JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville City Council’s Special Committee on Homelessness and Affordable Housing was announced by City Council President Ron Salem in October 2023. The group held its first meeting on Monday and talked about how the number of people without a place to live in Jacksonville is growing as the cost of housing becomes out of reach.
The latest study shows over 1,200 people are unhoused in Jacksonville and of that over 700 have recently lost their homes.
Mayor Donna Deegan is hoping to spend millions to deal with the problem.
News4JAX on Monday spoke to Ron, who is experiencing homelessness. We asked what he thinks the city should do about the issue.
“I would say, don’t judge a book by its cover,” he said. “Like I said before, bad things happen to good people. And when you get into a certain situation, it’s hard to get out. A lot of people think well, go get a job, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
Ron’s comments were echoed by others in Jacksonville, not only those who are experiencing homelessness but those working to address the problem.
Cindy Funkhouser leads the Suzbacher Center in Jacksonville which helps the unhoused get healthcare, jobs and housing.
“The number one solution, of course, is to find more capacity in housing itself,” Funkhouser said. “Because what has happened, as you know, is that over the last five years, especially with the pandemic, we saw a lot of different investors coming into our city from all over the country, snapping up properties, snapping up apartments that had once been affordable, jacking up the prices. Within three years, I think the rent went up 47% in Jacksonville, Florida. So we need to address, we need to address those issues. But most importantly, we need to figure out how to get more housing into the pipeline.”
The committee that met on Monday hopes to do that but also wants to deal with the problem right now.
“People want to take action on it. I know my colleagues want to take action on it. So I think we’re going to be fine there. I cringe when I hear the word committee, but this is going to be action-based first,” said councilman and head of the committee Joe Carlucci.
That action includes a homeless trust fund of sorts, $1 million from city council, that could go along with Mayor Deegan’s nearly $4 million she hopes will be used to deal with the problem. But the goal of this committee is to come up with a long-term solution that could be a permanent plan to help those without a home.