Government bails out on Broward County homeless

The rented space a few doors down the unadorned walkway from the Coalition to End Homelessness’ offices contains the story. Gerald Peterkin, the Coalition’s Programs Director and the space’s proprietor, leads the way. Business is booming so he’s even more circumspect than usual as he slides in the key, a routine he repeats often these days. An unmarked door, as anonymous as the dispossessed whose sundry belongings lie behind it, opens to an array of plastic bags, cardboard boxes and donated storage tubs, the lives of Broward County’s homeless on display, their uncertain futures strewn about or neatly stacked.

While other programs that Peterkin oversees have had about a 50% jump in demand in just the past six months, the Coalition’s Free Storage Program, which he calls “unique,” had never been tried before. But in an economy of layoffs and foreclosures, of government bailouts at the top that have yet to trickle down to the bottom, the idea was a no-brainer. A glimpse of the storage room’s contents piled closer to the rafters each day is confirmation.

Earlier this year a count of Broward’s homeless by the County’s Homeless Initiative Partnership showed an increase in the unsheltered homeless population of 14%, from 701 to 800 from 2007 to 2008. The study showed a more modest increase in the overall homeless population over the same period, from 3154 to 3230 or about 2 ½%. That was at the end of January, before the ravages of another 4 plus months of a worsening economy.

The Coalition, which itself had been tasked with this biennial count of the homeless in previous years, and whose own recent level of demand confutes the County’s recent estimate, puts the homeless figures higher.

But Coalition CEO Laura Hansen acknowledges, “There really is no good way to count homeless people.” Part of the problem, she notes, is that definitions of “homeless” differ from state to federal government and from agency to agency.

What nobody disputes is that funding, both private and public, is dwindling. Many private foundations, like the Libra Foundation which funded the Free Storage Program, have seen their portfolios shrink to record lows. While in previous years the Coalition could count on three or four grants per year out of about 20 requests, this year about half of the private sector applications came back stating they were simply out of funds. “It wasn’t even a matter of choice between your agency and another,” Peterkin lamented.

Another of Peterkin’s projects, Community Voice Mail, funded by United Way, was not refunded for the coming fiscal year. The program provides the homeless with free voice mailboxes which, for many, has been the only connection they may have to family and possible employment, shelter or medical care, in other words, the very support structure that can lead one out of homelessness.

Government funding, both federal and state, is also down, and while the focus under the Obama administration has partly shifted in a positive direction, it still has major gaps. “It’s much more intelligent,” CEO Hansen said, “to spend money on prevention than on homelessness” [after the fact]. An example of the Obama administration’s refocusing is the new Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program authorized through HUD.

But “funding for emergency services is getting weaker and weaker” with regard to those already in a homeless condition, she said.

The recently passed Florida budget also contained its share of bad news for homeless and low-income residents. The state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) completely eliminated funding for the grant in aid program which during the current fiscal year had provided Broward County with $117K for free bus vouchers, community-based shelter (CBS), day care and other programs which particularly benefitted the burgeoning population of homeless families with children. The Coalition serves as the county’s central agency for the distribution of grant in aid to Broward’s other service organizations.

The CBS program had enabled local churches to provide short term housing supplemental to the county’s established network of shelters which are perpetually operating at full capacity. CBS, in particular, was a program for which the Coalition’s Peterkin had seen a huge increase in demand since the beginning of the year.

While CEO Hansen has applied for the DCF’s Challenge Grant funding to address the shortfall, she said it would be months into the new fiscal year before she learns whether the request will be approved and, even if it is, it only will cover about 80% of this year’s appropriation. The current fiscal year ends on June 30.

“There’s no new funding,” according to Tom Pierce of DCF’s Office on Homelessness. “The question’s going to be ‘How does a community set its priorities’.”

Peterkin, as idealistic as he is realistic, affirms this message in a different way. “There needs to be a paradigm shift in how government thinks.”

“It’s like giving money to the person that robbed you,” he observes about the billions of federal bailout dollars given to Wall Street investment banks. “If we address the issues from the bottom up this country will be stronger.”

“There is an unfortunate negative sentiment about homeless people,” Peterkin’s realistic side reflects. “We have to keep enlightening and educating people about why this work is important.”

An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the amount of the DCF grant in aid for fiscal 2009 was  $1.14 million instead of $117,000 for Broward County.  $1.14 million was the entire state's appropriation.  This article now reflects the corrected amount of aid.