The Big Bend Continuum of Care (notice it says Big Bend and not Leon County) gets a huge HUD grant of over $5 million per year that they disperse mostly to the Kearney Center and they keep a bit for their own budget.

The other Big Bend counties are entitled to some of that money, but instead, opt out of the funding by agreeing to send their homeless to Tallahassee. So Tallahassee gets to keep all the money.

If homeless people show up in or are released from jail or prison in Gadsden, Wakulla, Jefferson, etc… those Sheriff’s offices drive them straight to Tallahassee and dump them.

The issue is being handled as another bit of evidence of our trend towards polarization. Can anyone disagree about that? In fact, on social media, derogatory references regarding political affiliations, based on which camp a person is in, is quite common.

The problem is, categorizing the homeless, based on political opinion, fear, guilt or helpfulness that only enables prolonged suffering, is only making the problem worse.

There’s a clear difference between the needs of an honest family who is homeless due to any number of economic hardships, and those of people who wander around screaming, pooping on the streets, aggressively panhandling, etc.

Those who don’t want to see any more money spent on the homeless reference those who are menacing to the public. Those who think more should be spent on the problem of homeless, reference the hard working honest (or would work if it was available) people.

The latest trend in interpreting the First Amendment, allows aggressive panhandling and intimidation, as long as it doesn’t interfere with traffic patterns. That doesn’t seem right to me. It also doesn’t seem right for the police to ignore those who are clearly not coherent.

I doubt I have any more answers than anyone else, but I sure as hell believe we can do a better job of discussing it, without the name calling and absurd generalizations.