Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/132206
Sarasota News Leader May 24, 2013 'SPIN CYCLING' One of the participants in the focus group was a civilian sheriff's employee who works at the county jail. On her own time, she came to participate. "We keep spin-cycling," she said. "Mental health and medical issues come first. That will take care of most of the problems. But we have to fix our mental health system." Florida's mental health system is not broken; it has vanished. When President Ronald Reagan closed the tap on federal funding for mental health care, facilities across Florida closed their doors. It is either family help or the streets for delusional people. Florida's Baker Act is only good for a three-day-stay at public expense in the psychiatric wing of a public hospital. Then the person is "spin-cycled" back to the streets. The parting advice is always the same: "Don't forget to take your meds." Sarasota's homeless population is not monolithic. A fraction has addiction problems, and the list of addictive substances is long. Others are criminals without the overhead of a car or apartment. Barwin told the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations on May 4 that 13.3 percent of all robberies in 2012 were cleared with arrest of a person with no permanent address. For burglaries, the statistic was 23 percent. For all arrests — felony and misdemeanor — 23.7 percent of those arrested had no address. While Barwin searches for a solution, two key city stakeholders are getting angry. Downtown merchants made their displeasure known May 6. "Customers don't feel safe," one told the City Commission. And the owner of a building across the street from City Hall testified, "We Page 25 realized very quickly the side of our building was a toilet." Then on May 20, Gillespie Park residents trooped to City Hall to vent their concerns. "Is this the direction the city should go?" asked Dale Attic. "Do you realize how hard this neighborhood has worked to come back as a great downtown neighborhood?" Bill Holland of Gillespie Park said, "A tent city would be a detriment to the area." And Linda Holland (no relation) said the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association "expresses concern to any increased concentration of social services for the homeless in the downtown area." COMING SOON? Armed with a lease and her personal interpretation of the zoning code, Vallerie Guillory is ready to start raising tents. "Within a week, there's going to be a tent up there," she told the focus group, referring to the North Washington Boulevard site. "Now that we have a license and a lease and a permitted use, they can't fight it." She said she will start conducting background checks on people who want to camp there, similar to the Pinellas Hope facility. And she is raising money to bring Marbut to town, collecting dollar bills and quarters from the homeless to defray his costs. City officials do not believe the site is approved for a tent city, and they already have run off one camper. But Guillory is convinced the zoning code is on her side. The two top city zoning officials were not available at press time to confirm or deny her ability to erect a tent city on the "property zoned commercial-intensive." %