Across the nation, people in arrears on their rent are savoring a brief and last-minute reprieve granted by the federal government’s decision to extend its moratorium on evictions.

Locally, as the end of the moratorium approached, the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas found itself inundated by apprehensive renters.

“We started getting about 30 emails a day as people were in sheer panic,” chief executive officer Amy Foster said.

According to the organization, about 13,140 Pinellas County households are behind in their rent. 

“There is a lot of despair we’re hearing directly from families every day. These are not people who are not working. They are people who are working and can’t figure out how to make ends meet. We do not have a single bed available for families right now,” Foster told me this week.

“There are 60 families that we know of sleeping in their cars and in the street.”

It’s a situation that portends disaster for thousands on the brink of eviction. Without financial help, some may be fortunate to be allowed to squeeze in with family and friends, but others might be forced to sleep in their cars, a surreptitious presence in a Walmart parking lot, or find a spot on the periphery of a city park. Surely you have seen the vehicles, windows covered with black garbage bags or bedding and parked in the same place day after day?

For some, this week’s 60-day eviction reprieve, ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could simply be postponement of the inevitable. At present, according to information compiled by the Homeless Leadership Alliance as the end of the moratorium approached, about 2,100 evictions were near the final stage in the court system. In an ominous warning, it added, “When the moratorium expires, tenants will be served with writs that give them just 24 hours to vacate their homes.”

And go where, is the question. There are, the agency said, just 28 available and affordable units for every 100 low-income families in Pinellas County.

“Clearly, we are in a system that would not be able to handle that influx of evictions overnight,” Michael Raposa, CEO of St. Vincent de Paul CARES, said Wednesday.

An overwhelmed system will mean many people will end up without a roof over their heads, joining, the Homeless Leadership Alliance said, the 1,970 individuals and 2,760 children who are already without homes.

Surprisingly, Raposa offers a note of optimism. His agency has not seen a “dramatic increase” in requests for rental help, neither at its St. Petersburg facility, nor at the parish level.

“The thing that I do know is being homeless is not easy and getting out of it is even harder,” Raposa said. “A household that has been stable for a longer time, they’re probably going to fight to find another roof over their heads, or work it out with a network they have in place.”

What’s exasperating is that there’s plenty of federal money available to help keep people in their homes, but only a smattering has been distributed.

“It makes you wonder if people don’t know those resources are there,” Raposa said.

“I just think that government regulations got in the way,” Foster said of the slow disbursement, explaining that there is a sensitivity to preventing fraud.

“It slows the process, but it’s absolutely necessary. With this temporary reprieve, now is the time to look at what other communities have done” to speed up the process, she added.

And here’s the thing. Foster, who also sits on the St. Petersburg City Council, brought up something that has bothered me in recent years. There is an online application to get rental assistance funds, as it was to get the initial coronavirus vaccine appointments. I think it’s a format that shows little regard for segments of the population that may lack the devices, WIFI or the technological skills to get the money they so desperately need.

“It makes it super inaccessible to them,” said Karla Correa, an organizer with the St. Petersburg Tenants Union with colleagues William Kilgore and David Decorte.

 The grassroots organization has been spreading word about rental assistance money available from the county. “We want to make sure that people know about this,” said Correa, a political science major at University of South Florida.

There’s some urgency to their mission. About one in 20 households faced eviction before the pandemic, according to the Homeless Leadership Alliance, which added that it’s difficult “to predict what post-pandemic rates will look like, since landlords are likely waiting for the end of the moratorium to file.”

Again, the question is, where will the displaced go? Rents are already high in St. Petersburg, said Correa, who lives downtown. “Once the rent goes up, it will be difficult for me to stay. Many people are constantly leaving. People have to find new places. Those places that working class people can live in are becoming few and far between.”

The 21-year-old noted that the county’s eviction crisis is most severe in St. Petersburg, in the 33705 and 33712 zip codes, where the majority of the city’s Black residents live. “The Black community is getting hit by the eviction crisis and by the pandemic. People are getting sick. People are losing their jobs. People are losing other types of income. People are suffering left and right and having to pay medical bills. And rents are going up.”

The Rev. Watson Haynes, president and CEO of the Pinellas County Urban League, agrees that Black people are bearing a disproportionate share of the pandemic-wrought crisis. “We always have a hammer without the nail,” he said. “While other races have been able to handle this, African Americans, we are the last in the barrel.”

Correa and members of the Tenants Union welcome the new eviction moratorium. “It definitely couldn’t have been won without pushback from the people,” she said, praising Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. – who had once been homeless as a young mother – for her well-publicized protest on behalf of the new moratorium.

