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UF Student-run Homeless Shelter FAQs Sheet

What is your project all about?

We are a group of student volunteers who are seeking to change the nature of UF's relationship with its surrounding community, particularly Gainesville's most victimized and vulnerable citizens: the homeless. Specifically, we are campaigning to have the university help allocate the necessary funds to start a student-run homeless shelter in the city of Gainesville and have all incoming students visit this shelter as part of their "Preview" orientation. Through these basic first steps, UF would begin bridging the campus-community divide in a more meaningful fashion. By visiting the student run homeless shelter, incoming students will be given the opportunity to see how UF positively affects the local community and fosters student leadership/service.

Where would the funding come from for this student-run homeless shelter?

The University of Florida would supply the financial and logistical foundation for the initiation, growth, and prosperity of the project, while supplemental moneys would come from private donations and grants. Fundraising would be ongoing to ensure the continued success of the shelter.

But if UF is having all of these budget crises, like the CLAS debt, how is it going to fund this shelter?

The University of Florida is not suffering through any monetary crises preventing it from allocating $2 billion in assets to the campus departments, groups, and initiatives it wishes to prioritize. The budgetary “deficit” in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) caused by systematic under-funding is a perfect example of this prioritization. While CLAS is considered “the intellectual core of the university” and teaches 48% of the university student credit hours with 42% of the faculty, it is only supported by 20% of the university’s budget, a funding rate that is 30-40% below those of the top ten universities in the country.

The funding for a student-run shelter would pale in comparison to the money that any UF department handles on a yearly basis. And getting this project underway would be less time and cost-intensive than the efforts necessary to host just one home football game. The University of Florida easily has the necessary funding and resources that it could set aside for our project, especially since so many departments would actually benefit by having an opportunity to give their students real work experience in their chosen fields.

What does UF have to do with homeless people in Gainesville?

UF is by far the largest institution in the city. It is impossible to separate Gainesville from UF and vice-versa. The surrounding area has been gentrified (for privileged UF administration, faculty, and students) to the point where there is now an affordable housing crisis. According to the city government, a resident of Gainesville must work 77 hours per week at minimum wage or earn $11.81 at 40 hours per week to afford a local low-end apartment. At any given time there are about 1,200 people without a home in Gainesville, while the city and various organizations only provide 350 shelter beds. Additionally, the disproportionate number of students seeking part-time work (often for “spending money”) consumes a large number of jobs for which the homeless would normally be able to qualify.

At the same time, UF must begin to take a greater responsibility for its local community. The city's "10 Year Plan to End Homelessness" was drafted with no UF input or support, even though UF has plenty of institutional power and resources to spare. Therefore, this shelter represents an opportunity for UF to both advance its standing in the community and provide students with invaluable hands-on experience in various applied disciplines including Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, Psychology, and Public Health.

Where would this student-run homeless shelter be and how would it run?

There are plenty of abandoned and underused properties available in Gainesville (and even on-campus) that UF could purchase or rent out for reduced rates. Also, local churches and other charity organizations might be willing to donate space. Regardless, however, logistical decisions like this will be made in campus town-hall meetings we will organize. By bringing together all of the campus actors and organizations who want to be involved, we can tackle these practical issues and implement this project in as democratic a fashion as possible.

Why should UF do this if other universities are not?

Harvard University, arguably the most elite educational institution in the country and the envy of universities like UF that strive to be "public Ivy League" schools, currently runs a student-run homeless shelter with tremendous success. For more information, please see http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hshs/

The University of Florida would take pride in being among the first to implement such an important project for its students. 55% of incoming freshman at UF have had community service experience in high school and 42% hope to partake in community service and volunteer work while attending the university. This shelter project would grant these, and other, students a perfect opportunity to begin working with the community immediately.

Aren't most homeless alcoholic, crazy, drug-addicted, lazy people with no ambition or willpower to get themselves off the streets?

The homeless person seen on the corner of an interstate exit, or the corner of University and 13th, is not in fact typical. According to the latest annual local homeless survey, out of the 1,200 people that are without a home at any given time, only 200 are "chronic" (homeless longer than a year), 350 are children, 1/3 of the women who are homeless "chose" to be so rather than remain in an abusive relationship, 40% are veterans (some are whom are already back from the latest Iraq war), and more than 1/4 are employed. Rates of alcoholism, drug-abuse, and mental illness are not disproportionate to the homeless community; they mirror relatively closely those of the population living in homes. The only difference is that homeless people cannot hide their problems since they live their life out in public, while those of us with homes can retreat to the privacy of our own four walls.

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