Letter: Low-barrier policy at GRACE endangers UF students and local residents
Letter to the editor
To the editor:
I am the parent of a current UF student and an alumna. Recent events, including Gainesville’s reported rise in violent crime, GPD’s reported delay or non-response in a stalking case involving a UF student, and a string of public reports describing repeat homeless offenders, have caused me and other parents to be very concerned about safety. I am writing to urge common sense safeguards such as identification checks, criminal background reviews, drug screening, and treatment for drug addiction at the homeless shelter, GRACE Marketplace (GRACE), along with an increase in GPD funding.
GRACE is a nonprofit, largely publicly funded, low-barrier, “housing-first” campus. GRACE’s site states, “There are no requirements and no barriers to getting help here” and “stable, permanent housing is the only solution to ending homelessness.” Although locals are “prioritized,” in practice, anyone can enter, including people with violent criminal records. North Central Florida has roughly seven major Florida correctional institutions within about an hour of campus. Those institutions release inmates to the county they name as their residence. Because GRACE does not require ID, a criminal background check, or sobriety, individuals who cannot enter other Florida shelters often choose Gainesville. That is the magnet effect. GRACE also provides residents with free or discounted RTS bus passes, providing quick, easy access throughout Gainesville, including the student core.
Statistics regarding the rate of violent crime are extremely concerning:
- FBI Uniform Crime Report figures for 2024 put Gainesville’s violent-crime rate at 738 per 100,000 (1,085 incidents), more than double a commonly cited national rate of about 359.
- A 2025 Wasatch Defense Lawyers review of 26 college towns, using FBI and local data from May 2023 to May 2025, ranked Gainesville first at 179 reported crimes per 10,000 residents.
- Gainesville Police Department NIBRS figures for January 1–June 30, 2026, show the problem is not “crime in general.” Violent incidents rose from 414 in the first half of 2025 to 506 in the first half of 2026, a 22 percent increase, about 4.9 percent above the three-year first-half average of 482.
Homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault all increased, while property crime and total reported crime declined. A drop in overall crime does not cancel an uptick in violence. That increase does not prove that the homeless or residents at GRACE caused the rise. However, it does make it reasonable to ask whether City and County housing-first policies are creating an unreasonable risk of harm to Gainesville residents.
As an additional taxpayer cost, at the Aug. 25, 2026 meeting, County Commissioner Mary Alford acknowledged that “more than half of the people sitting in our County jail are estimated to be unhoused, and at $127 per person per day, that adds up pretty darn quick.” Over the past year, public arrest reports and local coverage have repeatedly described people listed as homeless, and in many cases associated with GRACE, who were charged with new offenses, noting that defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.
It is critical to note that most Florida shelters screen. GRACE’s failure to screen has made this college town the statewide destination for people barred elsewhere. A no-screen campus is not safer for the homeless. Some unsheltered people will stay on the street if they believe GRACE is unsafe.
Mayor Harvey Ward and both the City of Gainesville and Alachua County Commissions have supported the low-barrier, housing-first model. However, President Trump’s Executive Order 14321 (7/24/2025) takes a different view. It states that “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” and that surrendering cities to disorder “is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.” Section 3 directs federal agencies to prioritize discretionary grants for jurisdictions that enforce rules on open drug use, urban camping, loitering, and squatting, and that move people who cannot care for themselves into treatment. Section 5 directs an end to support for Housing First policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.
GRACE’s 501(c)(3) status does not put the City or County outside federal grant rules because it accepts discretionary HUD, HHS, and other federal funds. On Oct. 23, 2025, the City Commission voted to transfer GRACE’s campus, valued at about $4.6 million, to GRACE for $1; another two parcels were transferred in November 2025 for perpetual use as a Continuum of Care facility. On Oct. 16, 2025, the City Commission extended GRACE’s FY2026 services agreement at $2,050,000 ($1.7 million general fund and $350,000 GCRA) (Agenda Item 2025-798). GRACE’s then-CEO told the Commission the City’s share was about 36 percent of a $5.1 million budget, including in-kind donations.
