Doris Williams knows first hand the dangers of being a woman sleeping on the streets.
"It’s hard. Men, they can lay down here and nobody bothers them,” Williams said. “If you're a woman, you cannot sleep here. A man will stop and talk to you. If you don’t want to, they will want to beat you up."
That’s why St. Petersburg Free Clinic is working around the clock to build a new shelter that will house 50 women.
"There’s a roof over their heads, there’s food to eat, clean sheets, but there’s also that sense of being home and not dealing with the dangers of being on the street,” said Beth Houghton, the St. Petersburg Free Clinic executive director.
The organization’s old shelter only housed 20 women. The new shelter, which will be called the Virginia and David Baldwin Center, cost $4 million dollars and was funded by donations.
The shelter will not only be bigger, but it will also have a training room where the women can get help with things like computer skills and resume writing.
On Saturday, a community forum was held just blocks from the new shelter. The forum focused on helping to end homelessness by adopting a housing-first model used by other counties.
"If we don’t solve (the problem of not having) a place for people to live, then we aren’t able to eradicate homelessness,” said Amy Foster, St. Pete City Council vice chair and a member of the Homeless Leadership Board of Pinellas County.
Foster said it’s time to focus on housing that isn’t dependent on things like sobriety requirements. She said the model would also be a better use of resources.
"For every four chronically homeless families or individuals we would provide a solution to, it would save almost $100,000 a year,” Foster said.
Foster said more than 6,800 people are homeless in Pinellas County. More than 2,500 of them are children.