This past weekend, Inweekly interviewed a woman who had lived two weeks at the Re-Entry Alliance Pensacola’s outdoor camp on the Pathway for Change’s property on Blount Street behind Baptist Hospital.
The city of Pensacola helped REAP open the camp after the city’s temporary camp under the Interstate 110 was shut down earlier this year. The REAP site reportedly housed 38 people when it first opened.
The interview took place a week after the camp’s director, Melissa Johnson, had been fired when a volunteer went before the Escambia County Commission with allegations of mistreatment of homeless people at the camp.
The woman that Inweekly interviewed agreed to talk about the camp under the condition that we would use a fictitious name to identify her.
Seeking safety from a domestic violence situation, Anne was referred to the REAP camp by FavorHouse, which didn’t have any space in its shelter. Melissa Johnson took her to the enclosed camp, pointed out her tent, and left her with 10 men and no other female on the site.
Anne felt threatened not only by the men but also Johnson. “She was very belligerent from the very beginning.”
She also had to deal with an erratic camp supervisor that was “very unstable as well and was a bit abusive.” Anne added, “One minute, you were doing something wrong. The next minute they were acting concerned for you. It was a rollercoaster; you were walking on eggshells.”
Anne and her fellow campers were given food infrequently. She shared, “Meals were very few. And when they did come, we did not get water, hardly at all. We never got ice.”
The camp had no way to refrigerate food. If someone missed a meal, there was no way to keep it from spoiling in the heat.
“It really couldn’t be saved because everything was laid out in the heat, on a table,” Anne said. “They had saved a Chick-fil-A sandwich for me while I was in the hospital. And when I came back, I was worried about it. It had been out in the heat for so long, but I hadn’t had a meal in days. I ate it anyway because I’m diabetic and needed the food.”
She continued, “I got sick; a lot of us were getting sick.”
REAP provided the campers with no hot water. The plastic utensils had to be washed and cleaned in cold water. The emergency exit at the back of the campsite was blocked with debris.
One morning, Councilman Delarian Wiggins showed up at the camp asking about the conditions. Anne feared she should be kicked out of the camp if she told the truth.
She shared, “I had to say, ‘Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine here.’ But I really wanted to say, ‘Please rescue me. Get me out of here. We don’t have water. I mean, I’m dying here.’”
After Wiggins left, Johnson showed up. Anne described the moment: “She is in a huge rage. And she’s cussing and swearing. And we needed to clean the whole f‘ing campsite up because the state was coming in.“We didn’t even have time to finish cleaning up. It was so disgusting.”
She continued, “Those tents had been—I mean, it was like a revolving door, and the stuff people brought in, you can only imagine what was inside those tents. And it was unsanitary.”
Most of the tents had screens that were ripped and the zippers didn’t work. Mosquitoes and other bugs would attack the campers. “You couldn’t sleep well because bugs attacked you. One person totally flipped out and was having a fit running around the camp because of the bugs attacking him.”
Anne’s legs were covered with cuts and bug bites. Several were infected. “I told Melissa I needed to go to the doctor, but she ignored it. She didn’t care.”
Anne and a fellow camper tried to clean the pantry, an unairconditioned shed. “We started going through stuff, and things would literally just crumble as we tried to get them into a garbage can. Things were completely all green mold. Bugs were running as we were pulling stuff out. Canned food had stuff growing on it. It was just… I almost threw up. It was just disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Anne’s health deteriorated over the Labor Day weekend. “We did not have food all those three days. I was found unconscious because I bottomed out, being diabetic with no food.”
Walter Arrington, a homeless health navigator with Community Health Northwest Florida, came in contact with Anne and transported her to Community Health’s behavioral health department. She was assessed and connected with a local provider who could provide her safer housing.
The Inweekly interview lasted over an hour. Anne talked about how the camp was promised food many times, but it wasn’t delivered. She saw REAP staff pick through donations before allowing campers to get to them. She questioned why REAP could have racks and racks of clothes at its Max-Well Center on North Palafox and not offer any to the campers. She complained about some campers having weapons and the lack of any intake system.
“These people should not be running shelters,” Anne said of REAP. “I believe that if you’re going to be running a shelter, you need to have compassion. You need to be non-judgmental, to have understanding. You need to be willing to be supportive, understanding, listen to their story, where they came from, and be willing to help them. But let me tell you, the word ‘compassion’ can go a long way in someone’s healing process.”
Though safe, Anne shared her tremendous guilt about those she left behind at the REAP camp.
“I’m traumatized. I am absolutely traumatized,” she said. “And I have a lot of guilt that they are back there, suffering. I’ve been talking to a therapist that I feel like I should not be sleeping in the bed right now, and they’re not because I care very deeply about them.”
Meanwhile, Councilman Wiggins has called for a moratorium on city funding for the REAP camp to give time for an audit of its finances. The city council will vote on it Thursday night.
The homeless population grows daily, and not just in Pensacola! It is a national problem of epic proportions! With the millions of dollars wasted by our government every year, why can’t some be delegated to build or repurpose existing empty buildings for much needed homeless shelters and programs to assist those “really” wanting to become working and responsible members of society again? A “tent city “ especially in the South is a shameful display of “trying to help” homeless people. And when the winter months roll around, then what? Especially up north! And what about severe storms? I know I wouldn’t want to be in a tent or huddled under a bridge for a severe storm or Hurricane! I also know some of the homeless population just want a free handout, I’ve seen it firsthand, but not all! Why can’t those that receive the monies delegated for this purpose make it happen? Where is this money, that comes from our tax dollars? What is done with it? It doesn’t appear to be spent on doing the job it’s intended to do!
