Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on Sheriff’s homeless outreach:
Hillsborough deputies who help the homeless will do even more from their new office
- By Sara DiNatale, Times Staff Writer
Friday, April 8, 2016 9:15pm
TAMPA — Bruce Roberts was trying to help a 74-year-old homeless veteran, but he hit a wall.
The outreach coordinator at James A. Haley VA Medical Center found out the man wasn’t receiving his Social Security benefits.
“He never knew he qualified,” Roberts said. “He worked at a carwash. But it just wasn’t enough to make a living, so he was sleeping on someone’s living room floor.”
Roberts didn’t know what to do. His job description doesn’t include driving the homeless man to the Social Security Office to sort out this mess.
So Roberts called Hillsborough sheriff’s Deputy Stephanie Krager. She drove the elderly man to the Social Security Office. She helped him with his paperwork, and then to find a home. The man, who had worked most of his life, was owed $14,000 in benefits.
“(The homeless) need a hand,” Krager said. “They don’t know how to navigate the system.”
Krager has spent the past few years filling the gap as part of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Homeless Initiative. What started as a one-deputy operation in June 2010 has grown to five.
But until Friday, the Homeless Initiative didn’t have an office of its own.
“Our cars were our facilities,” Krager said.
Now, at 3671 W Waters Ave. in the Fountain Oaks Plaza, the deputy has space to meet with the people she’s trying to help. There, they can get help to fill out paperwork and meet with other service providers. They can also store supplies for the homeless, like clean clothes, towels, toiletries and other necessities — the kinds of items deputies kept in their trunks or their own garages when they first started homeless outreach six years ago.
“Our goal is to work with the chronically homeless, the most difficult cases,” Krager said, “the mentally ill, the substance abusers, the ones who have been on the streets for 15, 20 years and get them permanent supportive housing.”
Last year there were 1,931 homeless people in the county, according to the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative.
The Sheriff’s Office says it has helped more than 500 homeless people find temporary housing or shelter and has helped 200 others find permanent housing, including those they’ve reunited with family.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman and others packed into the new outreach center for its grand opening Friday.
“The major key to whatever we’re doing, with the sheriff, with the county, is we are giving housing, but we’re giving it with services,” Murman said. “If you don’t give the services with the housing, you are not going to solve the problem.”
That’s what Krager aims to do. Sometimes she has helped people who don’t have an ID card or their birth certificate.
Once those essentials are taken care of, Krager and the other deputies work with a slew of local partners to provide other services to the homeless. ACTS Outreach, for example, houses about 25 people the Sheriff’s Office has helped through an assisted-living program, she said.
ACTS executive director Richard Brown said it has taken several years for the community to learn how to work together and combine different agencies’ assets to help the homeless. The new Homeless Outreach Center, he said, will only aid in that mission.
“It’s nice to know our homeless outreach people have a home,” he said.
