Kelly Hayes
St. Vincent DePaul CARES will receive a $5 million grant from the Bezos Family Foundation to help homeless families in the Tampa Bay area, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman announced Thursday.
The grant, awarded by the Day One Families Fund, will help an estimated 400 families including about 1,000 children across Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
“The thought that we are going to be changing the trajectory for hundreds and hundreds of children in our school system who are struggling in poverty and homelessness is at the heart of what we work for everyday in this city: creation of opportunity,” Kriseman said.
The funds will be used over two years through a new program from the local St. Vincent DePaul Society called “No Child Left Outside,” which will rapidly rehouse families into stable and permanent housing. St. Vincent DePaul Society CARES serves 16 counties across 7,678 square miles of Florida.
“Change happens from the bottom up,” said Michael J. Raposa of St. Vincent de Paul CARES. “Almost for the first time in grand scale, the Pinellas County school system is going to be joined at the hip with our homeless system to solve homelessness.”
The organization will create a homeless crisis response system through partnerships with the Pinellas County School System and the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative.
“One homeless family is way too many,” Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Michael Greco said. “It’s so important to understand that the stability of students is the key to their academic future.”
St. Vincent DePaul CARES has housed 503 homeless families since the onset of the pandemic.
“The only solution to homelessness is housing,” Raposa said. “We as a community have to let go of our fear to look poverty in the face … Homelessness is just a symptom of the greater ill of our community, which is poverty.”
