Council members decry that Beaches cities left out of homeless relocation program

A city program that helps transport homeless people back to their hometowns can’t be used at the Beaches, and several City Council members want to change that.

“We’re not allowed to use Homeward Bound money, even though we pay taxes and pay into that fund,” District 13 Councilman Rory Diamond said at a Finance Committee meeting Tuesday. “Now that the word has gone out that this is a safer place to be, it’s just, it’s going to inundate my community.”

The Finance Committee on Tuesday got an update from emergency services on how the agency is managing the homeless population after a new Florida law took effect in October.

The law made it illegal for municipalities to allow people to sleep on sidewalks, in parks, on beaches or in other public spaces. Cities across the state began scrambling to come into compliance with the law, because, beginning Jan. 1, residents, business owners and the state can sue any city they believe isn’t doing enough.

Soon after the law took effect in October, City Council appropriated $137,000 for the program. The funding is pulled from the Special Law Enforcement Trust Fund and provides transportation and other resources.

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The goal is to help people return to their hometowns where they may have more personal support.

Since then, efforts have been made to remove encampments Downtown, where many of the city’s unhoused population had tents. Several say that has led the homeless to migrate west to the coast.

While the Jacksonville City Council approved funding for the program, the Beaches cities, Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach and Neptune Beach have their own city governments. A city representative said that complicates the matter.

In an email, Mayor Donna Deegan’s Chief Communications Officer Phil Perry said state law precludes the other municipalities from participating.

“We are looking at options with the Beaches and Baldwin,” Perry wrote. “It’s also important to note (that) Councilman Diamond and Salem led the charge (to) slash funding for homelessness in the mayor’s proposed budget form $10 million to $1 million.”

But Diamond said he had been under the impression that the Beaches were included in the program. He said he was unhappy to learn otherwise.

Homeless at the Beaches

“This crackdown is happening Downtown, and the word has gotten out in the homeless community that if you go out to the Beaches, they’re not doing this,” Diamond told his colleagues. “And so now we’re having encampments exploding across District 13 at the Beaches, dropping this on Jax Beach PD, Neptune Beach PD, Atlantic Beach, PD.

“And so I would like to see this fixed. It can’t be that the Beaches are going to take this influx, pay all these taxes and not be able to use” Jacksonville Beach Fire Rescue Services.

Diamond said he has reached out to the general counsel’s office to see what can be done about perhaps creating a smaller interlocal agreement between Jacksonville and the Beaches cities so the agencies can work together on this issue.

Diamond said there was a meeting several weeks ago in the Beaches about the problem, but several council members said they had not known the Beaches had been left out of the Homeward Bound program until that moment.

The council members included former council President Ron Salem, who has been heavily involved in homelessness issues in the city.

“This is the first I’ve heard this, personally, and I think I’ve been pretty involved in this,” Salem said. “I’d like to see a solution, and I will work with you to do that. And if we need a separate legislation to do that, that’s what we need to work on.”

Most from out of town

Since October, the fire department team has worked with a total of 900 homeless people, police say. Of those, 93 used the bus option, 60 were admitted to a shelter and 86 were arrested.

Salem said he recently went with fire rescue and observed the agency’s interactions with the homeless. His understanding was that 80% of people approached by fire rescue were not from Jacksonville.

“In talking to the people for those couple days I was out there, the comment was made that Jacksonville had become a magnet for the homeless because of providers,” Salem said. “We provide a lot of services to the homeless. So other cities, I’m told — and I’m just repeating what I was told — were telling their homeless population, ‘Go to Jacksonville. We’ll put you on a bus to Jacksonville. They’ve got great services.’”

Salem said that’s why so many are here and why the Homeward Board program is being used so much.

“Many of these people want to go back home,” he said. “I think we need to give this program an opportunity to grow. … Let’s continue to monitor it, but let’s come back in two weeks with some questions about the Beaches for sure.”

— Dan Scanlan contributed to this report