In the six months since Grace Marketplace opened its doors, Jon DeCarmine has been sprinting.
A host of issues, including insufficient funding and amassing community support, have burdened DeCarmine, the operations director of the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry. Each month he faces a $15,000 deficit.
But on Sunday, he slowed down for an afternoon to host Grace’s open house, a celebration featuring music, tree planting and awards meant to garner support for the struggling shelter.
“We haven’t had a chance to step back and show the work that we’ve done,” DeCarmine said. “This is the first day that we’ve stopped and looked back.”
The open house kicked off Sunday morning with the presentation of a community service award to Hazel Williams, better known as Sister Hazel. Nearly 200 people packed into Grace’s small, white chapel to join in the celebration for Williams’ Citizen of Grace recognition.
“While I’m speaking, open up jobs for whoever is here needs one, give peace to whoever is here that is depressed, give joy to somebody who never feels joy,” she said while leading the room in prayer. “And give grace and glory to the Grace Marketplace.”
After the ceremony, the crowd spilled into the lawn between the old Gainesville Correctional Institution buildings, which have become home to Grace’s facilities. Live bands played throughout the afternoon, two food trucks — Off the Griddle and Bubba Luigi’s Road Trip — parked on the basketball court, serving quick meals, and guests added chalk drawings to two strips of brown paper that serve as the inspiration for a future Grace mural.
The event was a collaboration with Friends of Grace Marketplace, an organization of volunteers aiming to support the shelter.
The organization’s co-coordinator, Randi Cameon, said the group has been working for about two months to plan the event and eliminate preconceived notions about the homeless community and the shelter’s efforts.
“Nobody knows how incredibly much they are already doing, how incredibly successful it is,” Cameon said. “They call it a one-stop empowerment center.”
UF President Bernie Machen now serves on the shelter’s oversight committee and attended the open house. His wife, Chris, said she hopes the event gave visitors a new perspective of the shelter.
“People don’t want to come here,” she said, adding that the open house may have made more community members aware of Grace’s financial struggles, including renovations of two roofs that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I think this can work, but it’s a community deal,” she said. “It’s just got to work. It’s too late to turn back now.”
David Hickey and his 20-year-old daughter Celine, a Santa Fe College natural resource conservation student, said the pair was visiting the shelter for the first time Sunday. They said they were impressed with the new facility and its attempt at not only harboring and feeding the homeless but also helping them get out of homelessness.
“I would like to see a place that would have the counseling — which I understand this is guaranteeing — so that people can have some solution,” David Hickey said.
“It’s more than just charity. It’s solution,” Celine Hickey said.
The Hickeys joined a growing crowd at the food trucks mid-afternoon, just as a Grace resident, a 41-year-old man who goes by Lil’ Nikkie was getting his meal.
The 125 residents who attended breakfast that morning received a lunch ticket they could redeem at either of the trucks. A pay-it-forward container at the Friends of Grace Marketplace booth collected $5 from visitors to pay for each ticket.
When Lil’ Nikkie lost his ticket, Cameon gave him $5 to redeem his meal. He came over to her, his face beaming, with a fish taco in hand.
“Hey Ma, thank you,” he told Cameon as he approached her for a hug. “I’m feeling really good right now.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m so happy you’re happy.”
As Lil’ Nikkie walked back out of the shelter, still beaming, he praised his new home of about a month.
“I think they give them a bad rap,” he said. “I think people are really trying to try.”
“Give them a chance.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 11/17/2014]
Jon DeCarmine, operations director for the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry, leads a group of visitors on a tour of the 25-acre facility during the shelter’s open house in 2014.
