City of Jacksonville holds meeting to discuss plan to help tackle homeless problem

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The City of Jacksonville is pushing on its promise to help the homeless. Leaders met Monday to discuss a plan that would cost more than one million dollars.

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Jacksonville City Council held a meeting to discuss a 5-year strategic plan that will help tackle the homeless problem.

City council members talked about taking four percent of their $35 million general funds that will go towards the homeless trust fund, which comes out to be $1.4 million.

President of JWB Real Estate Capital, Alexandra Sifakis, said economic density will play a crucial role in this plan to help people save more money.

Sifakis said, “If you buy a lot, that costs 50 grand. If you build a house on that then you are in that house for a certain price. But if you build two duplexes on that same lot. Then you are in those for a lot less. That means you can rent them out for less and get the same return.”

This help coming as people are getting evicted from their homes. We dug into the numbers and found Last year, 15,164 people were evicted, according to the Duval County Clerk of Courts.

CEO of Sulzbacher, Cindy Funkhouser said, “That’s why more and more families are falling into homelessness today.”

Funkhouser said her organization is seeing mostly women who are getting evicted.

“90% are single mothers. They don’t have two incomes coming into their household. They need some extremely affordable rent.

The 5-year strategic plan will be in effect starting on December 21st of this year.

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