Community Forum Saturday Will Address Community Homelessness in Manatee

MANATEE COUNTY – Manatee leaders are calling on the community to offer solutions to curb local homelessness and to provide housing and shelter for thousands of local people who have no place to call home each night.

The public is invited to attend the ”No Place like Home“ forum from 9 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Jan. 28 at Renaissance on 9th, 1816 9th Street W., Bradenton. Dr. Robert Marbut will be the keynote speaker. Marbut is founding president at Haven for Hope, a San Antonio nonprofit facility hosting multiple key service providers in a campus-like environment.

Manatee County Government will co-host the event with the Community Coalition on Homelessness and People Assisting the Homeless.

Adell Erozer, executive director of the Community Coalition on Homelessness, said people often approach her asking how they can make a difference in the homeless situation, especially for children who have no home.

”This forum is an opportunity for community members to work together to explore options that could be adopted in order to increase housing that people can use as they work towards stability and sustainability,“ Erozer said. ”Homelessness is a complicated issue with many contributing factors, but one thing that can be done is to increase the number and type of emergency and transitional beds that are available to people in crisis.“

Manatee County Neighborhood Services Director Cheri Coryea said the Saturday forum is ”crucial“ for anyone impacted by a housing crisis in their life or the lives of people they know. 

”Knowing that each day in Manatee County there are over 2,000 children that have no home of their own to go to breaks my heart,“ said Manatee County Neighborhood Services Director Cheri Coryea. ”Community solutions for big issue items like housing can have a profoundly positive impact on the future of our County. We need the ideas of every citizen to be able to make this work.“

For more information on the forum, visit this area of the County’s website, www.mymanatee.org. To RSVP for the event, call (941) 749-3029. For more information on Manatee County Government, call (941) 748-4501.