Enough poorly-planned "evacuations." We need public participation and democratic planning, with everyone involved, with sensitivity to the disabled (including hearing-impaired), our elders, our homeless population, working and low-income people and people of color. Blithering orders to evacuate don't answer the questions of where or why or with what funds for people living paycheck to paycheck. Msasive traffic tie ups, unavailable shelters, price-gouging and other questions must be answered. We need democratic planning, not dull Republicans with closed minds and stony faces giving us vague orders. The Titanic Trio -- Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT, Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR (who changed his name from HOAR in 1994) and County Executive MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK -- have delusions of adequacy and are deeply insensitive. It's time for them to go. "Extremely upset?" Sheriff SHOAR is full of oceans of emotion, and makes unwise decisions based on emotions, as with the Michelle O'Connell case, when the Sheriff's office decided "suicide" after spoliating forensic evidence, before the sun came up on September 3, 2010.
Posted September 24, 2017 12:02 am
By JARED KEEVER jared.keever@staugustine.com
‘THIS NEEDS TO BE HANDLED AS A COMMUNITY ISSUE’: Emergency shelter turmoil exposes broader county problems with homeless population
A fiery memo from homeless advocates and service providers in St. Johns County claiming many of the county’s most vulnerable were treated poorly during Hurricane Irma as they sought refuge at one of the county’s emergency shelters, appears to have exposed a lack of communication between county officials and service providers, and has perhaps laid bare broader societal issues when it comes to dealing with the deeply impoverished and troubled.
St. Francis House Executive Director Judy Dembowski delivered the memo, along with a collection of handwritten statements, to the St. Johns County Continuum of Care membership during their Wednesday morning meeting.
Addressed to the Continuum — an umbrella organization that overseas and coordinates the efforts of all homeless service providers in the county — the memo says that the “homeless population that utilized the Pedro Menendez High School for emergency shelter were [not welcome] and treated accordingly,” and asserts that the actions of the St. Johns County School District and the Sheriff’s Office, who manned the shelter, “demonstrated a total lack empathy and were void of humanity.”
The memo claims that the homeless who stayed there “were segregated from the general population of other county residents and were issued yellow and black bands to identify them” and goes on to say that deputies “knew this was not acceptable as they cut the bands off and kept them upon the closure of the shelter.”
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In a phone interview on Thursday, Dembowski made clear that, while she did carry the memo to the Continuum membership, it was not a document from the St. Francis House staff.
“This needs to be handled as a community issue not a St. Francis issue,” she said.
Dembowski said that after hearing the stories from her clients and other members of the homeless community upon their return from the high school, she decided the statements should be collected and delivered to the Continuum’s membership, even though she couldn’t vouch for their veracity.
“Because we were not there we can not say what is fact and what is not fact,” she said.
“This whole thing has blown up into something that I did not intend,” she added later.
Instead, what she said she had intended was to start a conversation within the Continuum and with county officials to avoid any problems next time.
The school’s view
Pedro Menendez High School principal Clay Carmichael said the way he and his staff were portrayed as handling the situation was unsettling.
“It bothers me,” he said during a brief conference call with other school district officials on Thursday.
Carmichael said he and others “stayed up all night” before the shelter was opened to plan out how things would be handled.
“The wristbands were my idea,” he said.
But they weren’t given only to the homeless.
Everyone received a colored band, and there were yellow ones as well as pink, blue and orange bands. The colors corresponded with the colors of large tarps that were spread out on the gymnasium floor, he explained, and helped him and others keep track of the size of the of the shelter’s growing population. The first 100 people through the door were given blue bands, for example, and stayed on the blue tarp.
Those who were given yellow bands, Carmichael explained, were deemed either “elderly or medically needy.” He estimated that well over 100 homeless showed up at the shelter by bus and acknowledged that they all were deemed medically needy and given the yellow bands. But they weren’t the only ones, he said, adding that one of his own family members was also given a yellow band. They weren’t segregated, but were set up on two tarps at the front of the gymnasium and in a wrestling room.
“The reason we did that was so they were closer to the restrooms” and near the EMT staff who were housed in a nearby training room, Carmichael said.
He said that those with the yellow bands were always the first to be served meals and snacks and were first during rotations for shower access.
The Sheriff’s view
But that’s not to say there weren’t problems, and St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar says the ones that he witnessed during a brief visit to the shelter will definitely be avoided next time there is an emergency.
Shoar, on Thursday, took issue with the characterization of the goings-on at the shelter and said that if Dembowski felt the need to criticize the actions of those who worked there she should have been at the shelter herself or at least verified that the allegations in the memo were true.