On Aug. 25, 2026, GRACE’s interim CEO asked the County Commission to block an outreach contract he said would replace the County’s housing-focused approach with a “treatment-first model championed by the Trump administration.” A GRACE attorney called that treatment approach “antithetical” to the National Alliance to End Homelessness’s model. The County approved the $350,000 grant, but only after ordering the TaskForce for Ending Homelessness to revise its RFP to emphasize the housing-first model instead of requiring treatment-as-a-condition and the federal encampment framework, the opposite of what EO 14321 tells HUD and HHS to reward. Thus, the County appears to be willing to risk future access to federal funds by rejecting treatment-first policies.
To address the rise in violent crime, the City must also approve an increase in GPD funding. Even 300 officers would be only about 2.0 per 1,000 residents in a city of roughly 151,000. National averages run about 2.3–2.4; southern cities are closer to 2.5.
The City and County must condition public funding on written rules at GRACE: identification, background checks, and drug screening at intake; no recent violent felony convictions or active violent charges at GRACE, with supervised treatment or reentry offered elsewhere.
Compassion and student safety are not opposites. Gainesville should not be the place violent felons are drawn to when virtually every other shelter says no. Public safety demands nothing less.
Melissa Bell, Jacksonville
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters are limited to 1,000 words; they may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
Thank you for writing, Ms. Bell. If you search the archives here for the word homeless you’ll see homeless crime goes back way too many years. And in all of those years the city has done nothing to address it. Even after a schoolgirl was molested at a bus stop. Even after homeless nuts parade naked in the streets.
The only chance the city has for this to be fixed is for more people like you – parents of UF students – to expose the recklessness of the city commissioners. Because once UF and the state realizes what’s going on here, they will be forced – willingly or not – to address things correctly.
Actually Beardy, the problems are a one (radical) party group of politicians entrenched in governing GNV and the county. You and others here vote for minimum enforcement, high taxes, and push the vote on visiting students They have no knowledge of or interest in the local area past their college time.
Conservatives have been complaining for years about Democrat policies regarding Grace and welcoming career criminals, dopers, drunks. and bums.
It was DEM Lauren Poe who led a defund GPD movement who killed 50 sworn officer positions in GPD, followed by Harvey Ward losing an additional 44.
Sorry, I’m confused here. I am a conservative. I want more LEOs on patrol and I don’t want taxes going to ridiculous things.
I have a second comment at the bottom of the page (link below) where I explain how I’d handle Grace – make it a boot camp, not day care. I’m in favor of helping those in need but they have to show improvement and give back.
https://alachuachronicle.com/countys-opposition-to-federal-priorities-drives-discussion-about-street-outreach-to-the-homeless/
Tuchman’s Law, attributed to historian Barbara Tuchman. As she put it, “The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five to tenfold, or by whatever figure the reader would care to supply.” In other words, crime coverage doesn’t just inform us — it systematically inflates our sense of how much danger we’re actually in.
The Chronicle’s strategy is working.
Many homeless use Grace address as a place to receive mail but continue to live on the streets as this letter writer suggests.
“The weight of peer-reviewed evidence does not support a general claim that Housing First increases community crime, but the research is not settled, particularly regarding concentrated placements in specific neighborhoods. It’s an area where Tuchman’s Law likely applies — incidents get reported, aggregate data gets less attention.”
Maybe we can start a movement to make homeless shelters available in each governmental jurisdiction with a minimum county wide number tied to population.
With the coming surge of retirement aged people with only social security to rely on and rising housing costs the homeless problem is going to get worse.
GRACE’s failure points to the power of local Democrat well organized yet minority bloc voting over the huge number of UF students who are transient, unorganized and do not vote locally even with the Graham Center and an occasionally interested Student Government.
Thus, Mayor Ward and the city commission believe they have political authority to allow GRACE as a kind of staging ground for “endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made Gainesville unsafe.”
