Willing to Act on Adult Homelessness

Finally, some good news on a serious issue that has vexed our community for years: a realistic plan to effectively address chronic adult homelessness.

Congratulations to the commissions of both the City and the County of Sarasota. Our community has been looking for leadership that would break the logjam that halted any positive progress. Now it’s up to us—the community—to encourage the implementation of recommendations laid out in a new report accepted by both governments last month. (I encourage you to read Sarasota: Creating an Effective Homeless Crisis Response System.)

We should thank report author Dr. Susan Porciau, COO of the nonprofit Florida Housing Coalition, for helping our leaders reach consensus. She recommended that we build on our existing strengths. They include the Family Haven Alliance, which has made family homelessness a relatively rare and brief episode for families. We have well-established, hard-working service agencies already in place that can provide similar services to the chronic adult population. And they have become experts in coordinating their respective services, such as providing counseling, locating places to live, and teaching life and financial literacy skills.

Next steps toward implementation have already begun. Both commissions have empowered their respective staffs to move forward on executing Dr. Porciau’s recommendations. Their unanimity is laudable.

Go here to read the rest of Mark’s column in the May 20, 2017, edition of SRQ Daily.