West side story: When is it our turn?

Donald Russell, left, helps John Pettus fill out a survey form during a homeless count in Pasco County.

Between Holiday — home of Aloha Gardens Park, which county staffer Kristin King calls "the saddest park in the whole wide world" — and Hudson, site of a machete murder in one of its ubiquitous homeless camps runs U.S. Highway 19. A stretch of that road in Pasco County, from San Marco Drive to Denton Avenue, is the deadliest in Florida, and overall the Pasco leg of U.S. 19 is considered one of the most dangerous in the nation. Those who try to cross it risk their lives, and those who drive on it pass a bleak landscape of decrepit, outdated shopping plazas and small strip malls or standalone businesses that could, to put it mildly, use a little sprucing up.

Although West Pasco is home to beautiful beaches, lovely parks, a lively New Port Richey downtown and a lot of cool bars, residents say they feel like the county's unloved stepchild when they see the amount of resources and development invested in places like Dade City and elsewhere in East Pasco.

On March 23, the mayors, city administrators and some City Council members from Port Richey and New Port Richey met with county officials to discuss some of the problems facing their residents and talk about holistic community solutions, because most of the issues complicating life in West Pasco bleed into one another.

And perhaps the largest, or at least the one looming on more and more minds, is homelessness, which Cathy Pearson, assistant county administrator of human services, told the gathering is only going to get worse, fueled in part by a lack of affordable housing and an increase in mental health issues.

The last unofficial count showed 300 to 400 unsheltered people in the county, with 80% of them living on the west side of Pasco, she said. That figure, though, is only people counted living outdoors on a specific day, and doesn't include those who declined to be counted or who may be couch surfing or staying in a hotel for a few days but have nowhere permanent to bed down. The Continuum of Care, which offers an array of services to help people transition out of homelessness, estimates the figures in not the hundreds, but the thousands.

Twenty-eight percent of the homeless in West Pasco are 55 years or older, and more seniors are experiencing homelessness all the time, Pearson said. She noted that the county has 62 confirmed encampments. Eighteen of those have five or more residents; two have 10 or more, and most of them are in West Pasco.

Pearson advocated a "housing first" model, which means getting people into safe, sanitary living conditions first and then getting them case managers to help resolve whatever issues caused them to become homeless in the first place. She presented a few housing options — tent cities, pallet villages, shelters — for officials to consider.

On a Venn diagram, homelessness would be part of, but not the whole of, crime and health issues in the county, and in West Pasco those are also rife, representatives of the Department of Health said at the meeting. The opioid crisis in particular has led to an increase in overdose deaths and HIV and hepatitis C infections, endangering the community and straining county resources, both human and financial.

County commissioner Kathryn Starkey agreed that "the west side needs attention, especially the Route 19 corridor," and noted county efforts in terms of dredging, protecting the coastline and improving water quality. David Engel, Pasco's director of economic growth, said there will soon be a tremendous investment in projects along U.S. 19, including building housing, rehabbing shopping centers and helping small businesses landscape and beautify their properties.

The investment can't come too soon for many denizens of the west side, once dubbed "the Harbors" and waiting for at least a decade for some relief.

"The 'Harbors Plan’ devised in 2012 is now over a decade old," Kelly Funk, project specialist for Pasco, told the Suncoast News in an email interview. "The county has rebranded it as the ‘West Market Area.’ Staff is checking the boxes of the things we've accomplished, what still needs to be done, and finding (and) prioritizing the implementation of the remaining tasks.

"This includes working together with both the cities of New Port Richey and Port Richey on future projects. New projects could involve grant funding and increase not only the economic growth in West Pasco but the quality of life the residents crave."

A recent move in that direction was creation of the West Market Action Committee (West MAC), comprising representatives from different organizations concerned with a variety of endeavors throughout West Pasco.

"The whole idea … was to create a forum for citizens to come and learn more about what is happening in the county and ask questions," Funk said. "The committee is made up of citizens in the West Market Area. Speakers (at the committee's monthly meetings) are usually county staff, and the commissioners’ assistants also attend. This gives an open door for public to be involved and for the county to learn its residents’ needs."

If you go

West MAC meets the third Wednesday of the month at 2 p.m. in the county administration building.

A county Town Hall on the specific issues of homelessness is planned for April 17. Check the county's website pascocountyfl.net for updates on time and place.

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