A small portion of Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan’s $1.9 billion budget proposal presentation that she made in front of city council Monday morning includes $10 million to address homelessness in the city through a new initiative.
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“You can’t do one thing and expect that to fix the problem. The goal ultimately is not only just to get people off the streets, but to make sure that we can make them productive citizens,” she said.
Deegan said the announcement of the full plan will come in a few weeks, but she did explain what some of that program will look like.
“It comes with wraparound services, it comes with housing, and there are various forms of housing that we’re going to be putting people into. We wanted to avoid having a tent city. We wanted people to have some dignity with this process,” Deegan said.
The attention to mitigating homelessness is part of the concerns Deegan heard from people during community conversations, but it also comes on the heels of a new state law that goes into effect Oct. 1 that will ban anyone from sleeping in public places like sidewalks.
Dawn Gillman, CEO of CHANGING Homelessness, said she’s hopeful but also concerned that $10 million isn’t enough. She believes that funding will cover increasing shelter capacity and increase the ability of shelters to quickly move people out of shelters into housing of their own.
“There’s usually other things that we need, like workforce development. Oftentimes, these are families with children, child care can be an issue, transportation. So there’s always a laundry list. They have your personal family budget, right? So many of those things. If people are coming into our system with zero income, we try to provide or at least assist with all of that,” Gillman said.
During her presentation, Deegan said the anticipated total cost of the homelessness initiative will be $15 million and called on the private sector to close that gap.
“Public-private partnerships are how we create a safer community and make sure homelessness is a rare, short-term experience in a person’s life,” she said.
If the budget passes it will take effect Oct. 1. City council is set to vote on the budget in September.