About Us

The Gator Homeless Coalition was created by a group of University of Florida student volunteers seeking to change the nature of the university's relationship with its surrounding community, particularly Gainesville's most victimized and vulnerable citizens: homeless persons.  UF is not only the largest, but also most influential, institution in the city of Gainesville, and yet it has contributed to the city's gentrification, all to suit the needs of greedy real-estate developers whose primary concern is building for the privileged and not the majority of local residents who need affordable housing.

Though many believe that the city benefits from having UF located here, many of Gainesville's permanent residents (including homeless persons) suffer from the university's exploitative relationship with the local community.  After all, UF disproportionately appropriates community resources without giving back equally in return, as evidenced by the fact that Gainesville has the highest poverty rate of any city with a public university in the US.  Think about how much land UF takes-up, how many local service-sector jobs students take-up, how much the cost of living here is raised by UF administration, faculty, and students who come from a higher socio-economic background than the local residents.

These factors all contribute to an affordable housing crisis which has resulted in more than a thousand homeless persons currently residing in Alachua County. Instead of providing adequate shelter for these homeless persons, the city has done nothing in recent years to resolve the absurd shortage of shelter beds in Gainesville.  In fact, instead of helping alleviate this situation, the city has recently undertaken steps to further de-humanize homeless persons including passing an ordinance that criminalizes begging, evicting the homeless residents of "Tent City" without providing adequate housing alternatives, and moving the downtown Community Plaza bus station to undermine homeless persons' ability to congregate there.  All of these steps have been taken with no organized resistance by the greater UF community, indicating that what is taking place has at least the tacit approval of the university.

It is this dire situation that sparked the creation of the Gator Homeless Coalition during the fall of 2006 and continues to motivate us in our continued mission to create a student-run homeless shelter in Gainesville. We hope to not just improve the realities that Gainesville’s homeless persons face, but to collectively bring a sense of symbiotic community to this university town.

The Gator Homeless Coalition is part of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Solidarity, Inc. (EIN 20-8372795).  We are currently involved in multiple camapaigns of raising awareness on-campus of our responsibilities to the local community, providing direct services to homeless persons, and advocating/lobbying politically to end the affordable housing crisis in Gainesville. There are many ways you can help out if you're interested--from donating to plugging into our current initiatives to letting us know your ideas.  Please email us at ufhomeless@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

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