Commissioners:
As an update to my previous email, I provide the following information. Thank you, Commissioner Book, for responding to my email.
Effective April 15, 2024, St. Francis House, Inc. (SFH), will temporarily suspend its day services and Cold Night Services to unsheltered homeless and food insecure community members.
We will continue to shelter single women and families with children in our Emergency Shelter. Shelter guests will continue to receive three daily meals, case management and housing location support, coupled with essential services along
with referrals to available support services. Annually, we permanently house 100 families with 120 children. We have done so for over 15 years. A press release will be distributed relaying this important information to share with our community.
This is a difficult decision with much thought and deliberation invested in this action by myself, our team and Board of Directors. As I mentioned in my previous email, our operating costs increased by 30% last year and continue to escalate
this year. Our fundraising efforts increase annually by 20% each year but are not adequate to meet our rising operational costs. We had to make a decision to eliminate one of two services: Day Services or Shelter Services. While eliminating shelter services
would drastically reduce our operating costs, we recognize that the families and children we serve have no other place to go other than the streets. Conversely, unsheltered homeless and food insecure community members may receive meals and/or services at
GRACE or churches. GRACE receives non-grant funds from the city and county to serve unsheltered homeless. We do not; but serve 30-50 unsheltered homeless and food insecure community members daily. Further, our Cold Night Shelter services receive 25K through
city grant funded resources. We are required, per our grant contract to provide the number of bed nights along with the associated costs of said service for reimbursement of services provided. To date we have not received reimbursement for services provided
from 10/23-12/23. Additionally, GRACE receives over 100k in non-grant funds from the City for Cold Night Shelter and is not required to report the number of bed nights they provide for Cold Night Shelter. This fact was recently confirmed in media, as I
am sure you are well aware.
Secondly, SFH has listed our Sunrise Inn property for sale in order to assist in reducing our operating costs deficit and eliminate the need to further reduce our services and reinstate our day services for unsheltered homeless and food
insecure community members. Of the 33 Sunrise units, 30 are vouchered through Alachua County Housing Authority. In all likelihood, because of the property location, our buyer will be a property investor desiring to create student housing and not accept housing
vouchers. With the sale of our property, our community will possibly lose 30 units of affordable housing for extremely to low-income single individuals. The majority of current residents are seniors on SSI and or SDI. Ten percent of residents have been
permanently housed at Sunrise for over 20 years. It will be up to the county to determine what happens with the current vouchers. SFH has no control over the future of those vouchers for current residents. SFH will do everything we can do to rehouse current
residents, which again we receive no funds for, but ultimately, we are limited in what we can achieve.
Once the property sells, we will distribute a media a release announcing the sale of the property and the restatement of our day and Cold Night Shelter services for unsheltered homeless and food-insecure community members. Unless I hear
prior to the sale from the county regarding the voucher status, any questions from the media regarding the vouchers will be referred to the county.
In gratitude,
Lauri Schiffbauer
Executive Director
St. Francis House, Inc.
She/her/her’s
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Office: 352-378-9079 x310 | Fax: 352-378-1883
Cell :724-388-8463
413 South Main Street, Gainesville, FL 32601