“It’s really great to see people fighting back and it needs to be a mass movement,” she said. “We need back rent to be cancelled. Overall, though, it is a major victory in the fight for housing for all.”

Meanwhile, the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg is dispatching people door-to-door to help tenants apply for the important rent assistance funds, Foster said. And last week, the Juvenile Welfare Board launched an effort to help families navigate the process, she said.

Maneuvering the system apparently requires skill and patience. Alex O’Connell, who is studying for a master’s degree in public health at USF, rents in the Old Northeast. She applied for the county’s emergency rental assistance in April and did not receive it until last week. That, she said, was after many phone calls and emails over the course of several months.

It was a frustrating experience. “They did not have locals working on it (and) not even in the same time zone,” she said. “I would prefer local people working on local issues. I would prefer those jobs are here … It was so excruciating.“

Frustration is not limited to tenants. Apartment associations and landlords, also facing pandemic-related financial burdens, are just as upset with the slow pace of rental assistance payments from Pinellas County.  They’ve reported that the state’s OUR Florida system is faster, Foster said. “We are six to 10 weeks for payment and landlords are getting frustrated and don’t want to wait that long,” she said.

Still, some money is getting out. “We just need that to happen faster,” Foster said. So far, Pinellas County has distributed $6.8 million to 958 households from the $21.4 million it received to establish its Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program, Foster said. And the City of St. Petersburg has disbursed $3.8 million of its approximately $8 million to 397 households.   

It’s certainly good news that the pace of disbursements might be picking up. The new moratorium against evictions will not go on forever. Landlords have mounted legal challenges. Regardless, in coming weeks, thousands of families could be scrambling for a new place to live, or somewhere to take temporary shelter.

To view the full article, visit https://stpetecatalyst.com/a-moratorium-from-evictions-solves-some-problems-and-highlights-others/

Six years ago, the Tampa Bay Times published a Pulitzer prize-winning series entitled “Failure Factories,” exposing how elementary schools in south St. Petersburg were failing area children, and that’s when Bridgette Heller decided to do something about it.

Heller founded the Shirley Proctor Puller Foundation (SPFF) in honor of her late mother — a lifelong educator who implored those around her to “do something” to help improve education outcomes for children in the community.

In 2015, before the Times exposé, Heller started a pilot program with Girls Incorporated in the hopes of narrowing the achievement gap. After conducting focus groups and gathering data, she realized her mother’s hypothesis that African-American students in south St. Pete were falling far behind was correct.

Based on community feedback, Heller decided to start a summer program that focused on preventing the “summer slide.” As the program ended, the Times article was released. Heller said that justified and validated the data driving the concept. She said she realized they were on to something and providing an unmet need for an academically-based summer development program.

“There was just a lot of evidence coming out that summer that adding an academic core skills component was just huge in terms of need,” said Heller. “We had a unique sort of positioning in the community, and we felt like the need was really critical.”

Heller learned a lot from the pilot, and the Math-Art-Science-Technology-Reading (M.A.S.T.R) Kids summer program was born in 2016. After great success and a positive response from the community, the afterschool M.A.S.T.R. program launched in 2020.

Heller believed in the program so much that she and her husband funded it themselves for the first few years. After collecting enough data to show that the concept was viable and was improving learning deficiencies, they began to apply for funding.

The Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County is now their primary funder, responsible for 70 percent of the services they provide, while the United Way has been responsible for another 12 percent. The rest comes from smaller grants, and Heller credits the Pinellas Community Foundation and the City of St. Pete for helping when they were first getting started. She also praises Duke Energy and the Tampa Bay Rays – who recently presented SPPF with an equity award totaling $25,000.

“It’s just been terrific,” said Heller. “The momentum that we’ve built in the last year has been great.”

The momentum has been building because it is clear that M.A.S.T.R. Kids impacts children in the community. Academic Director Keisha Snead said that students’ progress is measured using interactive assessment and the instructional software i-Ready. More than that, she can see the progress every day.

Snead said the first thing she notices is the relationships students build with their teachers, allowing them to advocate for themselves when they get back into the traditional classroom. All the teachers at M.A.S.T.R. are certified through the county and lead small classes of between 12-14 kids with the aid of an assistant or two.

Educators design their literacy lesson plans with guidance from a well-researched, evidence-based core curriculum. They then incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math lessons (STEAM) to engage students while also enhancing and reinforcing skill development.

