In a near-empty strip mall, housing for the homeless?

TAMPA - With 10,000 homeless people living on the streets, and a failed plan for a tent city, two county commissioners have an idea: they are looking at county space at Floriland mall on Florida Avenue.

The original idea was to duplicate Pinellas County's tent city emergency homeless shelter in Hillsborough, on a church owned site near the fairgrounds.

But last week, angry neighbors killed Hillsborough's proposed tent city with raw political power.

As it turns out, though, a new idea has risen from ashes, at the Floriland mall north of downtown, where 30,000 square feet is available because budget cuts have the Clerk of Court and the Tax Collector closing up shop.

Yet the county has nearly two years to go on leases, with big penalties for breaking them.

"If we spend $590,000 dollars just to walk away, that's in my mind not using the taxpayers' money wisely," said Commissioner Kevin White.

White and Commissioner Al Higgenbotham say a huge plus is that social service agencies, like the Department of Children and Families and the Family Justice Center are already in the mall, along with the state jobs service.

"You got the workforce alliance, what is it we're trying to do with these folks? get 'em back into the job system , you got medicade, you got hillsborough kids, you got agency for school readiness," Higgenbotham said.

Homeless advocates, like New Beginnings Pastor Tom Atchison, are excited about the idea. Atchison says he'd love to bring his 12 years of experience in drug and alcohol counseling programs.

"There's a lot of faith-based people out there ready, waiting to want to help, but they just need the direction and somebody to organize it and have it happen," Atchison said.

White says the best part of building an emergency homeless shelter and social services in the mall, "there are no residential neighborhoods directly abutting this, and that's the wonderful thing about it."

While there's a long way to go before the mall shelter could happen, it's a long way from tent city, and the political problems that killed it.