Our Northeast Florida governments, long hostile to the homeless, were just beginning to get more competent and compassionate under guidance from reform Mayor Nancy Shaver when Hurricane Matthew hit. Read more:
Posted October 14, 2016 06:34 am - Updated October 14, 2016 08:34 am
By JARED KEEVER jared.keever@staugustine.com
‘They don’t know where else to go’: Homeless service providers working to pick up the pieces after Matthew
Two of the area’s homeless service providers took pretty severe hits when Hurricane Matthew made its run up the Florida coast. Now, the directors of the St. Francis House and the Emergency Services & Homeless Coalition of St. Johns County are working to not only repair badly damaged property, but also to continue providing services to some of the area’s most vulnerable.
“They are destroyed and they just keep coming back because they don’t know where else to go,” St. Francis House Executive Director Judy Dembowski said Thursday afternoon as people came up to a distribution tent to get snacks and bottles of water.
Dembowski said the soup kitchen and shelter on Washington Street got between 3 and 4 feet of water in all three of its buildings. The water ruined the administrative offices, the dining room and knocked out 88 beds for the county’s homeless.
The bright spot was that a $30,000 recently renovated kitchen was spared, but Dembowski said she still isn’t sure when the facility will be back up and running at full capacity.
Those who were living at the shelter have been moved out to Faith Community Church on County Road 210, but they are in no position to accommodate new residents, she said.
As for those who had come to rely on the kitchen for a hot meal, the shelter is doing what it can. Dembowski said they have been fortunate that members of the community have been donating supplies and bottled water. A tent and portable storage unit had been set up in a courtyard with workers distributing sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and other snacks.
“What we are doing right now is basic needs,” Dembowski said. “We set up a makeshift operation here where we are distributing immediate consumables.”
The challenge for the St. Francis House, she said, is that many people who come by for a meal aren’t necessarily homeless but are living very close to the edge. A number of them come to get meals when times are so tight that they have to decide between rent and food, or medicine and food.
People started coming and looking for help as early as Saturday evening.
“We are where they go when there is an emergency, and now that were are having an emergency, it was just heartbreaking,” Dembowski said of the scene at the shelter on Saturday night.
“I am at the point where I don’t cry every time somebody shows up and I’ve got nothing for them, but still, it’s sad,” she added.
Dembowski couldn’t guess when the shelter could start moving people back in. She was meeting with a contractor later Thursday afternoon to get some guidance about how much drywall and flooring would have to be removed.
“We have to get cleared for electric, we have to get cleared for mold,” she said, rattling off the number of problems she plans to see to in the coming weeks and months. But, she said, they will work to get back up and running, and providing shelter, as soon as possible.
“We are not really aiming, necessarily, for pretty before we get people in,” she said. “We are (aiming for) safe.”
On the other side of U.S. 1, the Emergency Services & Homeless Coalition, or ESHC, also suffered damage when a tree fell on a historic home that the service provider owns at 57 Chapin St.
Executive Director Debi Redding said the damage displaced a family with three small children who were living there. She was able to get them into another home, but the damage meant the loss of another five beds for those who need them. The home she moved the family into was slated to go to another family and they will now have to be put off until the Chapin Street home is fixed, she said.
“It is one affordable home that is off the market right now for the homeless” Redding told The Record Thursday afternoon.
According to an email Redding sent earlier in the day, the damage is particularly hard for ESHC to take because funding cuts they suffered last year left the home uninsured.
She has an estimate of $3,700 to remove the tree but still needs to get a structural engineer out to the property to see how much work it will require to restore.
“It’s a historic home and we will rebuild it,” Redding said.
A historical marker in front of the house indicates it was once the home of Willie Galimore, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and former player for the Chicago Bears. Galimore made history locally by returning to St. Augustine during the civil rights demonstrations and becoming the first black person to register as a guest at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge on U.S. 1, the marker says.
Redding said she plans to move quickly to get the tree removed, but was delayed for a time because live power lines in the neighborhood prevented crews from doing the job on the crowded street.
“If I don’t get that off of there soon, there is a hole in that roof,” she said. “I can’t get a tarp on there, and the rain is just coming in and it is just ruining the interior of that home.”
ESHC has money in reserves to cover the initial costs, but Redding, said she is going to try to raise funds to help recoup some of the losses.
The other homes owned and operated by ESHC only sustained minor damage and are still providing shelter, Redding said.
While the St. Francis House is having to rely on the kindness of a local church to provide shelter for its residents, Dembowski said all of the other regulars who frequent the Washington Street soup kitchen have been accounted for.
“That’s something you can’t replace,” Dembowski said. “You can’t get them back.”
“Everything else we will rebuild,” she said.
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