Safe Alleys

Safe Alleys, Stable Housing, and Responsible Taxpayer Dollars

A recent tragedy in downtown St. Petersburg should make every resident, business owner, city worker, and public official stop and think.

According to local reporting, a woman believed to be homeless was sleeping in a downtown alley when she was struck and killed by a City garbage truck. The driver has been charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving death. This article does not comment on guilt or innocence in any pending matter. That is for the justice system. But the incident raises a public-policy question that St. Petersburg cannot ignore: why are people sleeping in alleys where sanitation trucks, delivery vehicles, workers, residents, and businesses operate?

No one should be sleeping in the path of a garbage truck. No sanitation worker should have to navigate hidden human danger while doing essential public work. No resident or business owner should wonder whether the alley behind a home, apartment, restaurant, or workplace is safe, clean, and properly managed.

At the same time, no serious city should pretend homelessness has been solved simply because people are pushed out of sight.

This is a Live and Work issue. It affects people who live here, people who work here, people who visit here, and people who are trying to survive here.

Homelessness Is Not One Problem With One Cause

It is tempting to reduce homelessness to one explanation. Some say it is a mental-health problem. Some say it is an addiction problem. Some say it is an affordable-housing problem. Some say it is a personal-responsibility problem.

The truth is more complicated.

Mental illness and substance use are real issues and must be addressed honestly. But research also shows that housing costs are a major driver of homelessness. The Pew Charitable Trusts reviewed rent and homelessness data across metro areas and found that homelessness is higher in places where rents are high and tends to rise when rents rise. Pew also noted that housing costs explain much more of the difference in homelessness rates between communities than factors such as mental health, substance use, weather, or general poverty alone. Readers can review Pew’s analysis here: How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness.

Local data points in the same direction. The 2025 Pinellas County Point-in-Time report found that substantially more unsheltered people reported losing housing because of financial problems, job loss, foreclosure, eviction, or natural disasters than in the prior year. The report also cautioned that lower unsheltered counts should be interpreted carefully because people may have avoided known locations due to anti-camping concerns, hurricane displacement, fewer volunteers, or other factors. The report can be reviewed here: 2025 Pinellas County Point-in-Time Report.

That means St. Petersburg should not treat homelessness as only a policing issue, only a housing issue, only a mental-health issue, or only a nonprofit issue. It is all of those at once.

A person can become homeless because rent increased faster than wages. A person can lose housing after a medical crisis, job loss, divorce, family conflict, domestic violence, hurricane damage, addiction relapse, mental-health crisis, disability, eviction, foreclosure, or the loss of basic documents needed to access benefits or employment. Once someone is outside, health declines, employment becomes harder, transportation becomes harder, documents are lost, court problems compound, and a temporary crisis can become chronic homelessness.

Health and Housing Affect Everyone

Homelessness affects the person experiencing it most directly, but it also affects the whole city.

When people sleep outside, emergency rooms, fire rescue, police, sanitation, code enforcement, libraries, parks, businesses, and neighborhoods all feel the impact. When people sleep in alleys, the danger becomes more hidden. That affects sanitation workers, delivery drivers, small businesses, residents, visitors, and the person sleeping there.

Affordable housing also affects everyone. If teachers, service workers, nurses, restaurant employees, city workers, caregivers, veterans, retirees, and young families cannot afford to live in or near St. Petersburg, the City becomes harder to staff, harder to serve, and harder to sustain. A city cannot be vibrant if the people who keep it running are priced out.

Health is also not separate from housing. People without stable housing are more likely to face untreated illness, mental-health crisis, exposure, injury, addiction complications, and emergency medical needs. A stable place to live does not solve every problem, but it gives people a better chance to address the problems they have.

Florida’s Public-Camping Law Means Cities Must Act

Florida law now prohibits counties and municipalities from authorizing or otherwise allowing regular public camping or sleeping on public property, public buildings, or public rights-of-way, except under limited designated-area rules. Those designated areas must meet safety, sanitation, security, and behavioral-health-access requirements. The statute also allows certain civil enforcement after notice and an opportunity to cure. The law can be reviewed here: Florida Statute § 125.0231.

Whether a person supports or opposes that law, one thing is clear: cities cannot ignore homelessness.

But enforcement alone will not solve the problem. If people are moved from parks, sidewalks, and visible public spaces into alleys, behind dumpsters, under stairwells, or other hidden places, the City has not solved homelessness. It has made homelessness harder to see and often more dangerous.

The goal should be fewer people sleeping outside, not merely fewer people being seen.

St. Petersburg Already Funds Part of the Response

This is important. St. Petersburg is not starting from zero.

