Pasco's winter shelter policy revisited

Shelter providers and advocates for the homeless reached a consensus Thursday that cold weather shelters should open well before temperatures approach freezing.

Pasco County has six cold weather shelters that open when the temperature is 36 degrees or lower.

"I think there is universal agreement that it needs to be a higher temperature, but the logistics still need to be worked out," said Judith Tilton, director of community services for United Way of Pasco.

Pasco County Commissioner Pat Mulieri, chairwoman of the Homeless Advisory Board, said she will meet with the county attorney to determine how to adjust the policy. The 36-degree threshold has been in place since 1986. Mulieri and other homeless advocates want to raise it to 40 or 45 degrees.

Susan Ganoway and Lester Cypher, who operate cold weather shelters in Port Richey and Moon Lake, said they want more flexibility to open during inclement weather. Neither has a permit for a permanent homeless shelter, so they are permitted to open only when Pasco's Emergency Operations Center puts out the call to its cold weather partners.

"I would like to open when we feel like it's needed, not when the county issues the order," Cypher said.

Raising the temperature threshold would place a greater demand on volunteers and churches that provide the cold weather shelters, said Jim Johnston, Pasco's emergency operations coordinator.

"It's real easy to say we ought to," Johnston said. "But the question is: Does the community, in its present condition, have the capacity to open? Understand that if we set it at 40 degrees this year, we would have added 11 additional openings."

Impact Family Ministries would be able to accommodate the need, Ganoway said.

"We have six churches that provide volunteers for us, and people work four-hour shifts," she said. "We don't have a problem with volunteers."

Pinellas County opens cold weather shelters at 40 degrees. The county has opened the shelters two nights this winter.

Cliff Smith, assistant director for the Pinellas County Health & Human Services department, said the temperatures tend to stay a bit higher along the coast.

"In Hillsborough and Pasco, it gets significantly colder than it does here," he said.

Hillsborough County, the only county in Florida with a larger homeless population than Pasco, waits until the temperature reaches 32 degrees to open its four emergency shelters. Last year, cold weather shelters opened on 16 days and housed more than 3,100 men, women and children.