NEW PORT RICHEY – Members of the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners discussed issues relating to homelessness during their Jan. 28 meeting.
The topic came up while Amielee Farrell, director of Pasco County’s Office of Management and Budget, was giving a presentation regarding the county’s budget for fiscal year 2026.
That budget will be effective from Oct. 1, 2025, through Sept. 30, 2026.
Farrell had said one of the priorities the county should address over the next five years should include enhancing the quality of life through better public safety and public health.
Reducing homelessness was one of the things Farrell emphasized would need to be done.
“When you mention public health and safety, homelessness kind of fits into bucket one and bucket two,” District 2 Commissioner Seth Weightman said.
Weightman said he thought the number of homeless people living on the east side of the county “is probably as high as it’s ever been.”
“I really want to understand our options,” Weightman said. “I want to be as disciplined as possible with how much money we throw at it.
“We’re putting it towards people who don’t give two bits about other people’s property or businesses. They don’t care about themselves. They don’t care about this county. They don’t care about what they are doing.
“I want to be very deliberate and aggressive about how we tackle this problem.
“Can we get them to their next of kin? These people who are doing what they’re doing should not be our taxpayers’ problem. This is a family problem and their families should take care of it.
“It’s going to cost some money but I don’t want to invest anything in them because they don’t care. I think we have broadly gone abound this topic but we haven’t narrowed down and defined what we can do as a board. I’m ready to go to level 10 and put our foot down to make some real changes here.”
District 5 Commissioner Mike Mariano also spoke about homelessness.
“I know that we’ve been victimized by people from other places bringing people from other places to here … and they come here,” Mariano said.
“I don’t want to be the beacon for the homeless to come. Take care of our own, etc., but anyone from a different place – I think it’s a program to go with. We did a panhandling ordinance and that didn’t work.
“I agree it’s a big problem but if you keep giving them a way where they can stay in the woods and do their drugs, they’re going to stay in the woods and do their drugs.”
District 1 Commissioner Ron Oakley also weighed in on the issue.
“Some of the property owners need to trespass people,” Oakley said. “The landowners that own some of this land that they’re trespassing on do not do their part to make sure that they get off that land.”
District 3 Commissioner Kathryn Starkey said she understood Weightman’s frustration and saw it too.
“But I just want to be careful not to paint all of them with the same brush,” Starkey said.
She talked about a young father whom she had seen at a Home Depot a couple of years ago. He, his wife, and their two children had been evicted from where they had been living because he had been sick for a week and missed one paycheck. That caused him to be behind on the rent, Starkey said.
He told her that he still had a job but didn’t have enough money to rent another place to live. He also told her he was looking for a tent that he and his family could use to live in at Starkey Wilderness Park.
“There are places where people just need a little bit of a helping hand,” Starkey said. “Then we have the other ones that don’t care. They want to live in the woods. They like living that way. I want to be careful because we have both situations going on.”
District 4 Commissioner Lisa Yeager, pointed to organizations like One Community Now that will help displaced people with a housing payment or stay at a hotel.
Starkey said the family she had referred to were helped to get into another place to live.
She suggested commissioners hold a workshop sometime in the future to discuss solutions to the county’s homelessness issue. Solutions that arise in workshops must be presented in regular meetings before they may be acted upon.