Thank you Ms. Bell for this first-rate policy statement.
Thank you for saying what needs to be said. Unfortunately no one in this County or City government cares. I have lived here for over 69 years and I assure you the liberals will never change. It really needs to come from State or Federal intervention to stop this insanity. Cut off the money is the only way.
Grace Marketplace does not belong in the city of Gainesville. Common sense tells us that placing a large population of college students in close proximity to individuals with significant criminal histories and serious behavioral/mental challenges creates an unnecessary and foreseeable risk of crime, violence, and a potentially preventable tragedy. Additionally, the city of Gainesville does not have the necessary resources to deal with the influx of these high-risk individuals now roaming the streets. Why would any government allow this to happen at our state’s flagship university? Why is the local government putting student safety at risk for the sake of providing services to these individuals?
You hit the nail on the head. Mayor Ward and the city and county commissions keep doubling down on these low-barrier policies, completely ignoring the safety risks to UF students and residents.
I certainly hope you and other concerned parents didn’t vote for them, and that your kids are learning the real-world impact these policies have on a community. Nothing is going to change at GRACE Marketplace until people stop voting for the politicians enabling it. Good luck to your child—I hope they stay safe while the majority here looks the other way.
Many of us parents don’t live in Florida so we can’t vote these corrupt politicians out, unfortunately.
Thank you for having the courage to state what locals have been saying for years.
The Mayor and Gainesville City Commission invite violent criminals and drifters into the community with their failed policies and the crime statistics and murders clearly illustrate the consequences of their actions.
What you don’t see is the Mayor, former Mayors, and City Commissioners hosting these criminals at their homes.
Actions speak louder than words but the City Commission is more concerned with virtue signaling rather than protecting our community.
Homeless people, along with the mental illness and crime that tends to be intertwined with them, is a national problem that afflicts basically every urban center in the country. (The easiest way to spot a Chronitard in the comments section of this website is to see who’s blaming it all on the Democrats, apparently unaware that all the same problems exist down in ruby red Ocala/Marion County.) No one wants to address the inconvenient but obvious truth of why homelessness is so much more of a problem now than it was 50 years ago, or why it’s now so much more of a problem in the U.S. than it is in other developed countries. We’re too busy pretending to be Christians, while at the same time trying to figure out how to put all our homeless people on a Greyhound bus to San Francisco. The good news is that Alachua County has prevented its homeless population from going on a serial killing spree of UF students for 36 years–before GRACE existed–so give due credit for our progress!
Did you forget about Danny Rollins killing spree while he lived in the woods homeless around the UF campus?
Oops, dropped that argument, try living here on the east side with the vagrants (they are arent they) begging on the street, commiting crimes, building fires, And we PAY for them to be here.
. It’s just a matter time for another. Danny Roland comes around. The way to eliminate it to remove them all together
Your FOS look at democrat run towns see the decay
Well said. You illustrated things that make Gainesville a magnet. (No good deed goes unpunished!) Maybe, where the liberal thinking goes wrong is believing we can fix this fallen world. (We can’t.) We should not invite un-vetted homeless folks, what with all the people leaving prison looking for a place to do stuff that got them incarcerated in the first place. What we can do, is treat criminals in a way that changes their behavior. Spend the public’s money on police, fire, roads.
Would you please enumerate, using verifiable statistics, crime data in Gainesville and Alachua County attributable to those persons affiliated with GRACE Marketplace vs. the general population?
If you search “homeless” or “Grace Marketplace” in the Alachua Chronicle you will find countless examples of repeat, often violent offenders. Once you have the names, you can search public court records for the arrest reports and outcomes.
As stated in the letter to the editor, the increase in crime “does not prove that the homeless or residents at Grace caused the rise. However, it does make it reasonable to ask whether city and county housing first policies are creating an unreasonable risk of harm to Gainesville residents.”