The City already funds housing, homelessness, public safety, outreach, and nonprofit-related services. According to the City’s FY26 budget materials, St. Petersburg funds a $9.7 million Housing and Community Development Department operating budget, a $6 million five-year capital improvement plan for affordable housing land acquisition, $700,000 in Social Action Grants, $400,000 for Rapid Rehousing, $260,000 for a Childhood Homelessness Project, $215,000 for Pinellas Hope, $150,000 for Pinellas Safe Harbor, $148,633 for St. Vincent de Paul, $125,000 for WestCare Turning Point, $100,000 for Meals on Wheels, and $25,000 for the Pinellas Homeless Leadership Alliance. The same budget includes $1.7 million for the Community Assistance and Life Liaison program, known as CALL. The City’s FY26 budget highlights can be reviewed here: St. Petersburg FY26 Budget Highlights.

The City also already has a Street Outreach Team. According to the City, the St. Petersburg Police Department’s Outreach Team was created in 2006 and includes a full-time social worker and a Police Assisting the Homeless officer. The team conducts outreach throughout the city, makes basic contact, addresses needs, conducts assessments, links people to shelter and services, follows up, and provides advocacy. More information is available here: City of St. Petersburg Homelessness and Social Services.

The CALL program is another important piece. The St. Petersburg Police Department states that CALL sends social workers to certain non-violent, non-criminal calls, including mental-health crisis, suicide intervention, truancy, homeless complaints, and neighborhood disputes. CALL’s stated goals include reducing police involvement in non-criminal calls, reducing repeat calls, providing a more compassionate response, and freeing sworn officers to focus on public safety. More information is available here: St. Petersburg Police Department CALL Program.

That means the best immediate question is not simply, “Should we spend more money?” The better question is: are we coordinating the money, staff, nonprofit partnerships, outreach teams, public-safety responses, and housing resources we already have?

Nonprofits Should Be Partners, Not Afterthoughts

St. Petersburg and Pinellas County already have organizations doing important work. The City should not duplicate them. The City should coordinate with them, support them, measure outcomes, and fill gaps.

Daystar Life Center is a good example. Daystar provides food assistance, rent and utility assistance, a healthy food pantry, financial assistance, clothing, mail services, document support, and referrals. Those services matter because preventing homelessness is often more effective and less expensive than responding after someone is already sleeping outside. Daystar’s services can be reviewed here: Daystar Life Center Services.

The Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas also maintains a resource guide connecting people to shelter referrals, meals, pantries, showers, laundry, transportation, veteran services, youth services, healthcare, mental-health services, substance-use treatment, housing resources, ID cards, mail services, and legal assistance. The guide can be reviewed here: Pinellas Homeless Resource Guide.

A practical City Council approach should include a nonprofit coordination table focused on outcomes. The City should regularly bring together outreach teams, sanitation, police, fire rescue, code enforcement, Daystar, St. Vincent de Paul, Boley, Pinellas Hope, WestCare, the Homeless Leadership Alliance, hospitals, faith organizations, landlords, employers, and neighborhood associations.

That coordination should answer practical questions:

Who is responsible when someone is repeatedly sleeping in an unsafe alley?

Who can respond when the issue is not criminal but still dangerous?

Where are shelter beds available?

Who can help with ID, mail, benefits, rent, utilities, food, or transportation?

Which nonprofits are already funded by the City, County, state, federal government, philanthropy, or private donors?

What outcomes are those dollars producing?

Where are people falling through the cracks?

A coordinated system should not measure success only by how many people were contacted. It should measure how many people were diverted from homelessness, connected to shelter, moved into housing, stabilized through rent or utility assistance, connected to medical or behavioral-health care, or prevented from returning to unsafe locations.

What Other Communities Have Done

St. Petersburg does not need to copy any one city exactly, but it can learn from what has worked elsewhere.

Houston’s regional homelessness response is often cited because it became more coordinated across local government, nonprofits, housing authorities, service providers, and community partners. The Way Home Houston describes itself as a collective effort of more than 100 partners working to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring through permanent housing with supportive services. More information is available here: The Way Home Houston.

Community Solutions’ Built for Zero model emphasizes by-name data, coordinated outreach, time-bound housing placements, and shared accountability across systems. The lesson is simple: communities need real-time information about who is homeless, what they need, who is responsible for follow-up, and whether placements are actually happening. More information is available here: Built for Zero Functional Zero Model.

Denver’s STAR program offers another lesson. It sends medical and behavioral-health professionals to certain crisis calls instead of relying only on police. That does not mean every city should copy Denver’s exact model, but St. Petersburg already has a similar concept in CALL. The practical question is whether CALL, PATH, outreach, nonprofits, and emergency services are being coordinated and funded in a way that reduces repeat calls and gets people connected to lasting help. More information on Denver’s model is available here: Urban Institute Evaluation of Denver STAR.

