Alachua County Commission approves pilot project for permanent housing in shipping containers at Scottish Inn site

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their February 27 Regular Meeting, the Alachua County Commission approved a $1.5 million pilot project for permanent supportive housing in shipping containers on the Scottish Inn property.

Claudia Tuck, Director of Alachua County Community Support Services, presented a pilot project for permanent housing using shipping containers. Tuck said shipping containers are cost-effective and flexible; they can be stacked three high, and they’re “durable and sustainable.”

Various options were considered

Tuck said she and her staff had toured the vacant space at GRACE Marketplace, but GRACE was concerned about “any further impact to the campus” from adding units without showers and kitchens because the shower facilities and cafeteria are already busy. Other concerns with GRACE included questions about who has the rights to develop the land and how much land is actually available; Tuck said they felt like a Campus Master Plan should be done before any major changes are made at GRACE.

Tuck and her staff also met with Ken McGurn, who proposed 80 double-occupancy rooms and 120 containers on vacant land at GRACE. Tuck said there are concerns with double-occupancy rooms; she said GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine told her they “can be harder [to manage] than running a shelter.” Staff also visited Welding to Recycle, a Gainesville business that builds container homes; Tuck said County staff members were “quite impressed with what was available, and the price was very reasonable.”

Scottish Inn property

The Alachua County Commission voted in November to buy the Scottish Inn property, and County staff recommended using the northern part of that property for the pilot project. Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) funds of $1.5 million will be reallocated to the project.

Facilities Director Dan Whitcraft presented the draft site plan, which shows a combination of 20-foot (housing single units) and 40-foot containers (each housing two units), for a total of 29 units.

There are multiple variations of units from the local vendor, and one is shown below; they have air conditioning via a mini-split unit, a tankless hot water heater, an internet hook-up, a kitchenette, a sleeping area (the unit shown is intended for an AirBNB, and beds will not be in a loft in the Alachua County units), and a bathroom with a shower. Whitcraft also said they’re working on putting in a way to cook, perhaps by adding a unit that has a refrigerator, induction cooktop, and sink built in.

Motion

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation, which was to approve proceeding with the permanent housing pilot of container homes, located at the north end of the County-owned property formerly known as the Scottish Inn. Commissioners Ken Cornell and Anna Prizzia seconded the motion, nearly in unison. 

The motion passed 4-0 with Commissioner Chuck Chestnut absent, and Chair Mary Alford said, “That makes me super happy.”

Cornell: City should use GCRA funds to address homelessness

Following the vote, Cornell said the board should “really focus in on how do we move forward with what is a growing crisis of homelessness, not just in our community but in all the communities around us. And I think the County’s approach has been to really focus on permanent supportive housing and to focus on wrap-around services. And I’ve always said and continue to say that I think the City’s responsibility is to focus on the shelter and to focus on providing more housing units for the citizens.”

Cornell read the letter that is published here and said the City told the County that $12 million in GCRA funds was “moving to downtown… They should be using those funds for [the homeless problem]; we can’t invest in a downtown area if we’re not addressing that issue. And I think that it’s really important that we, as a board, ask them to do that.”

Prizzia said the sentiments in Cornell’s letter were reasonable, but “here’s the thing: We have 700-and-some-odd unhoused individuals in Alachua County at the Point in Time count. That’s probably not capturing everybody because that’s only capturing people that were on the street… So we’re probably, according to United Way and GRACE, looking at closer to 2,000-3,000 people who actually don’t have permanent housing… We have 130 shelter beds at GRACE, temporary shelter beds.” She asked how many permanent supportive housing units there are, and Tuck said there are about 65.

Prizzia continued, “So if you do the math, it’s nowhere near 700.” She said the “push and pull between us and the City” about funding isn’t helpful because even if the City got every person on the street to agree to go into permanent supportive housing, “we don’t have any place to put them.”

Cornell agreed but pointed out that the County has “$500,000 less money this year to do that because of last year” when they approved $500,000 to make up a funding gap in the City budget for GRACE. “Every time we make a decision to take on a role that is a City role, we take money away from a role that we are attempting to fill, that permanent supportive housing role… Look, if we didn’t do that last year, we could do $2 million today” instead of the $1.5 million for the pilot project. 

Cornell continued, “I don’t want to do a tit-for-tat, but when the Mayor says, ‘We have an emergency,’ [he should say] ‘Thank you, County, for helping us with it,’ not ‘The County needs to do more,’ because the County is doing a lot.”

Alford: “The people that complain… about the unhoused people sleeping on the doorsteps downtown are often some of the same people responsible for the fact that they’re there.”

Alford said she has been meeting with Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward, and she has discussed having a joint press conference with him “to talk about the emergency housing and to present a united front going forward.” She said her goal in having the press conference is to tell private landlords “that have been making money on raised rents… We have seen people displaced every day in this county… in the last four years–We’re seeing people pushed out of housing due to increased costs… The people that complain… about the unhoused people sleeping on the doorsteps downtown are often some of the same people responsible for the fact that they’re there. And so I want to… ask them to help.” She said they can’t solve the problem “with just government money.” She proposed creating a task force that would include the City, the County, and “private folks and to get them to help us solve this problem with private dollars.”

Cornell: “Can we agree, though, that one solution is that they can’t live on the sidewalk in front of a business?”

Cornell responded that “businesses downtown also need our help in making sure that people aren’t sleeping and living outside of their business. That can’t happen.” Alford agreed, “Absolutely.”

Prizzia said there need to be places where “these people are allowed and welcomed… We had Dignity Village that was supposed to be a place where they were welcomed while they were waiting for shelter. It didn’t work. So we need a solution.”

Cornell asked her, “Can we agree, though, that one solution is that they can’t live on the sidewalk in front of a business?” and Prizzia responded, “Of course.” Cornell continued, “We have to be, in my opinion, unified [both City and County] on that because we’ll never get… the private sector to join us if we don’t do that.” He reiterated that he thought GCRA money should be spent on homelessness instead of “improving infrastructure.”

Alford added, “There’s no beautification that can fix the problem of somebody that’s on a sleeping bag, in a pillow, in the front of a beautiful park bench. It just doesn’t work.”

Prizzia said a Downtown Strategic Plan could include both beautification and infrastructure and also fund housing and support for the people who are living on the streets. She also thought the County shouldn’t tell the City what to do with the GCRA money.