TAMPA, Fla. – Mervyn McClain has been living on the streets on-and-off for the last 10 years.
“Once you make up your mind that you want to get help and get well, then everything else that comes along with it is not a problem. It’s not an issue,” he said.
He now lives in a secured tent city that is partially paid for by the city of Tampa and run by Catholic Charities of St. Petersburg.
It’s called Tampa Hope.
It’s located in the middle of an industrial area, just east of downtown Tampa, and just south of Ybor City. Only residents and staff are allowed inside the locked gates.
“We partner with the City of Tampa outreach team, the City of Tampa’s police department, city police, their outreach liaisons, and then our own,” Maggie Rogers said. “That is how they come to Tampa Hope.”
Rogers is the executive director of Catholic Charities, and she said it was surprisingly easy to coordinate with all of those agencies.
“They’re all driven to do a similar mission. Maybe not exactly like ours, but it’s a similar mission,” she said. “It’s really just getting them all in the same room, and saying, ‘this is what we’re going to do. How can we work together?’ It just happened organically, and it was a piece of cake.”
Tampa Hope was established as a result of the pandemic.
When people started losing their jobs and their homes, Rogers said the city contacted her to ask if she could help.
She and her team set up Tampa Hope in seven days.
It cost $6.6 million to lay the groundwork for the facility, and it costs between $2 million and $3 million a year to operate.
Rogers said some of the money comes from federal grants, and the city of Tampa has contributed $1 million each year for the last three years.
“We want to give them the best jumpstart possible,” she said. “We want them to succeed. We don’t want them to become homeless again. Does it happen? Absolutely, but we don’t want it. If we can decrease that number or percentage by any chance, we want to take that opportunity to do it.”
Tampa Hope currently houses 125 residents in tents on-site, and pallet homes (or small cottages) that sleep two will boost that number to 325 residents very soon.
She said residents stay until they get jobs, save money and graduate to Catholic Charities’ affordable housing program.
As homelessness hits record levels across the country, similar government-sponsored homeless camps have popped up, including sites in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
There could be more coming to Florida because of a new law that could force some cities and counties to create their own spots like this.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1365 last week, which would ban homeless residents from sleeping on public property.
“We don’t run homeless shelters,” Mayra Uribe said.
Uribe is a county commissioner in Orange County.
“We don’t have enough housing for people, and now, the government is going to dictate to us to make homeless camps?” she asked.
She said the law is unfair because state lawmakers are not providing any money to start the sites up or run them.
“We’re not ready for this,” she said. “I don’t think any city or county in Florida is ready for this, and the financial cost that it’s going to be to taxpayers – we don’t have enough as-is, and we’re mandating a bill that is unfunded.”
She questioned where a site like this would go in the Orlando area.
“We have no idea where it would go. I don’t think that there’s any property that anyone would give up at this point,” she said.
Rogers said Tampa Hope does not have any residential neighbors, and her site has not been an issue.
“It’s finding the perfect place,” she said. “I looked for a year-and-a-half for this land, so it’s not like I just flipped a quarter and said, ‘oh, we’ll take that one.’ I probably turned down 30 different locations.”
“This is the start,” McClain said. “This is starting to help, and I would definitely say it offers hope. That’s all you can ask for.”
You can find out more about Tampa Hope by clicking here.
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