Threads
- Nonprofit would be created to control homeless program
- Other nonprofits pitching their services as alternatives
The city of Sarasota’s plan for ending chronic homelessness calls for a new nonprofit agency to take the reins on a Housing First program costing an estimated $31.4 million to permanently shelter some 300 street dwellers in the first five years alone.
Sarasota Homelessness Initiatives Director Doug Logan presented the plan Monday to the City Commission, with some members questioning the rationale behind starting a nonprofit from scratch and others lauding the idea.
“I think it’s naïve to think you’re going to get a lot of this taken care of by the philanthropic community,” said Vice Mayor Suzanne Atwell.
Said Commissioner Liz Alpert: “I know it’s doable. I have done it before. I think it’s a great way to approach it.”
Commissioners postponed action until after their joint meeting with the Sarasota County Commission on homelessness, scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday.
The city, Logan said, is “ill-suited to be the implementer of this plan” for several reasons. Among them, its public transparency obligations would violate the confidentiality requirements of housing the homeless.
And because none of the existing service providers have volunteered to spearhead such a program, Logan claimed, the city must encourage the creation of a new nonprofit to handle the task.
“Yes, we’ve talked to a variety of different agencies, some who are doing housing for the developmentally disabled or for veterans or for others,” Logan said. “It’s my judgment that no one is either willing or able to step up to this scale at the present time.”
That, said Scott Eller, is a lie.
As founder of the Sarasota-based nonprofit Community Affordable Supported Living Inc., or CASL, Eller said he told Logan in August he would join the effort and contribute to it financially.
CASL already operates 420 permanent supportive housing beds in Southwest Florida, including 250 in Sarasota County, for people with developmental disabilities, mental illness, co-occurring disorders, and histories of substance abuse. Many, but not all, used to be homeless.
Eller said he’s willing to open more such units as part of the city’s Housing First program.
Based on the philosophy that the best way to end homelessness is to find people homes, Housing First programs use a variety of resources to do just that.
“I find it insulting that I’m being told that Doug Logan could not find a willing collaborator in Sarasota County,” Eller said. “I told him the direct opposite of that. I gave him a specific plan.”
While Logan said he appreciates CASL’s willingness to help, the nonprofit’s plans require the city to contribute a majority of the funding. That’s not what the city has in mind, he said.
“The first question that came out of the mouths of most was, ‘How much money you got?'” Logan said. “I’m looking at a self-starting group that will have its own fiscal resources.”
Also apparently unable or unwilling to take on the project, Logan said, is the federal government’s mandated coordinating agency, or Continuum of Care, the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness.
The Suncoast Partnership,” Logan wrote in a memorandum to the city, “has not stepped forward to play an active role as lead agency in Housing First. In all fairness, (it) is under-resourced and does not currently have the infrastructure to build and manage a 300-unit enterprise.”
True, said Suncoast Partnership Executive Director Leslie Loveless, the agency is under-resourced – in part because the city cut its annual funding of $125,000 two years ago. But that hasn’t prevented it from playing an active role in Housing First, she said.
All but one of Suncoast Partnership’s upcoming projects are based on Housing First principals, she said.
And the agency currently funnels U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to support 82 units of permanent supportive housing in the community.
“The city,” Loveless said, “hasn’t invited us to the table.”
By Emily Le Coz