Make TBO Your Home Page| Subscribe To The Paper| Advertise With Us| Contact Us| Login| Edit Profile| Register
Suncoast Pasco News
Email
Print
A quandary of caring for Tarpon
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: October 24, 2009
Tarpon Springs faces an interesting quandary of caring, when it comes to helping the homeless. Over the years, several kindhearted and caring angels have gotten together to provide many basic services for the homeless. In Tarpon, a homeless person can find free hot meals every day of the week, clothing, a food pantry, day shelter to shower and receive mail and health care. When the weather turns cold there is a cold night shelter. The phrase "build it and they will come" has never been truer.
The city, in short, has become an oasis for the homeless, who now call its streets and woods home. As someone (Oscar Wilde? Claire Booth Luce? Joe Orton? Take your pick) declared, however, "No good deed goes unpunished." This has some people in the city raising warning flags.
Many homeless people are flocking into Tarpon Springs from as far south as Dunedin and as far north as West Pasco because those areas do not offer the homeless the same level of support services and relief. The vast majority of the homeless are mere victims of things like fate, bad economic times or a failed marriage. Experts say the ranks of the homeless are increasing at a staggering rate, with an estimated 38 percent on the streets for the first time in their lives.
Along with the innocent homeless come the mentally ill, alcoholics and addicted vagrants and wanderers who create a public nuisance wherever they go. This element of the homeless population can be aggressive as they follow people, taunt them and ask for - or perhaps more accurately demand - money.
The city and its caring angles have to get tough and chase away the bad apples among the homeless, who are rotten to the core and know how to use the system to remain society's outcasts. The city should study how larger cities control panhandling and enact the best portions of each ordinance. Business people and property owners must report trespassers who bother their customers. If they don't potential shoppers will go where they feel safer.
Police can put an extra focus on controlling trouble areas and problem people until they decide to move on. During his time as Tarpon police chief, the late Keith Bergstrom decided to clean up Safford Avenue, which was a notorious spot for loitering and barely concealed open-air drug dealing. That element had to go because the portion of the Pinellas Trail that runs down the center of Safford Avenue was opening.
The Tarpon police could resurrect this in-your-face technique to chase away the feral element of the local homeless population.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online ©2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company. Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