“I was there,” he said, before describing a chaotic scene with his deputies overwhelmed by the introduction of dozens of homeless, “half of which were mentally ill.”
Shoar said that there had been reports of fighting and stealing and said that, in the short time he was there, he witnessed one man urinating on a sidewalk. Another, he said, had to be escorted to the showers by someone working at the shelter to have feces washed off his legs.
After speaking with his lead deputy who was working the shelter, Shoar said he decided the personnel he had in place wasn’t sufficient.
“I had to plus that up by two,” he said, including a deputy trained in mental health crisis intervention.
Shoar said he was “extremely upset” that the St. Francis House had buses of homeless sent to the shelter but did not provide any staff members to help with managing the situation.
That was in contrast to at least one drug treatment facility which sent 20 recovering addicts.
“They also supplied a nurse and a staff member and medication,” he said.
Shoar said the homeless who came to Menendez for shelter didn’t have their movement restricted in any way and were in no way segregated (and were even given access to a courtyard to smoke), but, given the problems encountered by his deputies and those managing the shelter, they very likely will be segregated in the future.
“’Homeless’ isn’t the right word,” Shoar said while discussing what he thinks needs to happen in future emergencies.
Much as Dembowski and others who spoke with The Record on the topic pointed out, Shoar said that it is unfair to single people out based on housing status alone. But he also said it has to be acknowledged that a significant cross section of the homeless population suffers from profound mental health issues as well as substance abuse problems, and includes a good number of convicted criminals.
Such people, he said, can’t be housed in the same facility as young families or elderly evacuees.
He offered the hypothetical example of a young family who had been put out of their home and then lost a car in the run up to the storm.
“That’s one thing when compared with a paranoid schizophrenic who is a sexual predator,” he said.
The broad view
Dembowski acknowledged much the same thing on Thursday, but she said she also wanted to be sure that homeless people weren’t all lumped together and treated as a troublesome or burdensome population, because people who live in homes also suffer from mental health and substance abuse problems.
She said people are often quick to assume that everyone who is homeless is similarly afflicted or has a criminal background and is dangerous in some way.
“What people don’t see is the mom with the 6-week-old baby,” she said.
She, Dembowski said, also shouldn’t be housed during an emergency with “bad actors” simply because of her housing status.
That society hasn’t figured out how to help that single mother, or the mentally ill, in times of emergency or even in day-to-day life is really what is it at the heart of the matter, according to St. Johns County Legal Aid managing attorney Megan Wall.
She has requested a meeting with Shoar, homeless service providers, and school district officials to discuss the problems that occurred at Menendez this year (and last year during Hurricane Matthew).
That, she said, would go a long way to quell rumors and make sure everyone knew the facts about what went on.
For instance, Wall said she knew that the homeless had been given yellow wristbands, but she wasn’t aware that those wearing the bands were the first in the rotation to be offered food and showers.
The meeting may also clear up the perception that Dembowski and the St. Francis House “sent” busloads of homeless people to the shelter.
Dembowski said during her interview that only three families and about 10 individuals who were actual clients and residents of the shelter on Washington Street (that flooded badly during Matthew) were sent to the high school.
Many of the other homeless were picked up on Washington Street by district school buses and transported there.
That is part of the county’s emergency planning that has long been in place to help evacuate the downtown St. Augustine area, according to Emergency Management Director Linda Stoughton.
Wall said she is also hopeful that the meeting and the coming conversation will dispel the idea that Dembowski (or other service providers) is somehow solely responsible for the homeless population that she serves food to on a daily basis through the shelter’s soup kitchen, and, because of that service, must shepherd them through a storm at an emergency shelter.
“These are not ‘her’ people,” Wall said. “She is not the Moses of the homeless.”
Much of the subtext of the conversation that has already started, at least in Wall’s eyes, is that the situation at Menendez and the tension and finger pointing afterward, has to do with those involved coming in contact with a large problem that goes mostly ignored by everyone when there isn’t an emergency.
“Society hasn’t come up with a plan to deal with why we have starving people living in the woods,” she said. “We all need to point fingers inward and ask ourselves why we are not doing enough to help the homeless.”
Dembowski echoed similar sentiments and called the shelter a “microcosm of the overall state of affairs.”
Both said they hope that whatever comes of future planning can also motivate others to acknowledge the homeless problem in the county, and beyond, and get others to take a more active role in alleviating it.
“The only thing that brings this up is when we have a storm and everyone is endangered,” Wall said, “even the people we have abandoned.”
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