Daytona Beach city leaders tabled a plan for a proposed homeless shelter at a meeting Wednesday night.
- Daytona Beach tabled proposed homeless shelter
- Shelter would address homeless issue in downtown Daytona Beach
- Critics say proposed location far from downtown is a problem
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The city's mayor and city manager said they needed more information before they could properly present the proposal to city commission.
No word on when the First Step Shelter plan would be re-introduced.
The shelter would be a bunch of modular homes or a tensile-fabric structure to house 100 homeless people in Daytona Beach.
“It’s much needed for them, because they need a place to stay and have some of the services that will be in this facility on a day-to-day basis, really 24 hours a day, that will help them get back into their own permanent housing,” said Rev. Dr. L. Ronald Durham, Daytona Beach’s community relations manager who is helping spearhead the plan.
Homeless issues have been a problem for years in the city. But they were exacerbated this time last year when businesses along Beach Street complained that homeless people were scaring away potential customers.
The city and county could not agree on a plan last year, but now there's optimism for this new effort.
“Things are kind of moving at a pretty rapid pace over the last week or so,” Durham said.
The City of Daytona Beach formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation last year to help get this started. The First Step Shelter Board will have to appoint an organization to operate the shelter.
But the plan comes with critics, questioning both the facility and its location. The plan calls for the homeless shelter to be built on five acres of city-owned land off U.S. 92, near Red John Drive.
The location is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Daytona Beach, where most of the homeless congregate.
One of those criticizing the proposed site is 56-year-old Bill Byers, who lives on the streets of Daytona Beach.
He was part of the group of homeless who staged the protest a little more than a year ago outside the county building in Daytona Beach.
Byers and other homeless people say they are attending tonight’s city commission meeting to tell city leaders that the location is not useful.
“There’s nothing out there. All the services for us are here in town,” said Byers, who has been homeless for about 10 years now.
Byers says he has an idea why city leaders want to put the shelter so far away from the city.
“They want to make us invisible. They don’t want the tourists who come to town to see us,” said Byers.
Durham said because it is city-owned land, they will be able to get the shelter built quicker, perhaps as soon as the end of the year.
“It’s a location that gives us less hurdles that we have to overcome as far as time constraints, as far as permitting is concerned. We can move much quicker on city property,” Durham said.
There are still some other big hurdles. Besides getting approval from the Daytona Beach City Commission, other cities and the Volusia County Council will have to chip in to fund the shelter.
Preliminary estimates show operations costs in the first year totaling close to $1 million.