Friday, January 29, 2010

Homeless chased away,
Jacksonville shelter warned about trash

For the last week, homeless people sleeping near Jacksonville's City Rescue Mission have been chased away from the sidewalk nearby. And then the mission itself was warned by city code enforcement about garbage left on the sidewalks outside its fence.

The mission says it was blindsided by the actions, because the few dozen people who sleep outside the mission's New Life Inn, which has been full for months and has seen a 33 percent increase in demand, have been doing so for over a year.

"Rarely from time to time, police would come by and ask them to move on, but never with the kind of intensity that we've seen recently," said Bill Duguid, City Rescue Mission's chief operating officer. "There seems to be a concerted effort at this point to remove people from Julia Street."

Duguid said that some of the "trash" on the sidewalk was actually the personal belongings of homeless people.

The actions come just days after Mayor John Peyton's pledge to do more to remove homeless people from the streets of downtown in anticipation of renovations to Laura Street.

Read the Florida Times-Union report here.

Thanks to @hardlynormal for the link.

posted by Jacqueline Dowd @ 6:47 PM