Homeless Pet Owners Out in the Cold
Thursday, December 30, 2010
By: Nicole Creston

December 30 2010 | WMFE - As frigid nighttime temperatures sweep through Central Florida, homeless shelters are doing all they can to offer homeless people a warm place to sleep. But it's not so easy for homeless people who have pets, since Orlando's major shelters have no-pet policies.

Rick Deveney and his dog, a 14-year-old longhaired dachshund named Boo, live in a tent in the woods of east Orlando. Rick’s had Boo since he was a puppy, and he says Boo’s the only family he has since his wife died in 2006.

Rick says he first tried to get into a downtown Orlando shelter a few winters ago. “They said, ‘Oh, you’ll have to leave him outside, chain him up to the dumpster or something.’ And it was like 20 degrees. I said, ‘You know what? I’ll freeze with my dog. I’m not leaving him out there.’”

Turns out, none of the major shelters in Central Florida accept pets.

Rick says he’d be glad to enter a shelter, maybe even get into the job placement programs shelters often provide…but he won’t leave his campsite unless Boo can come, too.

“Homeless people, they have their animals, and that’s their love,” he says. “And they’re not going to leave that behind.”

Statistics seem to agree with Rick. A 2007 study of homeless people living in camps in Orlando’s wooded areas found that 1 in 3 of them wouldn’t go into shelter at least in part because they weren’t willing to give up their pets.

University of Central Florida sociology professor Dr. James Wright was in charge of the study.  “The lack of shelter for homeless people who have pets is one barrier to getting these people into a system of care, out of the weather, into shelter, into case management and on the road to self-sufficiency,” says Wright.

But, Wright adds, recognizing the problem and having the ability to fix it are two different things. Wright is also on the Board of Directors for the Coalition for the Homeless, the largest provider of homeless services in Central Florida. He says the Coalition and Orlando’s other major shelters are aware of the need, but trying to fulfill it gets complicated and costly.

“They don’t have the physical facility nor the financial resources to just up and say, ‘Okay, as of tonight we’re going to start taking people that have pets,’” says Wright. There would be a need for additional space, he notes, since all available square footage is currently dedicated to the shelters’ primary focus…helping homeless men, women, and children.

Also, Wright points to other considerations, like whether the pets are healthy and well-behaved in a communal environment, or whether other shelter residents have allergies to pets or fear of animals. There would be pet-food sources to secure, he adds, and maybe even licenses to obtain.

However, Wright says, it can be done. There is one well-known homeless shelter in Florida that has a facility for pets – it’s in Homestead, one of several shelters run by Miami-based Community Partnership for the Homeless.

Dan Vincent is its Executive Director. He says the kennel can accommodate up to 12 pets, and in the 8 years they’ve had it, he can’t remember a time it was ever empty.

“It’s something that we view as indispensable,” Vincent says. “We would not want to live without that, now that we’ve had it to this point. And so many success stories have come out of that.”

Vincent says his facility lucked out with a generous donor, so they have a nicely-appointed separated kennel building with a large fenced-in yard. But he notes a separated kennel room with some dog crates and a fenced-in patch of grass outside could also do the trick under the right circumstances. He’s also found the cost of his ongoing kennel upkeep to be minimal.

“We build it into an operation person’s routine to make sure that the kennels are cleaned out, the owners are responsible for their pets, you could probably likely find a good-hearted veterinarian who takes this as a passion and a good cause and volunteers their time, and it all comes together,” he explains.

Meanwhile in Central Florida, UCF study author James Wright says homeless pet owners get through cold nights the best way they know how.

“They’re throwing more logs on their campfires, and they’re probably going to various churches and other facilities to obtain extra blankets, and cuddling up with their animals and sharing heat and staying warm for the night,” he says. “It’s nothing you or I would want to do.”

Back at his camp, Rick says he's not sure it's something he wants to do, either...and if he could, he’d give people in his situation a choice.

“If I won the lottery, I’d rent a big ol’ warehouse for homeless people with their animals, and let them sleep there until they got on their feet,” he says.

Until there are more resources to go around, or until Orlando's shelters luck into a wealthy donor like Homestead's did, there are no plans to build a pet-friendly homeless shelter in Central Florida.