A Greyhound bus waits on the edge of Downtown Jacksonville on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. | Michelle Corum, Jacksonville Today
Published on December 10, 2024 at 3:56 pm
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Fifty-two people have been arrested and others have been bussed home as Jacksonville tries to comply with a new state law that prevents homeless people from sleeping in public, the mayor says.
Mayor Donna Deegan said the city is working to comply with the law, especially since people can sue the city if it doesn’t enforce the new rules.
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Since Oct. 1, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has warned 448 people about not sleeping on the streets, Deegan said Tuesday.
A team from the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department — called PATH, for Providing Assistance to the Homeless — has provided outreach and services to 150 people since Nov. 23. The department is finding that many of the homeless are not from here, and the city’s Homeward Bound program can pay for their bus tickets home.
On WJCT’s First Coast Connect program, Deegan told host Anne Schindler that she realizes sending people away with bus tickets isn’t a solution to homelessness.
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“There is a lot of this that I don’t particularly love, Anne, but this is where we are,” Deegan said. “We have a law we have to comply with, and what we are trying to do is move as quickly as we can toward a process.”
The process, Deegan said, involves getting people back to their communities. Or, if they’re local, getting them into a shelter and providing other services to help them become positive, contributing citizens of Jacksonville.
Deegan said the cities that are most successful with the process are ones where they have intake situations 24/7 where people can get the services they need.
“In terms of sending people into the communities where they come from, I know that’s probably not the most popular thing, but at the end of the day, you have so many resources for the citizens of your city,” Deegan said. “And if people are either being bussed here and or somehow are here and they’d rather go home to be closer to family, I think that’s just one resource we have.”
The Sheriff’s Office has not yet released the costs for arresting and housing — or incarcerating — people in response to the new law.
