EDITORIAL: Salvation Army’s plan would spare some families from homelessness

The Salvation Army’s idea to build affordable housing for families — and put a small plug in the gaping hole of local residential options for low-income workers — merits an open and honest community discussion. In the current market, apartment rents are out of reach for many with minimum-wage jobs and part-time employment.

Salvation Army’s plan to install pod-style housing for 18 to 24 families on recently acquired land next to its 14th Street West location requires City of Bradenton approval. We hope city officials, elected leaders and the greater community enter this discussion with an open mind — free of any stigma and misperception about the homeless.

As a big bonus, the nonprofit would convert its current family shelter into one for women, which the agency currently does not have. As Salvation Army Major Ethan Frizzell explained, Manatee County lacks adequate family and women’s shelters — and the agency’s proposal would only alleviate a tiny part of the problem.

Women and children account for a rising percentage of the homeless population. The Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness reports that families now account for more than 40 percent of the homeless — the fastest growing portion of the homeless population. The agency serves Manatee and Sarasota counties in a leadership role on homelessness.

Almost 1,700 students enrolled in the Manatee County school district have been identified as being homeless.

Even an efficiency apartment commands $700 to $800 in rent, Frizzell notes, but the Salvation Army would only charge in the neighborhood of $300 — an affordable figure to the working poor, veterans and the disabled served by the agency.

The City of Palmetto is considering establishing a housing authority to generate more affordable housing for low-income residents, another welcome development. We hope that effort gains traction.

The Salvation Army’s goal is all the more remarkable given the Legislature’s disdain for affordable housing. Again this year, legislators siphoned more than $100 million out of the Sadowski affordable housing trust fund and placed the money into the budget for general spending. Communities around the state will be left to tap more of their own resources to create affordable housing — or let the situation worsen.

Shameless legislators also drained money from a number of other homeless programs — “devastating” losses, Adell Erozer told Herald columnist Vin Mannix. Erozer, the executive director of the Community Coalition on Homelessness at the Bill Galvano One Stop Center, works on the front lines of this intractable issue. Now more families will fall into homelessness here because of that funding loss, she warns.

In this year’s state budget, lawmakers put zero dollars into rental assistance for the Department of Children and Families Homeless Program, quite a drop from the $2 million in 2010-2011. Last year’s $8 million in homeless prevention grant money also disappeared.

Yet the number of homeless school-age children in Florida almost doubled over the past few years, according to a report from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting — surging from 31,000 four years ago to 57,000 last year. How can the state ignore this?

With the Legislature abdicating any sense of responsibility to help the homeless, it’s left up to individual communities to lend a hand to Floridians struggling to survive. Bradenton’s Salvation Army has a commendable plan to help in a small way.

First appeared in the Bradenton Herald. March 23, 2012.