Pinellas County is in a housing crisis. Working families are living in hotel rooms or living in their cars because they can’t afford the high cost of housing in Pinellas County.   During our listening process over the last few years, members shared that they are often paying so much for their housing that they have to choose between eating or paying for their medications.  No one should ever have to make that kind of decision. According to Shimberg Center data, in 2021 there were 60,000 families making 80% AMI or less ($69,500 for a family of four) who paid more than half their income on rent. This means they’re one missed paycheck away from losing their housing.

Last year, rent in Tampa Bay increased 24%, more than any other area in the nation. This means the average rent went up $315!  In a meeting with St. Pete staff members in January 2022, they told us that in 2021, 90% of home sales in St. Pete were all cash offers.  In the third quarter of 2021, 37% of homes bought in the zip code 33712 were purchased by investment companies.

Every day, working families have been pushed out of their own community because they can’t afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for a place to live.  Non-profit developers such as Catholic Charities, Boley Centers, and Family Promise tell us that their biggest hurdle to getting a family or individual into stable housing is the scarcity of affordable housing options in Pinellas County.

So we began to fight for affordable housing.  Four years ago, we asked our County Commissioners to spend 4.15% of the overall Penny for Pinellas tax money on affordable housing.  We have worked hard to get these verbal commitments and to specifically get them in writing.  This finally happened in 2019 in the form of a resolution stating that 4.15% of the Penny for Pinellas sales tax will be spent on affordable housing.  This resolution also stated that the money would be spent mainly on families making 80% of Area Median Income or less.

While making progress with the County, we also chose to work directly with the City of St. Petersburg.  In 2018 at the Action we asked the St. Petersburg City Council to use a percentage of the City's Penny tax money on affordable housing. Though initially resistant, we were able to change their minds and get them to commit to use $15 million for affordable housing! The money is officially in the city's budget for Penny for Pinellas and was approved unanimously by all city council members.  We were also able to get a resolution in the City of St. Petersburg that states that 75% of this $15 million will be spent on families making 80% of the Area Median Income.

To date, we have won from the County and City of St. Petersburg a combined $100 million for affordable housing.  This money will be used over the course of the ten years between 2020 and 2030.  So far, over 700 units of housing have been completed or are under construction. 

We will continue to work on this issue to ensure that the Penny for Pinellas dollars are being spent on affordable housing for those who need it most.  Additionally, we continue to research new and better solutions to help fix the housing crisis in Pinellas County.

For a map of all the housing projects that have been built with the money we've gotten committed, click here. 

In 2006, FAST secured commitments from all 7 county commissioners to support an affordable housing trust fund. To date, $19.2 million has been allocated to the fund creating 1469 new units of housing for families making less than $40,000.

In 2015, we got an additional $15 million released from Penny for Pinellas tax funds for affordable housing. Over $7.5 million has been spent to date, creating 736 new units of affordable housing. The additional $7.5 million is committed to upcoming projects.

In 2019, we got the county commission to unanimously pass a resolution allocating 4.15% of the funds to affordable housing, with a special focus on low-income families.

If you or someone you know is in need of affordable housing, the following are available resources to check your eligibility:
- For rental units go to www.floridahousingsearch.org or call toll-free at 1-877-428-8844. 
- For home ownership opportunities check the county website at www.pinellascounty.org/community or call 727-464-8210. You can also call the Tampa Bay CDC at 727-442-7075.

In house meetings over the course of the last few years, we have heard story after story of people who have been branded for life with arrest records for committing misdemeanors. Sometimes, these arrests are for minor mistakes, like having expired car tags, or trespassing in a public park after dark. Other times, people are arrested simply because they don’t have the money to pay fees and fines. If you have court fees or tickets you can’t pay, for example, your license can be suspended.

If your license is suspended, many find that they still have to go to work to pay off those fees.  They find themselves faced with an impossible decision: continue driving to work (on a suspended license) so that they can pay off their fees and pay for food and housing and their family’s medical bills – or – stop driving completely and lose their job (which happens to 50% of people whose licenses are suspended.)  Once the choice is made, and a person decides to continue driving to work, they can then be arrested for driving on a suspended license. This results in a cycle of poverty that is incredibly difficult to stop, all the while branding people with lifelong criminal records.

In Pinellas County, for example, there are over 106,000 drivers with suspended licenses, and 75% of these licenses were suspended for unpaid fees and fines and not for driving offenses.  (see https://finesandfeesjusticecenter.org)

The good news is that Pinellas County does have an Adult Pre-Arrest Diversion (APAD) program that gives people second chances instead of arrest records. The problem is, however, that driving related offenses are not currently included in this program.  In fact, there are only 11 offenses included in the qualifications for APAD’s diversion program.   This means that in 2019, of the 12,000 people arrested, only a little more than 1000 got access to the program. 

