Activities and Opinions

Although we will not meet in August, we wanted to update you on the following activities of the steering committee:

Following our successful June 16 presentation to the SJC Board of Commissioners, (whole video now on our website) we met with county administrator Jerry Cameron for over an hour on July 10. We identified problems with health and human services, ecumenical leaders and sympathetic officials. We also noted problems with current county data on homelessness and offered PUSH assistance in collecting better numbers.

We contacted Rex Emerick, acting HHS director, who is interested in the multiple reasons for homelessness, better data collection, lack of affordable housing and prevention of homelessness. We sent him a follow up letter and copy of the PUSH presentation.

We contacted Ann Henry at HHS who oversees contracts for the county in social services. She invited us to attend the Health and Human Services Advisory Council meeting on July 23. This is a board of professionals and officials who are tasked with contract review. Both the COA and Learn to Read presented their programs.

We contacted David Hoak at United Way who has been tasked to coordinate the writing of the mayor's commission's plan to end homelessness. He forwarded HUD statistic requirements to help us design a useful survey form.

We met with Leanna Freeman, St Augustine City Commissioner, gave her a copy of the CD and talked about doing a more accurate homeless count and approaching UNF to do our data analysis. She noted the city commissioners have not been updated on progress of the current mayor's commission.

We met with Andrea Samuels, St Augustine Beach Commissioner, who knows where there are homeless camps on the island. She encouraged PUSH to present our knowledge to various civic groups such as the Rotaries and the Kiwanis. We left her with the CD and website information.

On Tuesday, July 28, we will meet with city officials in Hastings to see where PUSH can help.

We still need some contacts in Ponte Vedra and Fruit Cove. Send any information to us here

Future plans include gaining sheriff department input by zone of deputies’ anecdotes on numbers of homeless in their patrol areas. This information will be used to divide up the county and attempt a county wide homeless count over the duration of one week. This will be a huge volunteer effort for PUSH and hopefully associated groups like Food not Bombs and sympathetic faith based groups like Just Faith. We will need a lot of people donating their time to collect as much information as we can.

Plans continue to investigate and apply for non profit status if feasible. Regardless, efforts to start delivering food to our homeless in outlying areas besides the downtown plaza continue. Obviously, accurate data collection by locale is necessary for this project to succeed.

We need our members’ input: your ideas, your expertise and your time. We will reconvene our meetings in September and a final action agenda will be sent out in advance. We currently see ourselves doing a lot more presentations and reaching further out into the county. Any thing you can do to move these projects along will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all that you do already.

It’s starting to get ridiculous. Every Sunday night for weeks now, 2 bike officers ride into the midst of homeless men and women at our Food Not Bombs servings for absolutely no reason. Usually invited, they never join us for a meal. They ride off to a certain safe distance, talk into their shoulders and take pictures. Seems along with plaza artists, these amateur photographers are documenting plaza activity for some nefarious reason. Always have a camera with you if you’re in public places in St Augustine. You never know what you’ll need it for. Even though our guests are great at self policing the area for trash, make sure it’s clean before you leave. They sure don’t need any more ammunition to try and shut us down. Reports came in tonight of homeless being harassed on St George Street again.

Sunday night, June 21, Solstice and Fathers Day, brings out the bike police. A number of our many diners were intimidated by this attention so we decided to document it. What’s next, a live feed into the EOC from the bridge cam? Oh wait, maybe we’re already on.

The police were photographing the dinner and when we took their picture, they were quite open about it. When one of the diners asked why they were taking pictures, they said they were just goofing around. Why can't they be honest about the simple things? Officers in the Plaza area have been directed to photograph what goes on there since the city lost it's case against the Plaza Artists.

Today, the last of the potatoes from Smith Brothers Farms. 800 pounds of potatoes were delivered to the Farm Workers Association in Seville and another 550 pounds went to ESHC's Transitional Housing, the Salvation Army and Christian Service Center in St. Augustine.

Ray Randolph might start his day with breakfast for a room full of parents, then check the school attendance sheets before redeeming a donated gift certificate for a bag of groceries for a family on his list.

Ray is our school district's Program Specialist for Student Services, a multi-pronged position addressing homeless students in our schools, team parenting, and full service schools. He's also the newest board member of our Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition (ESHC).

"You've got to love your work; you've got to go home satisfied at the end of the day that you made a difference," Ray says of a job that, on any given day, might include moving furniture into an apartment for a homeless family, counseling some of our 116 homeless students, supporting homeless parents and their kids, and helping prepare those "unaccompanied" youths (not in physical custody of a parent or guardian) who can qualify for college. Thirteen are in his program. He proudly notes that new state law will allow teenagers to apply for college without parental signatures, and three successfully applied this year, slipping in ahead of the law's July 1 effective date.

Originally appearing in the St Augustine Report published 06/16/09 by the City of St. Augustine