Miami-Dade has also had to respond to Florida’s public-camping law. Its Homeless Trust has discussed the need for shelter, housing, behavioral-health coordination, navigation services, and alternatives to simply pushing people from one public space to another. More information is available here: Miami-Dade Homeless Trust Action Plan Discussion.

The common thread is coordination. Cities that make progress do not treat homelessness as a loose collection of disconnected programs. They build a system.

The Property-Tax Amendment Makes Accountability Even More Important

Florida voters are expected to consider a constitutional amendment that would substantially increase the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes. The proposal, CS/HJR 1F, would increase the non-school homestead exemption to $150,000 beginning in 2027 and $250,000 beginning in 2028. It would also reduce the annual assessment cap for certain non-homestead properties from 10% to 5% beginning in 2027. The proposal can be reviewed here: CS/HJR 1F – Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes.

Many homeowners understandably want tax relief. Homeowners are facing higher insurance costs, maintenance costs, utility costs, and general inflation. That concern is real.

But tax relief must come with a service plan.

According to the City’s property-tax transparency materials, ad valorem revenue makes up 55.62% of St. Petersburg’s General Fund revenue. The City also states that property-tax revenue is used first to fund the Police Department’s annual budget, then Fire Rescue, after required tax-increment transfers. The City’s property-tax transparency page can be reviewed here: St. Petersburg Property Tax Transparency.

That means property-tax reform is not separate from homelessness, alley safety, sanitation, police response, fire rescue, public works, or housing stability. If local revenue is reduced, the City will still be expected to maintain safe streets, clean alleys, reliable sanitation, emergency response, outreach, housing programs, nonprofit partnerships, and public order.

Tax relief without a service plan becomes a service cut by default.

The City should prepare now. It should identify which housing and homelessness programs are funded by local property taxes, which are funded by grants, which are funded by county or federal sources, which are delivered by nonprofits, and which are producing measurable results. Voters deserve to know what is at stake before promises are made and before cuts are forced.

A Practical Plan for St. Petersburg

I believe St. Petersburg should take a practical, nonpartisan approach built around safety, prevention, accountability, and partnership.

First, the City should create an alley safety and sanitation plan. That means identifying alleys where people are known to sleep, where sanitation trucks back up or turn around, where lighting is poor, where dumpsters block visibility, where complaints repeat, and where workers or residents face elevated risk. This should not be done to punish poverty. It should be done to prevent injury, protect workers, preserve clean neighborhoods, and connect people to help.

Second, the City should strengthen the referral pathway between sanitation, public works, code enforcement, police, fire rescue, CALL, PATH, and nonprofit outreach providers. If a sanitation worker or business owner reports that people are repeatedly sleeping in an alley, the response should not be limited to removal. There should be a clear outreach and services pathway.

Third, the City should create a nonprofit coordination dashboard. For programs funded by the City, taxpayers should be able to understand the purpose of the funding, who receives it, what services are provided, how many people are served, what outcomes are achieved, and what gaps remain.

Fourth, the City should prioritize prevention. Rent assistance, utility assistance, food support, IDs, mail services, transportation, benefits navigation, landlord coordination, and short-term stabilization may prevent a person or family from becoming homeless in the first place. Prevention is not only compassionate. It is often more practical than waiting until a crisis reaches the street.

Fifth, the City should strengthen housing pathways. That includes rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing for people with the highest needs, affordable and workforce housing, landlord participation, and partnerships with Pinellas County, the St. Petersburg Housing Authority, nonprofits, hospitals, employers, and faith communities. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness summarizes evidence-based approaches here: Evidence Behind Approaches That Drive an End to Homelessness.

Sixth, the City should prepare a property-tax contingency plan. If the constitutional amendment passes, the City should be ready to explain how it will protect police, fire, sanitation, roads, alley safety, housing stability, homelessness prevention, and nonprofit partnerships. If cuts are necessary, they should be made transparently, not by accident.

Seventh, the City should pursue outside dollars aggressively. St. Petersburg should not expect local taxpayers to carry the entire burden. Homelessness is regional. The solution should involve Pinellas County, state funding, federal funding, Continuum of Care resources, hospitals, philanthropy, employers, landlords, faith communities, and private donors.

Compassion and Accountability Are Not Opposites

St. Petersburg can be compassionate without being passive. It can enforce reasonable public-space standards without being cruel. It can keep alleys clean and safe without pretending that people disappear when they are told to move along.

The goal should be fewer people sleeping outside, fewer unsafe alleys, fewer preventable tragedies, cleaner neighborhoods, safer working conditions, better use of taxpayer dollars, and more people connected to stability.

This is not a partisan issue. It is a city issue.

We should protect homeowners and taxpayers. We should protect renters and workers. We should protect small businesses and neighborhoods. We should protect sanitation workers and first responders. We should protect vulnerable people from being hidden in unsafe places.

We should not punt this problem.

We should solve it.