Candie Nixon wants the community to know the faces of homelessness.
Some are domestic abuse survivors, others are suffering from mental disorders or battling substance abuse, but all of them share a common thread, the assistant director of Alachua County Community Support Services said.
“They did not choose to be homeless. These are people who had a series of events in their lives until they gave up,” she said. “Now, they’re trying to find housing, and there are obstacles.”
Homelessness was only one of the topics City Commissioner Gail Johnson discussed Friday, during her first Community Conversation at the LifeSouth Community Blood Center. The forum, which she hopes to hold at least once a quarter, is for community members to talk about Gainesville’s most pressing issues, she said.
“This is your forum, so this is what you want it to be,” Johnson said. “The real change is going to happen when you hold our feet to the fire and tell us what needs to change."
A poll sent out to the community and posted on Facebook determined which topics were discussed, she said. About 50 people showed up to talk about affordable housing, homelessness, equity and equality.
Pamela Davis, the executive director of Gainesville Housing Authority, said that affordable housing needs to be a priority for the city. She recommended that Gainesville create a separate fund designated for affordable housing.
“If we wait for the state, it’ll never happen,” she said. “We as a community need to decide it’s an issue.”
During the panel on homelessness, Jon DeCarmine, the operations director of GRACE Marketplace, spoke about the Housing First model, which aims to get homeless people shelter immediately without having strict requirements, such as sobriety.
“The more barriers you put up to people who need help, it’s kind of like going to the doctor, and she says, ‘Great, come see me when you’re not sick,’” he said.
Nixon said the community also shouldn’t forget about the people who are struggling with different degrees of homelessness, such as families living in hotels and people couchsurfing.
As the night went on, the conversation moved onto equity and equality topics. Johnson hopes to hold a conference to discuss the issues brought up in a racial inequity report that was released in January.
Natalie Hagler, a 46-year-old graduate student at the UF College of Education who attended the event, witnessed the racial divide firsthand when she was a student in the gifted program at Howard Bishop Middle School. She noticed that children outside of the program didn’t receive a lot of the services she did.
“Racial disparity is the biggest threat to democracy,” Hagler said.
Contact Jessica Curbelo at jcurbelo@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @jesscurbelo
Gail Johnson speaks to attendees at her first Community Conversation held Friday evening at the LifeSouth Community Blood Center.
