--Renovation of vacant hotel among ideas to ease pain of homeless in Hillsborough County--
Tampa, FL – Florida State House candidate Brian Blair, continuing to offer up innovative, aggressive ideas, has now turned his attention to the plight of Hillsborough County’s homeless.
Blair calls it thinking “outside the box,” and the same visionary approach that has worked wonders in developing new, sheltered bus stops for county residents is now being applied to those who find themselves without a roof over their heads, period.
Blair, the former county commissioner who seeks District 47’s seat in the 2010 election, has proposed renovating at least one vacant hotel so that it may house hundreds of homeless people.
“It makes sense, across the board,” Blair said recently. “Hotels are already equipped for sheltering people. And it would, at the same time, help the homeless and create jobs,” he added.
Blair says the plan would entail selecting a vacant hotel and targeting it for renovation. Then, county homeless people would be moved in—after background checks—with attention paid to grouping them by gender and/or families. Blair said, though, that people wouldn’t be able to stay there indefinitely, in order to ensure that vacancies would be created for others.
Blair says start-up funding would be asked for from the countless agencies already working closely with the homeless, like the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and others. He added that people benefiting from the program could become “in-house” workers to help maintain the premises, through training.
Other potential partners in such a project, Blair said, could be natural tie-in groups like Meals on Wheels and Seniors in Service.
“It’s not that county residents don’t feel that the homeless should have a place to stay, but the question is always, ‘Where?,’” Blair said. “Hotels are generally away from neighborhoods and shopping centers,” he added.
Blair’s suggestion is different from the “tent city” proposal by Catholic Charities that the Hillsborough County Commission killed in a 4-3 vote on October 13, 2009.
Blair noted that he hopes a mechanism could be put in place whereby local people—like those who’ve lost jobs, etc.—are helped first.
Blair said he’s confident that he has some initial support from within the county, encouraged by a discussion he had in 2008 with Department of Social Services department head Dave Rogoff, who Blair said “seemed to really like the concept.”
Blair, a Republican, announced in August that he was seeking the State House seat for District 47, which includes portions of Hillsborough County and will be vacated by fellow Republican Kevin Ambler in 2010. Ambler is term limited and is running for State Senate.
For more information about Brian Blair, visit www.BrianBlair.com.
For Brian Blair interview requests, contact Shannon Rose at (813) 960-8412; (813) 389-0801, or info@mediaproductions.tv.
Brian Blair lives in Tampa with his wife, Toni. The Blairs have been married for 23 years and have two children—Brett, 17, and Bradley, 14.
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Political advertisement paid for and approved by Brian Blair, Republican, for State House, District 47.
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