How can people help. I’m new here but I could definitely step up to the plate if it’s in working there, making phone calls to find resources etc. People need to have an idea on what can people do now. Not next week or a month ago but now. What do we do now for these people and children?
Where’s the cat?
Having read all of the reporting I can find a few issues still seem unclear. First, why would WKRG report that Johnson said, “I’m not even paid for all of this….” Was Johnson an actual employee of REAP – “or” – did REAP contract with Johnson’s non-profit “Fearless Community” to perform certain duties both at the homeless camp and at the Max-Well Respite Center? If the latter, then Johnson would be paid by her own non-profit Fearless Community of which she is the President, not REAP directly. Second, why did the Pensacola Beach Elks give a $5,000 check written out “to” Fearless Community? Did the Elks think, or were they led by Johnson to believe, that the money would directly benefit REAP? Has anyone thought to actually ask the Elks? As a related question, why would Whibbs even have known about the $5,000 check? Was it sent to Johnson “at” REAP? Did Johnson tell someone at REAP about the check? Third, is it legal or illegal in Florida to record a conversation with someone without their permission? Johnson admits that she made at least one recording of a meeting with Whibbs without his permission and then Bergosh admits posting extracts from the recording that he must have known was made without Whibbs consent. If Bergosh were a decent person, and there is no evidence that he is, he would have picked up the telephone and called Whibbs to tell him about the recording and ask if he had agreed to it. If Whibbs did not know, and that seems to be the case, Bergosh still could have spewed his political venom but without quoting from the recording. Fourth, WKRG reports that Johnson had a meeting with Whibbs the day prior to the one where she was either fired (or Fearless Community was fired) or quit. In the reporting about the earlier meeting, Johnson says that she met with Whibbs with another person listening in to an active telephone conversation between her (Johnson) and an unnamed person described as “[m]y board member.” Fearless Community has a four-person board member. So, the person listening in was Maurice Moody, Nathaniel Bass or Angela Knight. If what Johnson did was illegal, did the other person commit a crime if they knew that Whibbs had not given his consent? The big mystery is why we are expected to believe that no one with REAP or Pathways for Change knew what was going on at the REAP camp on Pathways for Change property. The REAP website lists four staff members and 17 board members. https://www.reapreentry.org/leadership The Pathways for Change website lists three staff members. https://www.pathwaysforchange.org/ It is hard to believe that none of these 24 people above never visited the camp and had no idea what was going on. Johnson may (or may not) have been in over her head but plenty of people must have or should have known the condition of the camp and spoken up.
Rick, it’s not an exaggeration to say that this reporting is heroic. You could literally be saving a life or lives with your willingness to expose this, and there are so many people deeply grateful for it.
Also: Anne is a hero herself. That woman’s grace and courage and her care for her fellow “campers” is truly astonishing to me. Sick as she was, her first thoughts from my initial contact with her were “we have to get everybody out of that camp.” I’ve had a hard time getting her to focus on her own healing because she has been so consumed with worry about what the others continue to go through.
If you have time, you might want to get with Candy Alcott for a follow-up interview. There was so much she couldn’t get in at the BOCC meeting that night, even with Jeff Bergosh and Lumon May recognizing the importance of giving her more time. There are SO many other things that she witnessed; one example is that the camp “managers” wouldn’t even allow her to pull up the wet blankets of CHILDREN that had soaked in the rain to get them dried out…she was admonished and told they needed to fend for themselves.
There are also reports that they have been allowing campers to shower in the building, and even stay in there overnight with some sort of perverse “reward” system. I let Connie Bookman know that yesterday, and she was completely unaware that this has been happening.
And of course there is the bigger picture of what our area hospital that is CONTRACTED to provide indigent care is doing. The stories are accumulating daily. They checked Anne out with NO care even though they diagnosed her. She wasn’t even given a fluid bag for what a nurse named severe dehydration. Of course there is the woman Jennifer Brahier is helping who was left on a sidewalk unresponsive without the ability to speak. In addition, there was another “camper” who arrived at the “SOS” REAP grounds WHO ARRIVED WITH NO COLOSTOMY BAG (his fellow campers and a volunteer helped him shower, gave him clean clothes, and couldn’t figure out why he was soiling himself).
It’s time for monied interests and the DIB to stop their political war with homeless people as collateral damage. There isn’t any form of abuse lower than people who would politic on one of the most vulnerable populations who are our fellow citizens. *Nothing* is going to get fixed as long as they continue to feed their pointless and greed-driven lunacy. If they continue to pursue these charges against Michael Kimberl, it is going to spiral into another constitutional battle that nobody wins. And if Grover Robinson isn’t willing to lead on this issue, perhaps our community could just skip the transition team and make DC the mayor right now. Hopefully he will be better equipped to handle the notion that rich people preying on homeless people is not right. And I can’t understand why anybody who spend a hot cent in any of the businesses associates with those DIB Board members, most of all Michael Carro. They ought to be the ones featured in a mug shot style Hall of Shame.