Summer 2019

Main Street Park became a gathering place for the
homeless after efforts were put in place to get them
to leave Hemming Park a block away.
BOB SELF
streets during the daytime hours.
And have those goals have been
achieved in the four-plus months since the
Urban Rest Stop opened its doors?
By all objective standards, the answer
appears to be “yes.”
“It has been working very smoothly and
efficiently from our perspective,” Funkhouser
says now regarding the Urban Rest
Stop.
“We’re still early in the process, but
the results have been very exciting and
promising.”
During the month of April, these were
some of the Urban Rest Stop’s activity
statistics as compiled by the Mental Health
Resource Center, which has 16 staffers providing
counseling and other daily services
in the daytime facility:
• An average of 75 people visited the
facility each day (it’s open from 7:30 a.m. to
6 p.m. Monday to Friday).
• More than 1,000 services were provided
to clients.
• A total of 454 people used the Urban
Rest Stop’s shower facilities.
• An average of six people per day used
the rest stop’s laundry facilities to wash and
dry their clothes.
• Nearly 40 people went through the
Urban Rest Stop’s mental health screening
process, which is offered to visitors on a
strictly voluntary basis.
And that was just one month’s worth
of positive impact by a daytime resource
created out of vacated space in Sulzbacher
when the nonprofit moved its female and
family residents to the new Sulzbacher
Village.
Among other services, the Urban Rest
Stop offers:
• Access to laundry and shower facilities.
• Access to warm meals during the
daytime hours.
• Access to mental health counseling.
• Access to the Sulzbacher’s extensive
and highly regarded medical services.
• Access to job-training and job-placement
possibilities (enhanced by the Urban
Rest Stop’s partnership with Goodwill Industries,
which has a “Job Junction” office
on site).
• Access to applying for housing or signing
up for other needs like food stamps, bus
passes and mail service.
• Access to computers, books and an
open social room with features like a giant
chessboard and a big-screen television.
• A sense of empowerment and dignity
for those who come through its doors.
And it is that last attribute — that final
quality — that particularly strikes a chord
with Daniel Dopson, who says he has practically
been a daily visitor to the Urban Rest
Stop since its opening.
“It’s been great to have this — it’s a really
good place to come to,” Dopson says as he
sits in the Urban Rest Stop’s social room.
“I’ve been able to get showers here, do my
laundry here, get glasses here,” Dopson
adds. “It’s helping me get back on my feet,
and that means a lot.”
And that, says Mental Health Resource
Center Vice President Debbie O’Neal, is
exactly the reason for the Urban Rest Stop’s
very existence.
“It’s proving to be a great resource for
not only providing people with services
they can take advantage of today, but also
educating them on how they can start to
access the services that can help them have
better, more stable futures,” O’Neal said.
The Mental Health Resource Center is
staffing the daytime resource center as part
of a collaboration with the Sulzbacher Center,
the City of Jacksonville, the Jacksonville
Sheriff’s Office and many other partners
committed to making sure the Urban Rest
Stop plays a successful and sustainable
role in helping local homeless residents on
the path to eventually transition from the
streets to stability.
And hopefully the Urban Rest Stop will
represent the most successful and sustainable
attempt by our city to provide Jacksonville’s
homeless population with a daytime
resource that truly makes a difference for
the homeless.
No, the Urban Rest
Stop is not the first
effort to take the city’s
transient population off
the streets during the
daytime hours by having
a fixed alternative Downtown location that
could offer the homeless both productive
resources and a more receptive atmosphere
— neither of which is in ample supply when
they’re outside on benches, sidewalks and
stoops, largely invisible to or ignored by the
multitude of other Downtowners who walk
by them day after day.
In the early 2000s, the Emergency Services
and Homeless Coalition pushed for the
city to establish a daytime resource center
for the Jacksonville’s homeless population.
In its 2004 report “A Blueprint for the Future:
Ending Homelessness in Jacksonville,”
the coalition included this recommendation
among several strategies to address the city’s
homeless issue: “Establish one or more
drop-in centers with day time hours, including
weekends, providing showers, restrooms,
phones, seating, assessment and referral.”
But in reality, the recommendation got
little traction in Jacksonville’s city government.
Years later ICARE, an influential nonprofit,
powerfully took up the baton to advocate
for a daytime resource center for the
area homeless, making it one of its perennial
topics in its annual list of issues that it said
demanded immediate and real action from
Jacksonville’s powerful decision makers.
ICARE’s vocal, passionate efforts played
a huge role in pushing former Mayor
Alvin Brown to open the Jacksonville Day
Resource Center at the City Rescue Mission
SUMMER 2019 | J MAGAZINE 81