready by June 1.

Jean Harden reported the NSP funding was to be released today with no word yet on amount for SJC although 25% will be to purchase foreclosed properties to turn over to non profits for low income rental. This was discussed in Tom Crawford’s two prior presentations.

Jean also said the Salvation Army was the only entity interested in distributing the Homelessness prevention funding. She thinks it’s a 3 year grant and introduced Major Vicky to the room.

Jean mentioned the BrAIves Fund, money to get returning veterans hired but has had no word back from local veterans organizations. Upon my questioning, she stated the money will be handled from Jacksonville.

Laurel noted that UNF is still compiling data from the point in time surveys and that this information will be ready next week and she will email it out to members. She also stated training on the HMIS is free to any agency who wants to use it to track services to our homeless and encouraged member agencies to sign up.

Major Vicky, Salvation Army, noted an antique car show and flea market for 6/6/09 at Francis Field to raise money for local food pantries.

Meeting adjourned at 1:06PM

Please remember, these are not minutes, just notes I take for PUSH members to keep up with what our lead agency on homelessness is doing.

- Mary

Today's gleaning was one of the easiest yet! The Society of St. Andrew's "Harvest of Hope" Alternative Spring Breakers provided us with about 250 pounds, or maybe even more, of broccoli which we distributed to St. Augustine Food Not Bombs, St. Francis House and the Emergency Services Homeless Coalition's Transitional Housing Project.

PUSH members Al and Olivia Deinhart and Mary Lawrence attended this meeting at the gargantuan county auditorium expressly to hear Tom Crawford's presentation of how the Housing Finance Authority will spend the disbursement last July of approximately 2.5 million dollars for homelessness prevention.

All commissioners were present save for Mr Mays, appointee for Mr Manuel's seat. About 40 other people were there.

The auditorium boasts two speakers podia, 5 large LCD screens and a spotty audio system. More on that later.

We sat through invocation, pledge and proclamation of the 4H 100th year anniversary and some picture taking.
Public comment request cards are in the lobby to be filled out before the meeting. Speakers get 3 minutes and there is an overhead to display any photos or print materials to audience members.

Public comments by most speakers were irrelevant to PUSH issues except for Rev Helen Toby, who needed assistance to get to the podium. She told of having to live in her van for 3 nights, unwilling to impose on her children. She lauded the efforts of Ellen Walden (assigned to Hastings but according to Toby, helps out all over the county), Jerry Cameron and Tom Crawford to help solve immediate housing problems. She mentioned Bill Lazar, SJC Housing Partnership, has having constructed a ramp and porch on her house. She worried about the elderly, homeless and those on fixed incomes not having viable housing solutions and decried the lack of a Housing Authority (section 8) in the county. She had a lot of praise for the employees of the county who work on these issues. She evidently had way more to say but ran out the
clock.

The commissioners voted unanimously to decrease the members of the Housing Finance Authority from 7 to 5 to enable term staggering.

Now comes the part we came to hear and the audio goes out so I may have missed the beginning of Crawford's remarks til I moved myself up front to take these notes.

Finally, discussion began on the Neighborhood Stabilization Program's receipt of 2.5 million to purchase foreclosed properties and rehab or rebuild affordable housing. 25% of that money ($728,347.00) will be used to buy properties and turn them over to non profits for low income rental. The other 75% is to be used for down payment and closing costs on rent to own homeowner purchases through SHIP. The county's application for this program is due April 6. Cyndi Stevenson asked where the county stood on the application process. Crawford answered that his employees are undergoing a training process to file these applications as there is this tight timeline of April 6.

A public comment by Randy Martin of Sunwork Solar Systems in Jax revealed that there is money in this NSP program for solarizing and energy efficiency. Comm Bryan asked what the federal payback would be. Martin stated an original cost for solar would be about 24k, with final cost to customer of about 4k; for water systems, he estimated the payback at about half original cost. Both estimated returns would be within 2 to 2.5 years. Martin stated his company is ready to help with this effort.

Crawford explained the federal government will designate areas involving highest foreclosure rates in SJC, (hopefully with income parameters). THERE WILL BE A PRESENTATION OF THESE DESIGNATED AREAS ON MARCH 17. Crawford noted that discussions with bankers are already taking place and that there may be additional state funding available to offset staff costs.

Comm Stevenson asked if dollars will be available for financial counseling and restructuring of mortgages. It was stated 2 billion dollars of federal stimulus money has not yet be specified as to use.

Comm Bryan asked if there was a list of pre approved residents. Crawford noted a pool of potential homebuyers. He plans to advertise to business community and will notify eligible non profits about acquiring some of these properties. He plans to use the Housing Finance Authority to act in development implementation: acquiring, rehabbing and dispersal to non profits. Eligibility will be for persons at or below 50% of what is considered "very low income".

Comm Stevenson noted the desirability of keeping people in their homes and houses in neighborhoods being fixed up.

At this point, discussion on this topic ended and we left. Former assistant to Comm Bryant Ms Neeland told us a CD of the proceedings could be obtained by contacting Margarite Laidlaw: mlaidlaw[at]sjcfl.us but was unclear on cost.