JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville City council members are looking to take the first steps toward dedicating consistent funding to address homelessness in Jacksonville.
The CEO of Changing Homelessness said the extra money could get hundreds of people off the streets every year.
News4JAX was inside City Hall Wednesday as Councilmembers Jimmy Peluso and Michael Boylan discussed the possibility in a bipartisan conversation. They’re looking to consider bringing to Duval County a solution to fight homelessness used by Miami-Dade County, but doing that would require a change to state law.
According to Changing Homelessness, the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in northeast Florida has dropped in recent years, but hundreds of people still live on the streets.
Dawn Gilman, who is the CEO of Changing Homelessness, said adopting Miami-Dade’s County model for funding support would make a big difference.
“We need some baseline of funding to know that if we start a program in October, we can still pay those people next October,” Gilman said. “If we have put people into housing...if we have guaranteed their rents for a certain amount of time, we can still pay those rents...that there is a more continued funding.”
In Miami, a one-percent tax on patrons at well-to-do restaurants goes to the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, which is the lead agency administering funding to nonprofits and other entities to help people experiencing homelessness. The tax only applies to those dining at restaurants with liquor licenses that bring in at least $400,000 a year, so for every $100 spent at such an establishment, $1 goes toward helping those in need.
Miami-Dade County has special permission from the state legislature to levy that tax locally, and City Councilmembers Peluso and Boylan want Jacksonville to have that opportunity, too.
“One of the things that it also does...15% of any monies collected must go to domestic violence victims,” Peluso said. “So it helps us with the unhoused issue that we have in our city, as well as those who are...victims of domestic violence.”
Gilman said the one-percent tax could bring in $10 million a year in Duval County and create transformational change.
“If you wanted to move 200 of the most vulnerable individuals living on the streets in Duval County, it would cost you about $5 million a year,” she said. “So we could move 200 people off the streets, and now we would have enough money to continue them being stably housed for as long as they needed that support.”
Making these changes could be a long way away. First, the state legislature would need to change the law to allow Jacksonville City Council pass such a tax, and it’s not clear whether such a measure would pass.