Listen

Their is a serious issue with homelessness in the city of St. Petersburg. These people share their stories:

Interview with William Shumate aka “Pop”

Interview with Pinellas Park Police Officer Steven Vangeli

Interview with John Crinan

Interview with Jack McPherson

Interview with Curtis Matthews

Interview with Charles Lawhorne

Interview with Bernie Taylor

Interview -tent city

Watch

Poynter Fellow Dexter Mullins follows local St. Petersburg homeless residents, and spends several nights with them to chronicle their stories. Click on the photo above to link to the video documenting this story.

Read

The sun rises early one morning in St. Petersburg, birds begin chirping their musical medley, squirrels crawl across the underbrush, and the crunching of leaves on the ground echos throughout the area as the other wildlife begins to move. The humidity and warm summer mornings don’t necessarily lend themselves to a very comfortable morning, and the droves of mosquitos, tics and other parasites are less than desirable.

What may not seem like much of a habitable area to most is the only home for nearly 600. This isn’t a nature preserve, a park, or even the wooded area around a creek or a lake. This wooded area, filled with numbered tents resting on wooden platforms to raise them off the ground, is a home for those who otherwise have nothing.

Pinellas Hope is a tent-city for homeless in St. Petersburg, Florida.