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1 Man's Risk Will Reward Homeless With Neat Shelter

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By DAVID SOMMER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 12, 2008

HUDSON - Homeless people looking for a way out of the woods have a new alternative to trying to make ends meet on their own without benefit of electricity and running water.
Brother Jeff Fries of Elisha Ministries has used his own credit to buy three lots on Rhodes Road a few hundred yards from the bustle of U.S. 19.

Fries, who has been working with the homeless since 1969, said his dream of someday operating a shelter is now a reality thanks to a message from God.

"I've heard from the Lord and he wants me to do this," Fries said as he and a handful of homeless clients worked to clean up an old mobile home and concrete block structure on his new property. "I've never taken a risk like this in my life."

Fries is partnering with Kerry Fitts, pastor of West Coast World of Faith Church, to turn the Rhodes Road tract into an alternative to the often-full Holy Ground shelter to the north on Denton Avenue.

"Jeff and I went out into some of the areas where the homeless people are camping illegally," Fitts said of the decision to open a new shelter. "There are 2,000 homeless people out there every night in western Pasco County. We started by giving them tents, but they do make a mess in the woods, and therefore we decided to get a place and control it and keep it in nice, sanitary condition."

Fries and Fitts acknowledged there are two kinds of homeless people.

Some, also known as street people, choose the lifestyle because they do not want to work or have anyone stopping them from drinking and doing drugs.

The pair wants to help people who fall into the second category: those who want to work but are trapped in a cycle of homelessness. They need a place where they can clean themselves up and store their belongings while seeking employment more substantial than what day labor centers can offer, Fries and Fitts said.

Also, the truly homeless need an address and telephone number while they establish themselves as good employees and save up enough money to rent their own places to live, the pair said.

Eventually, Fries hopes to offer classes on "how to get jobs and how to present yourself." He envisions a growing homeless shelter that features clean beds, individual lockers, bathrooms, showers and three hot meals a day.

"When this place is done, you are gonna say, 'I'd live there.' Everything is going to be as neat as a pin," Fries said.

Already, carpenters have donated time and materials to build a bath house behind the old mobile home that Fries is fixing up to serve as his own office and home.

About a dozen homeless men and women were staying in tents pitched in nearby woods earlier in the week. By Friday, Fries had moved them onto his property, where he was providing a portable toilet and a temporary shower tent.

An old concrete block building in dire need of renovations was serving as a cold-weather shelter.

A man who identified himself only as Ken said he moved into one of Elisha Ministries' tents about three weeks ago after spending part of the holidays at his sister's crowded home. Fries put Ken to work setting up newly purchased American flags on both the mobile home and the block building.

Nearby, Colleen Warren sat smoking a Marlboro, between cleaning campsites in the woods.

Warren said she hails from New Orleans but "thank the Lord I was already here" in Pasco County when Hurricane Katrina hit two years ago.

She had been living in a rental home but "I lost a fiancee, lost a trailer, lost a job and now have a brain tumor."

Warren said she is declining treatment and will live out her days at Elisha Ministries.

"I can get disability now that I have an address," she said. "I'm doing it my way and when he God is ready for me I will go live with him."

Fries said he chose the shelter location, which is across the street from a county fire station, based on the lack of neighbors to complain about his operation. He and Fitts hope to work with Pasco County officials to ensure everything is done by the rules.

Already, county officials have been out to visit the site, the pair said. However, calls to a variety of county departments, including code enforcement and zoning, failed to turn up anyone who knew much about the nascent Rhodes Road operation.

"We can't fight these people, we need them on our side," Fitts said of the county inspectors who ordered Fries to remove a series of extension cords used to power a television set in the block building.

"We want to do everything right, but people have got to understand that they the homeless have got to be someplace."

Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.

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