Most shelters screen and/or require treatment. Grace’s failure to screen has made this college town the statewide destination for people barred elsewhere.
this is a ridiculous request/comment. virtually every homeless person who is in Alachua County has received services from GRACE. The City and County continue to attract more homeless every year due to the money (citizens’ money) that gets pumped down the drain for these programs. Gainesville is a national embarrassment for their failure in dealing with the homeless population and threat that these people are to businesses and citizens.
Ricki Dee, kudos for your civility and clarity, but….no. If you want to say something with statistics, you should provide the statistics. Your approach is used by tricksters, requiring their opponent to work harder than they are willing to. The above kudos suggest that you are better than that.
It’s the students that has many, many votes for Grace. The aren’t going to live here forever. The liberals got their wish. Now it’s back firing.
When inmates in the state system get released they have to have an address to get released. Many of them use Grace. The ones that are “houseless can get a bus ticket to Gainesville and go to Grace. Thank you for the article.
Well said, the plague of homeless people attracted to alachua county due to their “advocating for the unhoused” and lots of free stuff is destroying our county and on top of that the commision loves spending our tax dollars on them.
Well said…great letter.
Great letter with facts. When Amendment 3 passes we’ll see what happens. And the city and county still haven’t come clean on why Nefarious Darius suddenly left as Grace director.
Joe, government isn’t going to take a massive cut with Amendment 3.
They will just pass it on in other tax forms. They will get their money from storm water fees, bed taxes for tourism, sales taxes on food and gas.
They will find a way to tax your even more.
Grace puts a strain on Gainesville Fire Rescue as well – lots of drug abuse related calls out there, and it puts our firefighters in danger.
The fire union endorses far left candidates every election. Apparently, it doesn’t bother them…
It was a misguided fad called “housing first” that only helped build new downtown courthouses while scaring off other downtown businesses.
Repeat offenders must be dealt with, first.
The housing cost matter is another political screwup. Prices shot up while encouraging illegal aliens to come here and increase demand for low wage jobs and housing demand both increased crime and addiction, homelessness of citizens. Dems love creating chaos and misery via their disdain for proven traditions we once wanted everyone to melt into, until “diversity” meant more chaos and misery, and new courthouses.
ACLUSPLCDNC approved this message 👿👹👺💩🤡
Lets add ‘Campus Walk’ an old apartment building that houses approximately 100 degenerates right on sorority row at UF. 914 SW 8th avenue. If anyone analyzed GPD and GFR responses to this building they would see police and fire going to this address multiple times per day for all kinds of crimes and medical issues. The place is a slum and many of the people who stay there contribute to the thefts, prowling, trespassing, organ exposure, and disturbance calls in and around UF. This building and the idiots housed here remain a threat to the safety of everyone in the area.
Voting yes on amendment three will not only help you on your property taxes. It will do away with all the waste of money spent on marketplace and other left-wing idiot ideals, that the city of Gainesville and Alaucha county elected officials waste tax payor money on
I am amazed. Your local government will find new ways to tax you.
Amendment 3 sounds good. But it just shifts where they will get their money.
That is not true. They are only permitted to assess fees right now for fire and stormwater, and those are limited to a legally defensible methodology to recover costs. Sales taxes are also limited by statute.
Believe me, these governments would not be so panicked about amendment 3 if they knew they could just raise money in other ways.
DeSantis recently posted on X that if amendment 3 passes, there will be a special session to draw up the statutes implementing it, and he will push for strong rules against new types of taxes.
Thatguy you may be right in the short run, but by letting them totally demoralize you like this and even worse spreading this demoralization, you have let them defeat you. Keep your head held high.
Of course they will always try new way, but it is our civic duty to continue to apply pressure and continue to starve them out. As it gets harder and harder to squeeze taxpayers, the worst of these parasites will just move on to easier pickings.
“If the situation was truly hopeless, their propaganda would be unnecessary.”
The COG tried to “Build the homeless away” with Depot Park. The tried to “build the homeless” away with the Hampton Inn downtown, Pick any COG building project that you must have COG permits to build, and the relative location of homeless folks.
