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Sulzbacher Center wants to move out of Downtown Jacksonville
Plan to move to new facility includes creating for-profit manufacturing business as social enterprise
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Sulzbacher Center, which has been operating in Downtown Jacksonville for 25 years, could be headed elsewhere if the homeless shelter’s president can get buy in for a multi-million-dollar project.
Cindy Funkhouser, president and CEO of Sulzbacher Center, told a meeting of Downtown business leaders that residents have had to be evacuated and the campus was damaged in the last two hurricanes because the current location was left under more than 4 feet of water.
Guest column: Mental health services now available for offenders
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For many years, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and our courts have struggled with how to handle individuals charged with non-violent misdemeanors who also suffer from severe and persistent mental illness. These individuals are often arrested for minor “nuisance” offenses such as trespassing, breach of peace, sleeping in public or the open consumption of alcohol.
They are booked into the jail as the result of their arrest, but due to a lack of community alternatives their mental illness is never fully addressed. As a result, some are released after being sentenced to the time they have served, and others remain in jail for weeks until it is recognized that their offenses are largely due to their mental illness. Over time, it was common for those with mental illnesses to cycle in-and-out of our jails for repeated nuisance offenses our jail system developed the undesired reputation of being the larg
A homeless camp’s growth in downtown Jacksonville has sparked a new effort to move people there to hotels while seeking permanent housing for them, Mayor Lenny Curry said Wednesday.
The makeshift community’s spread during the COVID-19 pandemic poses a public health concern, Curry said as he and homelessness service providers outlined an initiative called Pathway to Home to handle it.
Four extended-stay hotels have contracted to provide rooms and more are in discussions, said Dawn Lockhart, the city’s director of strategic partnerships.
The effort targets about 50 households, maybe 75 adults, who have tents or makeshift shelters around a vacant block of Jefferson Street at Union Street, near charities that deal with homelessness.