The next thing that Snead sees is the confidence level in students rising. Children are encouraged to ask questions, and with the small class sizes, more individual attention is given. Snead fondly recalls a child that came in as a non-reader. He applied himself through the program, and with the help of his parents, who are heavily involved, he has recently tested for the gifted program at his school.

“So, I’ve seen that it is truly making an impact,” said Snead emphatically.

Snead also proudly tells the story of a young lady going into the fourth grade who was a very limited reader. After working with her teachers, she wrote an essay completely by herself for the first time ever this summer.

“You can just see the growth,” said Snead. “We track and monitor their growth. We actually have data to back up what we’re doing.”

In addition to their core curriculum, M.A.S.T.R. Kids also incorporates extracurricular activities designed to foster personal growth and teach things not usually learned in a classroom. Considering last year’s civil unrest and with cases of police brutality dominating headlines, they designed classes meant to teach civics and social justice. Guest speakers came in to teach them about everything from civil rights to the proper way to handle encounters with the police.

Snead said the plan is to continue the classes throughout the school year, culminating in a field trip to Alabama over spring break. The idea is to see and experience historical sites from the Civil Rights Movement firsthand. Stops include the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the nearby museums. At the end of next summer, the goal is to take students to Washington, D.C.

“So, take it full circle,” said Snead, “where they see both aspects of what we’ve been teaching them.”

Every Friday over the summer, they also went on a local field trip. The James Museum for the Reverberations exhibit, a mural tour of downtown St. Pete, the Museum of Science and Industry, bowling, and skating are just some of the fun activities that children were able to experience.

While the M.A.S.T.R. Kids program has already been so successful that they now have two locations in south St. Petersburg, Snead would like to see further expansion into another facility. They currently serve 160 kids, from entering kindergarten to entering the ninth grade.

While the focus is on improving educational outcomes in Black students, the program is open to all. Unfortunately, keeping class sizes small is imperative, and they currently have a waiting list – another indicator of their success.

Heller and the M.A.S.T.R. Kids program looked beyond the “Failure Factory” statistics to the potential of the community, parents, and most importantly – the students. They are helping to close the achievement gap and are focused on academic enrichment that nurtures tomorrow’s leaders. They decided to “do something.”

“This program is not only teaching our children how to build character, but it’s building on the legacy of someone that who taught in the St. Petersburg school system,” said Snead. “She’s still impacting our children to this day.”

To view the full article, visit https://theweeklychallenger.com/success-factory-m-a-s-t-r-kids-programs-bring-potential-out-of-children/

As many of you know, being a parent is tough, especially after going through a pandemic for over a year and a half. The isolation alone can be quite overwhelming.

But a local organization can help if you have a small child acting out, and the services are free of charge and available throughout the summer.

“For us to remain calm with our children really helps to calm them down. So we really need to work on calming ourselves down before we can help our children calm down,” said Emily Chavie, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Supervisor of the Children’s Home Society of Florida’s Early Learning Center Support Team.

It’s a place that provides free, on-site counseling at 10 local daycares in Pinellas County, specifically for the early intervention of babies and toddlers.

“A lot of the counseling for the real young children looks more like play therapy techniques, engaging in social stories, helping them identify and express their feelings,” Chavie explained.

And just like the pandemic has affected parents, it’s also impacted little ones.

Even babies and toddlers can start to exhibit signs of stress, including biting, excessive tantrums, difficulty with attachment and more.

“Withdrawing behaviors, hitting their peers, screaming, yelling, not listening to their parents, not listening to their teachers, things like that,” explained Chavie.

So Chavie’s team of mental health professionals provides hope with free counseling and support to navigate the challenges of parenthood, especially if families are going through transitions.

“If there’s a death in the family, divorce, separation, even new teachers, like those things are really stressful for kids,” she said.

And Chavie recommends to all parents that you must put self-care at the top of your list, take deep breaths, go for a walk, and stay calm to be present and ultimately a better parent.

“You can’t do it if you’re not taking care of yourself. You just can’t be an effective parent. So that’s my biggest advice is it’s not selfish to take care of yourself,” she explained.

If you’re interested in enrolling your child in the free Early Learning Program, call 727-953-3354.

And if you need help right away, you can call or text The Family Support Warm Line at 1-888-SEE-ME-03 or 1-888-733-6303. From 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., all texts are free and confidential.

For more information about the Juvenile Welfare Board, which funds the program, visit www.CHSFL.ORG or http://chsfl.org/support/.

To view the full article, visit https://www.abcactionnews.com/rebound/coronavirus-stress/local-organization-offers-free-early-intervention-services-for-children-in-need