At the end of a joint session on homelessness with Sarasota city and county officials, one could have left thinking little had changed in the disposition of the bodies. City officials remained committed principally to a Housing First effort to get the chronically homeless in permanent homes. County leaders stayed focused on opening an emergency shelter. These have been the postures held by each body for more than a year. But as the homeless directors for the county and city were sent to develop a solution and bring it back within 45 days, it seemed the governments may be closer to a consensus than ever before.

With city officials publicly agreeing for the first time in a public setting that a “triage center” of some sort was needed before figuring where homeless people should ultimately end up, it marked a turning point. County Commissioner Paul Caragiulo, a year after leaving the post of city commissioner to fill his current role, suggested at the joint session that the two governments needed to loosely integrate a county-run triage with whatever city-led housing program may arise. “How much can we commingle these good faith efforts to move forward in a collaborative effort?,” Caragiulo asked at the meeting. 

Mayor Willie Shaw applauded the suggestion, but also acknowledged there will be struggles in the future. He said the city does not want a shelter in North Sarasota County.  “Yes, we will continue to struggle,” Shaw conceded. And there remain questions of funding for housing efforts. Jon Thaxton, former county commission and now-Senior Vice President for Community Investment at Gulf Coast Community Foundation, suggested the nonprofit world could step in and help with some of that. 

At the staff level, the heads of homeless initiatives for the city and county—Douglas Logan and Wayne Applebee respectively—seem to be getting along better than officials representing the two governments have up until this point, but there are certainly points of disagreement there as well. Logan said at the Friday session that having a large-scale shelter could concentrate problems, while Applebee said a surplus of beds was critical because current shelter options are not meeting needs during times of crisis. But both are pursing ways to create synergy with the county and city agendas and move any proposals toward fruition. 

Come the end of a sometimes tense and other times conciliatory meeting on Friday, the city and county commissions each passed unanimous and nearly identical motions asking respective staffs to explore the matter together and bring forward an actionable plan. In a month and a half, it will be more clear whether that goal can be achieved.