The Dems are just not getting it. 🤣
Well said, Melissa. It is not reasonable or fair to force Alachua County and the city of Gainesville specifically to absorb the cost of solving the unsolvable homeless problem–the financial cost and the less tangible cost of living in a degraded, unsafe city where all shared municiple spaces have been surrendered to the willfully homeless.
I say it is unsolvable because only a tiny fraction of the homeless are actually just “down on their luck” or could ever truly pull themselves out of their situation. 99% are the willfully homeless–complete a-holes that have burned every bridge they had in life because they just want to drink, laze around, and get high all day.
GRACE Marketplace is fundamentally a bad-faith actor and a huge net drain on our limited resources and emergency services. They have utterly failed in their mission to “end homelessness”, but that was never their true mission:
Their true mission of GRACE Marketplace is to scam the system to make money for themselves while hiding behind the unaccountable, feel-good BS of “helping the homeless”. They are incentivized to bring as many homeless people here as possible so that they can ask for even more funding.
Much like the SPLC that was caught manufacturing racism to justify their existence, GRACE has zero incentive to ever “solve homelessness”. They’d be out of business and the con-men that run it would have to find other employment.
GRACE Marketplace should be bulldozed to the ground and all the criminal homeless rounded up to face justice for their crimes. No more handouts to selfish bums who refuse to help themselves.
This entire piece is predicated on the stigma that homeless people and the proven best practices for helping them make our community less safe, but it ignores the fact that low-barrier approaches are evidence-based ways to reduce homelessness. Research shows that providing stable, supportive housing to individuals returning from prison—including those with violent histories—dramatically reduces overall recidivism rates.
Furthermore, research consistently shows that people experiencing homelessness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators. Unhoused individuals do face higher overall arrest rates, but these are driven predominantly by low-level, non-violent charges. These include quality-of-life and “survival” offenses. Survival offenses drop drastically when people are housed.
But sure, blame it on the folks who are already the most marginalized and the few people who are doing something about it, with a bunch of false equivalencies.
Why does it have to be a one-size-fits-all approach? We need low-barrier shelters and housing-first approaches AS WELL AS access to mental health and rehab services, and we need higher-barrier shelters as well. No one at Grace advocated against the latter; in fact, they do plenty of work to connect people to the very limited treatment and social support services that do exist in our community. Wild that while social services and safety net resources are being gutted, these same folks advocating for the gutting of our systems will advocate to mandate that people utilize them. Make it make sense.
-a local small woman who grew up and went to school in Gainesville, who has lived experience, has worked with thousands of student volunteers at the shelter, volunteered at Grace for 11 years, and works with safety net organizations
You take them home. Tell City and County leadership to lower the costs of housing rather than increasing it.
Just another hypocrite.
I personally can think of at least a dozen friends and family that would put me up if I lost my home or job. No questions asked. Now what do you think these people have done in their past to not have one person to give them the benefit of the doubt. They can’t all be orphans, or had an event where all the people that ever cared about them died in one horrible accident. These people have used and abused the people that care about them the most so much that they had to be pushed away. Take it from someone who has tried to help in the past and gotten taken advantage of.
Total gaslighting by a biased source–nothing has been proven except that GRACE Marketplace has been a complete failure and that the homeless problem is exponentially worse than it was before the con-men that founded it started this scam.
Anyone not in complete denial can see the aggressive bums on every corner, trash all over public spaces, news stories every single day involving homeless people, and the financial record of the spiraling costs of this failed program.
You, Author, are part of the problem–you have not made the world better in any way, and in fact your wasted, naive efforts have actively made the world a far worse place for the good people of this city.
Go join a book club if you need a hobby to feed your virtue-signaling ego. You are the worst kind of evil: banal, ignorant, and doing pure evil out of a misguided sense of false empathy.
Where’s my comment!
Yeah, I lost one too….a reply to Ricki Dee
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