unRavel

Sarasota, homelessness and Wu-Tang Clan

Zach Murdock

The Kearney Center for Comprehensive Emergency Services is a 24-hour shelter whose founding public-private partnership could become a model for Sarasota.

The next step in Sarasota’s fight to combat homelessness will almost certainly be the addition of a “come as you are” shelter, but it’s an idea that has divided government leaders for some time.

At least until they saw the shelter up in Tallahassee.

The Kearney Center for Comprehensive Emergency Services is a 24-hour shelter housing up to 270 individuals each night who are already homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in Tallahassee and surrounding Leon County.

The $7.5 million Rolls-Royce of shelters has it all: Damn near every Tallahassee social services agency hosts office hours there, it provides medical attention, help signing up for benefits programs, substance abuse programs, GED courses, or even scheduled meetings with parole officers.

The best part? The city and county government came together to agree on — and fund — the facility.

So this week Sarasota leaders invited Rick Kearney, the rich businessman namesake of the shelter, and a few Tallahassee municipal government leaders down to share their insights on how to get it done.

**They all sat down for an in-depth Herald-Tribune Hot Topics Forum on the subject, which is available on YouTube in its 90-minute entirety.**

The biggest piece of advice they gave local government leaders — get the cuss out of the way.

Let people in the private sector who know how to get shit done take the reigns and run with this thing. When they get the absolute best idea for what, where and how to move forward — they’ll come back and let you know how you can help, Kearney told government leaders.

For that to work, though, Sarasota needs a Rick Kearney. Or several of them.

Kearney himself is the first to admit this. Rich benefactors are the real movers and shakers in this world, and one or several of them who are passionate about this issue here really need to step up and take control to elevate this from bureaucratic slugfest to a shelter that actually helps those who need it most.

C.R.E.A.M.

Unfortunately, Kearney didn’t quote Wu-Tang Clan, but that’s definitely the bottom line here.

Cash Rules Everything Around My Effort To Build A World-Class Homeless Shelter To Triage Sarasota’s Neediest Residents.

I know I wasn’t the only person sitting in the forum Tuesday eyeing Jon Thaxton when all this advice got thrown around. Thaxton says the Kearney folks smiled and elbowed him with the same idea Tuesday morning.

As a former county commissioner and executive VP of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Thaxton has the ear of every major donor within 100 miles, relationships and clout with everyone who would have to sign off on the damn thing and skin thick enough to carry such a project to the finish line.

He’s proving all these things with his role on the leadership team behind the Bayfront 20:20 initiative, which is the exact structure Kearney is suggesting needs to happen for the homeless shelter.

Thaxton laughed when I told him all this after the forum. He sees the parallels, but he’s already got a full-time job (or several of them, really), and the person or people that take this on gotta be in it “from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they fall asleep again,” he says.

Instead, he and the rest of the heavy hitters (think Debra Jacobs at the Patterson Foundation, the Baranciks, City Manager Tom Barwin, County Administrator Tom Harmer) need to sit down with the deep pockets and show them Kearney’s idea. Getting those benefactors who are dedicated enough and liquid enough — dolla, dolla bills, y’all — to back this thing will be the next big step toward breaking the stalemate on this.

“We’ve got a lot of the foundation laid; we’ve got this network,” Thaxton told me Tuesday. “What’s pretty clear to me is that you’re going to need one or two of these people who are dedicated to it to bring these plans together. We need your leadership, we need your passion and we need your cash.”