At the Action in 2021, we won commitments from various Criminal Justice stakeholders across the County to expand the diversion program to include more misdemeanors. At this time, we are following up with those stakeholders and more to ensure that access to this program is indeed expanded and that more adults will have the opportunity to forego an unnecessary arrest and lifelong criminal record for a minor, and often unknown, mistake. It is crucial that approved offenses to the APAD program are not only expanded, but that they do include driving related offenses such as “Driving With License Suspended.”  This will help to ensure that people who are poor and low income are not criminalized for being unable to pay fees and fines. 

Through hundreds of house meetings last fall, we heard story after story of the impact of poor water quality and flooding on families and children.

These stories covered a range of issues, some causing health problems via Red Tide,  others related to flooding issues during heavy rains due to poor infrastructure.  We even heard stories of sewage being dumped into neighborhood waterways and polluting community areas.   And at our Annual Assembly in 2021, we voted to work on this problem of “Water Quality and Flooding.”

The Water Quality and Flooding Committee has been engaged in vigorous research on this issue, and has met with a number of stakeholders, scientists and experts.  Throughout this process, many startling facts have been laid bare.  For instance, FAST has learned that eating more than one fish from Tampa Bay per week is dangerous to our health because of the mercury released from power plants.  And that the Piney Point leak has contributed to the severity of Red Tide now and in the Summer of 2021,  even as the company behind the phosphate plant considers plans to build more phosphate mines, predominantly in low-income areas.

There are still many more research meetings to come to continue gaining understanding  around these problems and their impact on our water.    No matter what we end up focusing on, our task at the Nehemiah Action this year will be to push our local governments to take action on long-term solutions that prioritize the health of our people and our waterways over the profit of corporations.

Through the FAST Hot Spots campaign, local law enforcement of the county, Clearwater, and St. Petersburg have, in total, cleaned up over 77 hot spots of drugs and crime in our communities.

ItemIn 2011, Dr. Law, President of St. Petersburg College (SPC), responded to the concerns of FAST by creating the Learn to Earn Program. This program created short-term, affordable training opportunities such as industry certification and licensures. Since 2011, the workforce institute has served over 30,000 participants. As of 2019, over 9,000 industry certifications and licensures have been awarded. Additionally, as of 2017, there were over 4,500 successful job placements for students who participated in over 60 SPC certificate programs.

After five years of work, the St. Petersburg City Council voted unanimously in 2015 to pass the disadvantaged worker ordinance, designed to ensure that for construction contracts of over $2 million, 10% of work hours will to go ex-offenders or people who have been on public assistance in the last year. To date, almost 10,000 hours have been logged by disadvantaged workers. description

About 200,000 adults in Pinellas County lack access to affordable dental care. In Pinellas County, for people living at 100% of the Federal Poverty Line – which for a family of 4 is a household income of $26,200 – most can get covered for only ‘relief of pain' services, like extractions. After two years of hard work by FAST members, three dental clinics were added in 2013 which serve an additional 1,900 people per year. In 2014, we successfully got the county commissioners to allocate $958,000 of reoccurring funding into the county budget for dental care. This resulted in an additional 1,600 people getting access to dental care each year. In total, 3,500more people are getting access to comprehensive dental care in Pinellas County because of our efforts. 

CARE ABOUT ME (CAM) Victory

How does the figure $9.16 million sound to you? That's how much money the County Commission just allocated when they approved a contract to create a coordinate access model for behavioral health services. This is a justice win in Pinellas County that is directly a result of the power of FAST and the work that over 50 interfaith communities have been doing for five and a half years.

Care About Me is a new, innovative and streamlines resource. It provides experienced behavioral health specialists who screen residents in need of services and match them directly with local providers, making sure they have an appointment before they get off the phone with the helpline.

How did we get here?

In the fall of 2018 , the house meeting listening process raised up serious concerns about the difficulty in accessing mental health and addiction services. As an organization, FAST voted to work on this as an issue and took action. We did our research and found that in our county, there was a maze of different providers and services that were too complex to navigate.

At our 2019 Nehemiah Action, we asked the County Administrator and two key funders of behavioral health services to work together to create a plan for a central pathway that would connect services so that residents only had to call ONE number to get an appointment. There were 2,200 people in attendance at the Action. Facing that kind of power, all three said, "Yes!"

Persistence Pays Off!

Our job wasn't done. It has taken five and a half years, while the County hired consultants and conducted studies, and at times dragged their feet and needed reminders of their previous commitment. But through it all, FAST has been there. There were follow up meetings, hundreds of letters sent to county staff and officials, and numerous county commission meetings.

