“Our goal is to get them out of the woods,” said Wayne Teegardin of homeless veterans.
Teegardin, the St. Lucie County veteran service officer, his staff and other members of the county’s staff are working up a plan to do just that – bring homeless veterans inside, get them stabilized, find them work, and help them return to society.
“We decided to start small,” Teegardin said of the county’s decision to tackle veteran homelessness before expanding efforts to help the larger homeless community. “We can take a little bite of the apple.”
St. Lucie County’s official homeless veteran count sits just over two dozen, but Teegardin suspects that number is woefully underreported. Not every veteran self-identifies during the annual Point in Time Survey, a survey of the homeless population.
County Commissioners held a brief discussion about a proposed Veterans Assistance Center, though their comments focused more on the then-proposed location, the Zora Neale Hurston home.
The now-historic building was home to the influential author of African-American literature. Hurston was born in 1891 in Alabama and died in 1960 in Fort Pierce.
“For a lot of reasons, it made a lot of sense to look at that facility,” County Administrator Howard Tipton told Commissioners during their discussion.
He explained that the Hurston house was located near the multi-modal transportation center and a few blocks away from the county’s Veteran Service Office.
However, upon further examination, the historical building poses some challenges, he said, explaining that it would cost a few hundred thousand dollars to renovate it to the standards needed for housing.
“We are stepping back,” Tipton said, adding that staff would continue to survey the area for potential sites.
Commissioners were quick to support the effort to help homeless veterans and still preserve Zora Neale Hurston’s history.
“Both issues are of extreme importance,” Commission Chair Frannie Hutchinson said.
Teegardin told St. Lucie Voice that the Veterans Assistance Center is not meant to be a homeless shelter where veterans can come for a night or two. Instead, it would be a multi-family-style facility where each veteran has his (or her) own quarters.
“It’s not a group home,” Teegardin said, adding that the veterans would also get help tapping into veteran benefits they might qualify for, learn skills and get job training, and otherwise transition to a life under a roof instead of life in the woods.
“It’s extremely hard” to be presentable for interviews or even have the ability to make contact for potential interviews when you’re homeless, he said.
Teegardin suspects that veterans would stay at the facility for many months, up to a year or two, as they transition and start to stabilize.
Once stable with a job, the veterans can then move into other housing options through the Fort Pierce Housing Authority and other agencies.
When the Veterans Assistance Center could open and be ready for its first tenants remains to be seen. County staff has been tasked with looking into other potential county-owned properties for the facility and are expected to report back by the end of the calendar year.
“It is a process,” Teegardin said. Not only are they searching for potential sites, but also for funding – through donations and grants.
They’ve been tasked to do all this without tapping taxpayer dollars. Finding a county-owned property or getting a facility donated would help ensure that goal is kept.
Motels, apartments and the like would all be potential facilities for Teegardin and the team to assess.
Even if a property owner were to donate a former motel or apartment complex to the cause, it won’t solve homelessness overnight.
“We’re just trying to get something started,” Teegardin said.
