BROOKSVILLE — Broken relationships and lost income, not drugs or mental illness, are pushing most people onto the streets in Hernando County, advocates told county commissioners Oct. 27.
In September, relationship troubles were cited 76 times and financial loss 58 times as causes of homelessness, according to data the Mid Florida Homeless Coalition presented to the commission. Substance abuse was cited 10 times and mental health five times.
Substance abuse is a factor, the coalition’s Tiffany Brown said, but it is not the main issue driving homelessness in the county.
The full September breakdown:
Relationship troubles: 76
Financial loss: 58
Trauma: 28
Landlord issues: 25
Incarceration: 20
Medical health: 12
Substance abuse: 10
Mental health: 5
Brown asked commissioners to adopt a resolution proclaiming Nov. 15-21 National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week in Hernando County. The resolution says hunger and homelessness remain a serious problem for many individuals and families in the county.
The night before the meeting, Brown said, 403 people in 244 families were known to have slept on the street. Thirty-eight of them are homeless for the first time, coalition representatives said.
The coalition now hands out cards with a QR code that leads to a five-question assessment, which connects people with services in the community. Food banks are also seeing growing demand, coalition representatives said, and they thanked commissioners for their support.
Commissioner Steve Champion praised the group’s work and said children and families shouldn’t be homeless. But he said he had heard research showing many homeless people are on the streets because of mental illness or drug use, and he asked how to keep them off the streets. He also said some people want to be homeless.
Some do, Brown said. But she said Hernando County has become the “over there” for Hillsborough and Pinellas counties and the city of Orlando. When those communities move homeless people off their streets, she said, many end up in Hernando’s woods, where they can stay out of sight, and the other areas can then claim they’ve solved homelessness.
Legislative wish list
Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the county’s priorities for the 2027 legislative session, presented by Dominique Holmes, the county’s director of communications and government affairs.
The list includes five funding requests and six policy proposals. Funding amounts, county matches and legislative sponsors are still being worked out where applicable, Holmes said.
The funding requests:
Burn building complex: $1.125 million, matched by $1.125 million in county money, for a live-fire training complex on land donated by Cemex. Firefighters could train in fire behavior, search and rescue, hose operations, ventilation, incident command and firefighter survival without leaving the county.
Ridge Manor land purchases: $2 million to buy parcels for drainage, flood mitigation and stormwater management.
Mosquito control operations building: $2 million for a facility at the county utilities site on Sunshine Grove Road, with a $500,000 county match made up of $325,000 in cash and property valued at $175,000.
Corporate Air Park expansion: $4.241 million, with a county match of $745,575, to upgrade a main road and build an access road with full utilities at the Airport Technology Center. The work would prepare about 46 acres, 37 of them developable, for industrial, aviation, manufacturing, logistics, technology and other job-producing uses.
Chinsegut Hill archaeological dig: Money to continue excavation at Chinsegut Hill, including an unfinished dig and other identified historic sites. The cost, county match and sponsor have not been determined.
On the policy side, one proposal would let counties adopt an additional half-cent or 1-cent tourist tax for publicly controlled infrastructure and economic development projects without diverting existing tourist tax revenue.
Another would give counties and cities the same confidentiality the Florida Department of Transportation has for official cost estimates and bid analyses on public works projects. Final contracts and other public records would remain open.
The county also wants a registration fee for electric and alternative-fuel vehicles so they help pay for state and local road maintenance as gas tax revenue declines, and it wants local option gas taxes tied to the Consumer Price Index so they keep pace with inflation.
The remaining proposals would raise from $200,000 to $500,000 the threshold under which local governments may waive payment and performance bonds on public construction contracts and reduce state-required procedures the county says cause unnecessary delays.
Clearing Bay Lake
County crews have begun clearing an invasive plant from Bay Lake, off the Weeki Wachee River, but have barely made a dent, Natural Resources Field Manager Matt Harrington told commissioners.
The county had been monitoring the lake, and by September water lettuce covered so much of it that residents couldn’t get out to kayak, Harrington said in a report with Natural Resources Manager Carla Burrmann.
Water lettuce is an aggressive, free-floating plant that forms rosettes resembling open heads of lettuce. It thrives in nitrogen-rich freshwater, and Harrington said it arrived from South America as far back as the Spanish colonial era.
Just reaching the lake was a challenge. The county’s harvester tops out at 6 mph, slower than the 7 mph current, so crews towed it in with a boat. They pulled out 1,800 pounds of water lettuce on the first run and 5,300 pounds in all, which went to the landfill at a cost of about $162.
Timing is another obstacle. Crews can work only at high tide, which lately has come around 2 a.m.
“The residents don’t enjoy us harvesting at 2 o’clock in the morning,” Harrington said. “So we’ll wait for that tidal flow to switch back over.”
The county is also looking for spots closer to the lake to moor the boat and offload the plants. Once the work is done, residents will again be able to use the lake and reach the Weeki Wachee River, Harrington said.
Commission Chairman Jerry Campbell drew laughs when he asked, “Do the manatees not know that all that lettuce is there?”
The canal is too shallow for them to reach the lake, Burrmann said.
Talk then turned to whether anything else might eat the plant. Champion said an artificial intelligence search turned up grass carp and aquatic snails, though the carp could be considered invasive, too.