Gainesville Sun | Gainesville outreach program nudges people into homes, by building trust one-on-one

Jerry Giardina is already a familiar face to the homeless people in downtown Gainesville, where he's been working as an outreach worker for Grace Marketplace for only the last month.

The unassuming, thin, bespectacled man on Thursday was toting a backpack with his trusty computer inside — his lifeline to help homeless people transform their lives. Several acknowledged him as he stood on a sidewalk by Haisley Lynch Park.

When Giardina can gain a homeless person's trust, he pulls his laptop out and inputs data to find out what services, and particularly housing, are available to them.

Giardina knows he’s not intimidating, which works to his advantage getting people to sit down and talk about their lives so he can try and get them into permanent housing.

“I give that Mr. Rogers vibe," he said. "That’s what I’ve been told. Some folks can’t do it. It doesn’t work. (Homeless) people get spooked by them.”

Housing "the only solution to homelessness"

Giardina is among the first of the Grace Marketplace outreach workers who are going out into the community to try and convince homeless people — including those who have been the most stubbornly reluctant — to get assistance.

The Gainesville City Commission in April will decide whether to spend $200,000 in Community Reinvestment Area funds for more outreach workers for the program. And the organization is also applying for another $300,000 in federal funding to hire more outreach workers and a psychologist.

Jon DeCarmine, Grace Marketplace's executive director, said the Gainesville CRA board is recommending that the City Commission approve the funding. Part of the CRA's mission is to reduce blight, he said.

DeCarmine said there are other outreach programs in town, such as those targeting homeless veterans.

“Ours is the only one that is purely focused on housing, which is the only solution to homelessness,” DeCarmine said. “No matter how many business cards or pamphlets you give out, if somebody is still homeless at the end of the night there hasn't been the outcome we are looking for.”

Through its partnership with the North Central Florida Continuum of Care, Grace outreach workers are accessing a database of services available to homeless people.

“Our community works with what is called a ‘coordinated entry system,’” DeCarmine said. “Collectively, all agencies work from the same housing list. The idea is that we can conduct these basic assessments and triage people. For some people, they don’t need much."

Rapid rehousing

DeCarmine said for about half of the population, the right intervention is “rapid rehousing.’” 

Rapid rehousing allows for up to six months of rent and utility assistance, including security deposits, he said.

As he worked his outreach services on Thursday, Giardina was approached by homeless man who identified himself as “Mike."

He thanked Giardina for helping him get a cell phone this week. He’s using it to set up appointments with doctors and others to try to get disability payments. Giardina is linking him with legal help. And the man is on a list to get into housing.

“I just finally started cleaning my act up,” Mike said, noting that he recently went through detox. “This guy here is helping me out with some things other programs couldn’t.”

Giardina previously worked at Dignity Village, the now-closed homeless camp outside of the fences at Grace Marketplace at Northeast 28th Avenue.

It’s been replaced with a temporary campground focused on moving campers into affordable housing.

As the village was phased out, the Grace workers there — Giardina included — became outreach coordinators, recently focusing their work in downtown Gainesville.

Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe said this outreach program is trying to help those who have resisted help in the past.

“This is a model that has been successful in other communities,” Poe said. “They are social workers. They are people who have specific training in addressing the needs of folks who are living on the street, particularly helping work with them and identifying folks who have mental illness challenges, substance abuse challenges. These are generally your harder-to-reach neighbors, and it takes a different approach to aligning them with the services they need, including housing.”

“I have a good instinct for people”

Giardina said every homeless person has a different story, and that affects how long it might take to get them into housing that is either free or costs them 30 percent of their income.

“There are people who have been out there for 15 years," Giardina said. "They are what we consider ‘anchors.’ They are not going anywhere. And then there are folks who have been homeless for two months. The way their cases are going to be resolved are totally different.”

Giardina said Grace has a list of landlords willing to help homeless people get into housing, noting that it’s sometimes a simple fix. He said he recently helped a homeless lady get into housing who had a serious hearing impairment that was hurting her ability to communicate.

“We housed her yesterday," he said.

Not every interaction works out.

Thursday, he approached Steven Boyt as he was sitting on a sidewalk off Main Street across the street from St. Francis House. The homeless man had a meal and signed up for services at Grace Marketplace in 2019 but never followed up.

Boyt explained to Giardina that he was recently arrested for a crime he didn’t commit as he was in jail in Orange Park when the crime happened. Though the charges were dropped before trial, an online newspaper story about his arrest made it impossible for him to find a job.

When Giardina asked for his ID, Boyt said he didn’t have one and then stood up and announced that he was moving to Michigan in April, so he didn’t need the housing help.

Giardina said sometimes people don't want the help, and sometimes it's a matter of building trust with the clients. Sometimes, he won’t ask a person right away for information to plug into his computer.

“I have a good instinct for people,” he said. “I’m not going to press it. I’d rather build rapport. And the next time I see this guy he will be willing to talk to me because I didn’t pressure him.”

See the story at www.gainesville.com