Helping the Homeless During a Pandemic
By: Avalon Gordy
Tags: Pandemic, Lee County, Homeless, Coronavirus, Fort Myers

A Fort Myers woman laid out a picnic blanket in Lions Park. She wore a pink and white sweatsuit and a Hello Kitty backpack. The woman was carrying a Snow White Barbie doll.

The woman was spotted by Therese Everly, the vice-chair of Lee Memorial Health System. Everly described her as frail, looking to be roughly in her mid-50s. Drawn to the woman, Everly asked for her name. It was Kathleen.

Kathleen said that it was her first night being homeless. She said that she left home because she felt her family was evil. She later admitted that she was a bipolar schizophrenic.

“She was choosing to be homeless,” Everly said. “She called it transitioning into homelessness.”

They walked together until dusk. Everly watched Kathleen cross U.S. Highway 41. Kathleen told Everly that she was going to sleep at the bus stop near St. Francis Church.

Kathleen is one of many who are homeless in Southwest Florida. Roughly 2,700 people are experiencing homelessness in Lee County alone, according to an annual census conducted by the Lee County Homeless Coalition.

The virus threw the U.S. into an economic recession, leaving many without jobs. There are 19,180 currently unemployed in Lee County, according to a census conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“You just don’t wake up one morning and say ‘Oh I’m going to be homeless.’ Life happens to you,” Everly said. “This could happen to anybody.”

The coronavirus pandemic has worsened the impacts of homelessness. Janet Bartos is the president of the Lee County Homeless Coalition.

“COVID-19 isn’t just a health crisis,” Bartos said. “It’s an economic crisis.”

Major Carlyle Gargis is the pastor and area commander of the Fort Myers Salvation Army on Edison Avenue.

Gargis’s Salvation Army is the only Fort Myers location that houses families. He described how things changed when COVID-19 hit Fort Myers.

Major Gargis Carlyle stands outside the Fort Myers Salvation Army on Edison Avenue on Nov. 21. He just gave a tour of the shelter to a group participating in the Lee County Homeless Coalition’s “Homeless Challenge 2020.” Photo: Avalon Gordy

“It was really scary,” Gargis said. “We didn’t know what to do in the early days. I had a whole lot of people in a building.”

The staff deep cleans and sanitizes the facilities every day. There are isolation rooms ready for guests waiting for their coronavirus test results. Gargis’s location serves trays of food out of the back door because of health concerns.

Gargis said there have been a couple of cases in the Salvation Army’s Center of Hope on Edison Avenue.

“We used to do one food pantry a week, but now we’re doing three pantries a week during COVID,” Gargis said. “During the height of the pandemic, we were doing four.”

The Salvation Army also runs mobile pantries. Volunteers recently delivered food to a low-income senior facility.

Gargis went to Lions Park on a recent Saturday and handed out sandwiches to the homeless. By the end of the day, his group had leftovers. Instead of letting the food go to waste, they went to the Rosa Parks bus station near Edison Mall.

It was late and he didn’t think that he would see anybody. That was until a young man approached him. He wasn’t wearing shoes or socks.

The man asked if the group had any shoes. However, all they had were sandwiches and a first aid kit.

“I asked him where his shoes were and he told me that he just got out of jail and they didn’t give him any shoes,” Gargis said. “He wasn’t sure if he could get on the bus if he didn’t have any shoes.”

Gargis asked him what size shoes he wore and turned to his group. That was when one of the volunteers stepped up. This particular volunteer was a graduate of the men’s rehabilitation program. He shared the same shoe size as the homeless man and gave them to him.

“They were really nice shoes. He gave them to this guy and I’m telling you, this guy was so excited about that,” Gargis said. “So we just stopped and prayed with him.”

Gargis’s Salvation Army is expanding, adding extra rooms for both guests and staff.

“I don’t know what the building will hold after we get everything set. But there shouldn’t be a real crowd of people in here at any one time,” Gargis said. “It’s going to be a good flow.”

They are projecting that around 125 to 140 people will be coming in and out per day.

“When you come here, we’re going to feed you. We’re going to give you a place that has some coffee,” Gargis said. “But we’re also going to be encouraging you to move along.”

Gargis said that the staff will monitor comings and goings.

“One of the dangers of these places is it can turn into a place of prostitution and drug deals,” Gargis said.

The numbers of homeless in Florida are expected to increase when the eviction moratorium expires at the end of December. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the Florida eviction moratorium in September. Landlords are prohibited from evicting a person who has tried to get government assistance to pay rent. They must earn less than $99,000 a year, and are unable to make a full housing payment.

This was after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to allow the eviction moratorium to expire. Low-income families are still protected under the CDC until Dec. 31.

“So many people have lost their jobs or have fallen into hard times,” Bartos said.

As in most cities, the unsheltered homeless are left with no option but to keep moving.

“The city has a no loitering and no camping policy,” Everly said. “So obviously homeless people are seen as loitering and camping. But the problem is where are they supposed to go?”

Centennial Park downtown is closed for refurbishing. The project is expected to last a year. Previously, dozens of homeless people slept under the shade of the pavilion. Now a metal fence surrounds the premises.

“People on the street don’t necessarily think like you and me. Some of them are just fine being on the street and have no desire to move into a house or anything of that nature,” Gargis said. “For us, it’s kind of hard to imagine.”

Therese Everly recounted a homeless woman that she had seen two Saturdays ago. Everly was walking by Lions Park at Lee Memorial when she saw her.

“This was when that storm was coming in, Eta,” Everly said. “A woman had put a tarp over the plastic rock climbing wall to make it into a tepee so that she could sleep in it.”

With nowhere to go, the homeless are at higher risk of catching the virus. They tend to ignore social-distancing guidelines and lack the resources to stay safe.

“People that are homeless tend to congregate together because that’s where they get fed in the parks,” Bartos said. “So our workers try to do different methods of feeding like brown-bagged meals. It has been difficult.”

Medical accessibility is essential, especially during a pandemic. There are more than 28,000 COVID-19 cases in Lee County, according to the CDC.

It is projected that the homeless population in the U.S. “will be twice as likely to be hospitalized, two to four times as likely to require critical care, and two to three times as likely to die as the general population” due to the pandemic. This is according to a report published by the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“Lee Health is a public safety-net healthcare system,” Everly said. “So all of these homeless people are patients. They are clients.”

Lee Health supports agencies such as the Bob Janes Triage Center & Low Demand Shelter, as well as the Salvation Army.

“We’re governed by Florida statute and the statute says that we care for all of the people that reside in Lee County,” Everly said. “That’s regardless of their ability to pay.”

However, there are some who don’t want help. Before Tropical Storm Eta, Everly estimated, there were about 45 people who needed shelter.

“We didn’t know how bad this storm was going to be. Outreach workers went out in their vans to offer housing. I wanna say that out of the 45 people that said they would shelter, only four or five showed up,” Everly said.

Bartos said, “They didn’t take the opportunity.”

“They had the help,” Everly said. “But they didn’t want it.”