Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/285258
Port and Venice and all of Sarasota County, the homeless and vagrants will come to the City of Sarasota. The shelter is not designed like a jail. While security will be maintained by Sarasota County Sheriff's deputies, the door to the basic facility will be open at all times. People will be able to come and go as they please. Some will gain admission to the facility for counseling, training and other services. But if history is any judge, the other half will wander the streets. The local newspapers in communities with Marbut-style, Pottinger- approved shelters — including the Tampa Bay Times — have remarked on the increase in crime and drop in property values in the areas around those facilities. Is it wise to site the Sarasota shelter in the area of the county with the highest crime and lowest property values? How wise is it to add hundreds more unemployed and unemploy- ables to north Sarasota streets? While the rest of the county may benefit from a marked reduction in the homeless and vagrant popu- lation, of what benefit will that be to the City of Sarasota? Downtown merchants and residents continue to be stressed by the city's current population of homeless people and vagrants. Imagine their delight when the population swells after the shelter is in operation. Just this week, Ernie Ritz, chairman of the Sarasota Downtown Improvement District, told me the following when I asked what he thought of the shelter: "It strikes fear into me." And under Pottinger, city police will have little choice but to return violators to the shelter, only a few blocks away. Can you think of a better way to capitalize on the millions of public dollars spent to improve and beautify downtown than to attract a larger population of transients? THE AROMA OF KNEE-JERK POLICY When policy is made in haste, unintended consequences uncoil, fangs bared. Pottinger is the law (although the judge relaxed it some- what this month) and it must be obeyed. But no judge has ruled a homeless shelter must be only a few blocks from a city's downtown, or that it must be in an area already experiencing high crime and catastrophic unemployment. Several years ago, I watched and reported on the county's efforts to find a new jail site. The search went on for years, and it was ulti- mately shelved when the jail population did not prove to soar as expected. It was a delib- erate and methodical search. By comparison, finding a shelter site seemed almost preor- dained, needing only a handful of weeks to complete. Another knee-jerk action was appropriating money from the county's affordable housing trust fund to build the facility. That decision came in spite of a study indicating the greatest need to help move people from homelessness OPINION Sarasota News Leader March 28, 2014 Page 90