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By JOSH SALMAN, staff writer
SARASOTA
Roland Wilson was hoping for an easy end when he lunged into the busy traffic of Bahia Vista Street.
For the unsuspecting motorists passing by, it was a near miss.
Roland Wilson got help with housing through theSarasota County YMCA.
(Staff photo / Thomas Bender)
The troubled teen had been thrown out of his mother’s house, fallen behind in school and lost his grandmother to a stroke. He was homeless that March afternoon. He thought death was the only way out.“I was full of stress — school, work, family,” Wilson said. “I was depressed.”
A friend reported Wilson’s incident to a high school guidance counselor, who helped him enroll in a housing program offered by the Sarasota Family YMCA. He’s now striving to turn his life around.
Wilson is just one in a vast demographic of homeless in Sarasota that has become lost in the conversation. He’s among the invisible.
Since the Great Recession took hold, children are one of the fastest growing segments of the region’s homeless population.
But unlike the adults often identified with the problem, these youth are not drinking in public or panhandling along congested intersections. They’re not camped out with sleeping bags on downtown sidewalks.
Social workers say homeless families and teenagers are typically the most eager to seek help, and Sarasota County has made substantial progress providing that assistance in the past two years.
It’s a success story that is part of the widening discrepancy in the way the community handles homeless children compared to adults.
“Sarasota will have the most comprehensive way to address homeless families and children in the U.S.,” said Robert Marbut, a consultant who was brought in to address the homeless situation. “It will be the best — by far — in America.”
“Sarasota also will have one of the worst adult programs,” he said. “That’s what’s so ironic. It’s a tale of two cities. I have never seen anything like it.”
Nowhere to go
Wilson never had it easy.
Growing up in Aurora, Colorado, his parents fought constantly. When they split, Wilson’s father took him and his four siblings to Indiana, where the man would abuse his children.
Wilson eventually landed in foster care, where he lived for several years before reuniting with his mother in Colorado.
When she moved to Ellenton in 2008, Wilson followed — traveling 1,900 miles across the country on a Greyhound bus.
He bounced around schools from Ellenton to Bradenton and Sarasota. By high school, he was working to help his family pay the bills while trying to make his way on the football team. His studies took a back seat.
He began cutting class and had to repeat one year. He also found himself in legal trouble, tagging buildings with graffiti and joining in other such behavior.
During his freshman year, Wilson’s family house burned down as a result of a cooking accident. At their new rental, his older brother moved back in. His ill grandmother also moved into an already overcrowded home, pushing Wilson to the couch, he said.
Wilson’s antics ultimately became too much. He remembers sitting in class in February when his mother started frantically texting him. She was throwing him out.
By the time he got home that day, all his stuff was on the front yard.
“I was homeless,” Wilson said. “I didn’t know where to go.”
Rock bottom for Wilson was when he tried to end his own life just weeks later.
But it also served as a stark wake-up.
The 19-year-old moved in with a friend. He caught up on school and graduated from Sarasota High this summer — the only one of his siblings to earn a high school degree, he said.
The YMCA helped him find his own apartment through a transitional housing assistance program, which subsidizes rent for homeless youth who are on their own through Season of Sharing funds. Participants are required to work and remain enrolled in school.
“A lot of organizations are trying to step up to help fix things,” said Ali Kleber, a counselor at the Resurrection House shelter and board member for the Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness. “It could happen to anybody."
Families on the brink
With plans to enroll in State College of Florida in January to study radiology, Wilson has reshaped his future.
Many others have not.
This sign appeared at a forum in July featuring Dr. Robert Marbut, a national expert on homelessness prevention, at New College of Florida in Sarasota. (Staff photo / Thomas Bender)
There were more than 71,000 homeless children attending grade schools across Florida during the 2013-2014 school year, not counting children too young for kindergarten, according to the Florida Department of Education.
That rising tally includes nearly 3,300 homeless children between Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties, an area largely premised as one of the state’s most wealthy.
In neighboring DeSoto, an agricultural community just miles east of Sarasota, almost one in every 10 classroom children is considered homeless — one of the highest ratios in Florida.
With no parents around, these children are often left to fend for themselves. They live in shelters, double-up with the family or friends, sleep in cars and stay in squalid motels. Often, the only meals they eat are those served at school.
“This population is invisible,” said Ellen McLaughlin, program director for the Sarasota Family YMCA, who serves as the school district’s homeless liaison. “And I think there’s a lot more youth out there not counted.”
Although the economy is rebounding, the number of homeless children appears to be increasing.
Another 36,056 children under the age of 18 live in poverty in the three-county region — many on the brink of homelessness. That number is up 12 percent from the trough of the recession in 2009, and flirts with an all-time high, Census figures show.
A lack of long-term affordable housing in Sarasota has swelled the cost of living for these families. Rental prices in the area are increasing at one the fastest rates in the country, while wages are stagnant.
“Most of America is a paycheck away from going broke,” said Erin Minor, executive director of Harvest House, which opened a shelter for homeless families with children in October. “These families are falling behind every week because there is a deficit in their income.”
Shelter put on hold
Since early 2013, issues surrounding Sarasota’s homeless population have erupted through the community, stemming largely from an uptick in panhandling, arrests that have garnered headlines and civil liberties lawsuits.
The community hired Marbut, a national expert on homelessness, to help craft a solution.
Dr. Robert Marbut, an expert on homelessness prevention, spoke at a community forum in July at New College in Florida in Sarasota. (Staff Photo by Thomas Bender)
Local officials toured homeless housing facilities across the country, sponsored public forums and eventually approved Marbut’s 12-step plan to address the community’s homeless population.
Seven of those initiatives have been completed and another three are well in progress. But the top priority — a come-as-you-are shelter for homeless adults — is on hold indefinitely.
There is no place in Sarasota County where a single homeless adult can seek shelter 24 hours a day, seven days a week without paying.
County officials and Marbut fault the city, which would not agree to any of the 80 some potential sites identified for an adult shelter. The only site that city officials deemed acceptable was in Manatee County, far from other Sarasota services.
For city commissioners, there has been a shift in how to address the problem of chronic homelessness. Most no longer believe a shelter is the best approach.
“Sheltered people are five times more likely to remain homeless,” City Commissioner Susan Chapman said.
Focus on families
The county’s efforts are focused on children and families, whose homeless presence in Sarasota last year nearly matched the very visible adult population — a shock to even those counting.
Agencies have opened a shelter for children and families in north Sarasota, with a second set to debut in North Port early next year.
The community implemented a software system to help the slew of agencies providing homeless services coordinate their efforts, ensuring a homeless client is following the assigned program and not double-dipping on help.
New case management systems were developed, and motels along North Tamiami Trail were converted into affordable housing rentals.
“A lot of it is perception,” said Wayne Applebee, director of homeless services for Sarasota County. “It is easier to raise funds for families than panhandlers and alcoholics.”
Back on his feet
Jeron Thomas was briefly among the homeless ranks.
The 20-year-old did not get along with his mother — exacerbated by a lackluster effort in high school.
Although he graduated from Sarasota High, Thomas was forced to move into his best friend’s family home.
But he eventually found the same YMCA assistance that has helped so many others. He’s now attending State College of Florida, where he plans to graduate by next year and transfer to a four-year university.
Thomas also works a busy schedule at Walt’s Fish Market, a short walk from the duplex unit he rents, subsidized to a cost of just $280 per month.
“It has just been extremely helpful,” Thomas said with a smile.