Editor’s note: This is the first in a series following the transition of the Friends in the Park program from Veterans’ Memorial Monument Park to the Winter Visitor Center, part of the Planteen Recreation Center campus.
Spaghetti with feta cheese and olives: It’s what’s on the dinner menu at the Friday, May 23, homeless outreach program in Veterans’ Memorial Monument Park.
The hungry come to the green square from all walks of life — migrants, mothers, drifters, veterans, elderly, and addicts in recovery. Most arrive right at five. Straw hats, overalls, pajama pants, stained clothes and scuffed tennis shoes line up to get a heaping plate of spaghetti, beans, salad, Girl Scout cookies, chips and fresh cantaloupe slices.
Today is a small group of 50. Usually there are 70.
Friends in the Park feeding program, organized by church members and do-gooders with big hearts, has been at Veterans’ Memorial Monument Park for five years and grown from three nights to five nights to seven nights a week. Volunteers serve homeless and needy people under the shade of the pavilion.
The program offers an important service in Plant City, a town that is lacking in its homeless outreach. According to the Department of Children and Families, there are 85,907 people who are homeless on any given day, and only about 9,000 emergency shelter beds in Florida. Plant City does not have a shelter.
Residents have voiced opposition to the feedings. They say the feedings cause homeless to linger at the park, which until recently had a playground at it.
With the playground gone and Plant City Police officer Priscilla Clark on duty every night at the pavilion they are fed at, the homeless are no longer allowed to loiter before the meal or hang around the park after they are finished eating.
Still there are problems for the patrons and volunteers.
“It’s not hot today, but you wouldn’t believe the storms we’ve been in,” organizer Shirley Chamberlain said. “We’ve been out here when it’s been so stormy. We’ve had to congregate under the center table here because the rain has blown into the pavilion, getting everything wet.”
There is a resolution in the works for Friends in the Park.
At a May city commission meeting, City Manager Mike Herr proposed to offer the Winter Visitor Center, an indoor, multi-purpose building on the campus of the Planteen Recreation Center on Dort Street, for Friends in the Park feedings.
The visitor center is equipped with a restroom and kitchen. It is about one mile west of Veterans’ Memorial Monument Park, but sidewalks along the way make it easy for pedestrians to access. It won’t interfere with activities scheduled at the center.
“We’ll provide a better location, and hopefully over a period of time we can transition into some programming that would probably help people be more self-sustainable,” Herr said at the commission meeting.
That programming could include financial skills training, or job search and placement services. Chamberlain expects the decision on whether or not to move the feedings to the Winter Visitor Center to be made this month.
“I love it,” Chamberlain says about the feedings. “I really, really love it. I love the people.”
It is all about the people for her.
NOT WHO YOU THINK
A migrant worker rolls up the brick path on his mountain bike. He washes his hands in the men’s room before he eats. He is lucky enough to have an apartment. But many of his friends do not — they walk to get food at the park from their tent camp in the woods north of Interstate 4.
One arrives just in time to get a plate. His clothing is smudged with dirt. His eyes are bloodshot. He pulls a plastic bag out of his unraveling backpack. It is full of plantains. He wants the volunteers to have them.
Clark points out a grizzled man with smiling eyes from Plant City Towers, a senior living facility in downtown near the park. He comes when his social security check runs out.
After she’s done talking with him, she gets a high five from a 20-something-year-old saying goodbye before he leaves to couch surf at his friend’s.
But many of the people who come to the feedings aren’t the single, transient, adult drifters that fit the stereotype.
Homelessness among families with children is the fastest-growing homeless population in the nation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports. According to DCF, 40% of all homeless people in Florida are families.
“Most people are in the area,” Chamberlain says. “They’re not traveling. They live at Wilson Court, couch surfing, living in the woods. A lot of them have homes, but can’t feed their families.”
Families like Melissa Voyles and her two sons. She walks into the park from the north side on the breezy spring day. One of her sons is in tow on his bicycle. She does what she can to help her family get by. But when the food stamps run out, she’s at the park.
“Some of us are not always homeless,” Voyles says. “We’re hungry. We don’t have food. So we come here to eat. We don’t cause any trouble.”
Her son eats first. She goes for the bed of a pick-up truck filled with donated clothing next to the pavilion. Voyles stacks up a pair of new jeans on top of the boys’ clothing. The donations are just in time for the summer weather.
“I’m very thankful,” Voyles says. “If it wasn’t for them, where else? If it wasn’t for them, I’ll tell you now, people wouldn’t have bread and butter.”
FULL STOMACHS AND HEARTS
“Its’ a fellowship time,” Chamberlain says.
Today she is working alongside volunteer Sherry Kaufmann.
Kaufmann took it upon herself to round up the clothing each patron is browsing through after their meal. But it is her first time handing out food and interacting with patrons face to face.
She sees herself and so many of her friends in each of them.
She’s been there.
“I remember sleeping in the woods — in a broke-down recliner in the woods,” Kaufmann says. She is sharing her story with them while sitting at the buffet table lined with bowls and plates. “I’ve ate green oranges off trees in a grove. Back then, we did not have services and people like this.”
She was addicted to crack cocaine for 25 years.
She has 47 felonies.
She is in recovery.
Everyone claps.
It’s chicken soup for the soul she is dishing out.
“Is that your Camaro?” One of the patrons asks.
An orange muscle car is parked near the pavilion.
“Now I own my own home, car, motorcycle. I’ve had a job for 10 years, all because I’ve decided to change my life,” Kaufmann says.
“You’ve come a long way from being homeless,” the patron says.
But it’s not about the material possessions. It’s about hope.
Clark watches over the Historic Downtown neighborhoods in Plant City as her patrol area. She has been working with the Friends of the Park homeless feeding program since she started her gig almost a year ago.
“It gives them an opportunity to see they can have positive contact with the community — It doesn’t always have to be negative,” Clark says. “They watch over each other, help each other. They are their own little family.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.