On TBO. com today - here's the article: We're getting some progress!
TAMPA - When two Hillsborough County commissioners proposed putting a homeless shelter at the former Floriland Mall, they didn't think to ask Kellie Nieves and her neighbors what they thought about the idea.
Nieves is grid captain for Neighborhood Watch in a six-street area northwest of the mall. She said the neighborhood is already struggling against a rising wave of crime, including break-ins, trespassers and the attempted abduction of a teenage girl last year.
Adding dormitories for the homeless a half-mile away would exacerbate the problems the neighborhood faces, she said.
"We're dealing with what surrounds us on a daily basis," Nieves said. "(The shelter) is going to take it to a different level."
Commissioners Al Higginbotham and Kevin White said they came up with the idea to put the homeless shelter at Floriland when they learned the county faced a $592,000 payment for breaking a lease at the shopping center. The county had leased the space for the clerk of circuit court's satellite office until budget cuts forced the clerk to close the office July 31.
Rather than pay the lease default, White and Higginbotham envisioned converting the 20,000 square feet of office space into dormitories for the homeless.
What was especially galling to Nieves and her neighbors was White and Higginbotham's assertion that no residential neighborhoods abutted Floriland. The shopping center faces Florida Avenue, a busy six-lane highway. Less than a quarter mile to the east is Interstate 275.
But directly behind the center is a mobile home park with hundreds of residents. And across Florida Avenue, behind the fast-food joints, tire stores and strip malls, lies the sprawling Forest Hills neighborhood, home to thousands of middle-class residents, along with their schools and churches.
The residents say they already have occasional vagrants who find their way into the neighborhood from Florida Avenue.
Vikki Palmeri said strangers have walked up to her door, casing the house for a future burglary. The unwanted visit was a "wake-up call," Palmeri said. Now she plans to buy a gun.
"We used to go to beds with our doors unlocked," said Palmeri, who moved to the neighborhood when she was 2. "All our neighbors knew each other. We've always been that way for 50 years."
The neighbors say they have been able to keep a lid on crime through vigilance, cooperation and close communication with Tampa police. Nieves says a drunk, homeless man tried to abduct a 15-year-old girl last year in the adjacent neighborhood south of Linebaugh Avenue. A group of residents jumped the man and held him down until police arrived.
"You bring in the homeless element, you're undoubtedly going to have people with the same issues," said Lee Grear, a Vietnam veteran who moved to the neighborhood in 1959.
Nieves said the group's stance doesn't mean residents don't sympathize with the homeless. But she said the county needs a well-thought-out, comprehensive solution that includes counseling, drug and alcohol treatment and workforce training. The neighbors see the Floriland proposal as a snap decision, arrived at in part because commissioners don't want to pay for the broken lease.
The also wonder why the commissioners would want to start the county staff moving on the proposal before involving surrounding neighborhoods.
"Why can't they come to us first before they do anything," Grear said. "Are they afraid to talk to us?"
County Commissioner Jim Norman had the same concerns. At Wednesday's commission meeting, Norman called White and Higginbotham's approach "wrong in so many ways."
Norman noted that a recently rejected proposal by Catholic Charities to put a homeless shelter on East Hillsborough Avenue and Harney Road went through nearly a year's worth of public hearings and discussions.
White and Higginbotham, who voted against the Catholic Charities proposal, said they never intended to bypass the public hearing process. They just wanted the county staff to approach the mall owners to see if the shelter idea is workable.
George Heaton, a managing partner of Centermall, the company that owns Floriland, said Tuesday he won't allow the office space to be used for a shelter.
But Nieves and her neighbors aren't taking any chances. They have already printed handbills and are alerting everyone in Forest Hills via e-mail about the proposed shelter.
Nieves' friend Toni Walker summed up the neighborhood's feelings: "We shouldn't be victimized on a daily basis because they have an empty building to fill."
