Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/352007
progress. He told the city commissioners July 21, "We are moving one individual or family out per day into housing." Frizzell would like the city to repurpose an old police substation at 890 Central Ave. into what he called a "progress center or wel- come center." He said it "needs some building upgrades, showers for instance. We would like to be able to coordinate with other agen- cies on the site. And we would like to be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m." That was part of a sev- en-step initiative he proposed to attack the problem of vagrancy and homelessness. Converting the building would cost an esti- mated $395,000. While it would handle only one-tenth of the population of the proposed shelter, it would cost about 3 percent of the estimate for the shelter, in part, because the city owns the land and the building is already standing. Mayor Willie Shaw was concerned about the chronic homeless. "There are persons on the Rosemary [District] side of Central Avenue who will not walk over to the 890 building," he said. "We're still not addressing the issue of the chronic homeless person. You can't make them [use the facility]." Sarasota's homeless in the past were primar- ily local people. Census after census found the large majority of homeless and vagrants reached in what used to be a biennial count had ties to the community. That has changed, leading Shaw, among others, to start talking about offering homeless services just to peo- ple with local connections. Homeless people routinely gathered on Central Avenue in early 2013. Photo by Norman Schimmel Sarasota News Leader July 25, 2014 Page 44