That is why we are proud to announce that the central pathway is up and running with the capacity to assist up to 1,000 residents of Pinellas County each and every month! Anyone can go to careaboutme.org or call 1-800-431-1998 to get assessed by a mental health professional who can help you figure out what you need and make appointments. If you or anyone you know uses the website or calls to get helps, please let us know about your experiences so we can report back to the county.

Many thanks to Rabbi Torop of Temple Beth-El for compiling this information!

We got our county transportation agency, PSTA, to upgrade many of the bus stops to provide shelter and more safety for their riders, especially senior citizens.

We got the Director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization to create a new, one-number system for senior transportation. This system, unveiled in March 2006, works with the Area Agency on Aging and allows seniors to speak directly with a trained professional who can help them with their transportation needs. There are over 20,500 seniors in Pinellas County who do not drive and who will benefit from this new system.

Reducing Youth Arrests:

In the summer of 2014, for the first time ever, all School Resource Officers participated in a mandatory training on alternatives to student arrests. From the 2013-14 school year to the 2014-15 school year, the total number of arrests decreased by 30%.

Five years ago, we decided to work with our 10 DART-affiliated sister organizations in the state of Florida to reduce the number of youths in Florida who are arrested for non-serious offenses. The state created a program called Civil Citations through which local law enforcement can divert youth to community-based programs without giving them criminal records. Youth who go through such programs face consequences for their actions. They do community service, make restitution to victims and the community, and complete whatever interventions are deemed necessary to change their behavior. Youth in the civil citations program are three times less likely to get into trouble again as youth who are arrested for the same infractions. Because of our work over the last 5 years, 23,255 children in Florida were NOT arrested for first-time for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses and instead got access to a civil citation. This means that we have saved the state over $104 million dollars by reducing youth arrests. Further, Pinellas County has gone from 80% of children receiving access to diversion program to 97% (the highest in the state)! In our county, over 800 fewer children have been arrested because of our work!

Reducing Youth Suspensions:

Since 2014, FAST has been pushing for an end to out-of-school suspensions (OSS). These suspensions are proven to be ineffective at changing a child's behavior and increase the likelihood that a child will drop out of school. We asked the district to eliminate all out-of-school suspensions, and, as a result, they changed their policies so that K-2 students are no longer allowed to receive OSS without approval of the area superintendent, and students in grades 3-5 cannot receive OSS longer than two days without approval.  

For many years, the Pinellas County School District has used a “zero tolerance” policy of discipline. Because of our work, the district has taken steps to move away from “zero tolerance” discipline and instead roll out restorative practices in all 123 schools. The district identified the highly experienced International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) to train school staff, and the district has signed a multi-year contract amounting to $500,000 to provide monthly coaching to teachers and staff on implementing restorative practices.

Education:

In 2005, we secured commitments from the director of the Early Learning Coalition to provide funding so that all low-income children in Pinellas County can attend a full-day Pre-K program. From 2005 to 2018, 12,794 children benefited from this program, and more children continue to be helped every year.

In 2016, we convinced the county to fund a new mental health pilot project. This project continues to provide services to people with serious mental illness.  The county reports that $2 million dollars a year has been saved by keeping these individuals out of our jail and hospitals, and 28 of the 33 individuals targeted for this program have had success. The program was recognized in 2016 by the White House for its effectiveness.

For years, we  heard stories from those who felt they had been pulled over because of the color of their skin. One young man was pulled over for having window tint that was too dark, despite the fact he’d had the car for 10 years and it had never been a problem. Through research we found out that the St. Petersburg police, Clearwater police, and Sheriff’s office all accept complaints from community members about racial profiling. However, in St. Pete and the Sheriff’s office there had been no complaints of racial profiling in 2018. We realized that either community members did not know they could report such things, or they did not feel comfortable doing so. In order to fix this, we created “Law Enforcement Interaction Cards” for community members to fill out and turn into FAST. FAST keeps their contact information but passes the complaint on to law enforcement anonymously. In May 2019, the three police leaders listed above came to our Joshua Assembly and affirmed their commitment to investigate any complaints regarding racial profiling!

In our conversations with Sheriff Gualtieri, Chief Holloway and Chief Slaughter, a common theme they all mentioned is the importance of hearing the complaint as soon as possible. It is difficult for them to investigate incidents when months have gone by. We encourage all members of the community to report incidents with law enforcement officers to the appropriate department as soon as possible. Law Enforcement Interaction cards are available through the FAST office or through the links below. We also encourage everyone to keep an interaction card on hand so that it is easily accessible to you should you need it. Please turn in your completed cards to the FAST office or email them to us at fastsecretary2004@gmail.com

Law Enforcement Interaction Card in English

Law Enforcement Interaction Card in Spanish