Outrage prompts upcoming town hall as homeless population balloons in South MS

Yahoo

16-04-2025

Homeless residents in Biloxi are daily strapping their possessions to their backs or pushing them along downtown streets in shopping carts after being forced from camps on the old Broadwater golf course, where they found an overgrown refuge amid a bustling city.
Some people lived on the land for years, building houses jerry-rigged from scraps, says the housing case manager at Back Bay Mission in Biloxi. And some are still there, although their ranks are thinning as heavy machinery chews through dense underbrush on portions of the 266-acre property.
Those displaced from longtime camping spots wonder where they are supposed to go, advocates for homeless people say. The Coast has no emergency shelter. Fearful neighbors have over the years killed numerous plans to build one in Biloxi and Gulfport.
After repeated complaints about the Broadwater property, the Biloxi City Council has decided to host a Town Hall meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Civic Center on Howard Avenue. The agenda says the discussion will center on citywide homelessness, the Broadwater property, surrounding areas and related issues.
Homelessness is not going away. Annual surveys conducted nationwide on a single night in January, when workers fan out for what is called the Point in Time Count, show an increase of 35% in the homeless population over a two-year period in South Mississippi's six counties.
Agencies across South Mississippi work toward temporary and permanent housing for those who qualify under various programs but need far outpaces supply.
'What is happening here is no different from what is happening across this country,' said Dena Wittmann, executive director of the Open Doors Homeless Coalition. 'Homelessness is a symptom of larger social issues. It is dangerous to try to attribute what is going on to individual issues or problems that people are having. There's a trend afoot.'
Homeless people and property owners near the Broadwater co-existed peacefully for years. But in recent years, residents and business owners have been increasingly disturbed by vandalism, theft, uncontrolled blazes, prostitution and fights at all hours emanating from the camps.
The property owners, Roy Anderson III and Cotton Fore of Broadwater Development LLC, bought the resort months before Katrina devastated it in August 2005. Plans for a casino have failed to materialize, but the state is renovating the marina on the south side of U.S. 90, a favorite spot for homeless people with vehicles before it was recently fenced off for the construction work.
Anderson and Fore were allowing homeless campers on the Broadwater property, but began clearing it at the city's request. They also put up no trespassing signs as a warning to squatters. City leaders acted after residents of the Greater Southern Subdivision repeatedly blasted them over the property's condition and unsupervised, untended camps.
'There's 20 years' worth of people pooping in there,' said resident Bob Silvestro, who has gotten to know some of the homeless campers, sympathizes with their plights and has helped some find housing.
Resident Shelley Kendall called the city's attitude 'selective enforcement.' A city code enforcement officer came calling shortly after she bought two of her three properties in the neighborhood, insisting she cut back the undergrowth. She spent $12,000 on cleanup, she said.
Meanwhile, garbage has piled up at the Broadwater, including spent propane bottles, abandoned tents and furniture, old wooden pallets, countless shopping carts and piles upon piles of clothes.
'There's filth and garbage and hazmat (hazardous material),' she said. 'It's horrific.'
Roy Anderson said that he and Fore have been cooperating with the city by clearing the land when requested and putting up no trespassing signs.
'We've been trying to secure the property and develop the property,' he said.
Kendall has put up with theft, too. While out of state, she watched on a camera as one of the homeless men loaded her outdoor air conditioning unit onto a wagon and pulled it off with a rope tied to a bicycle. The police said she would have to come to the department to file a report, but she was watching the camera from Vermont.
Business owners along Beauvoir Road report similar frustrations. Longtime business Furniture Galore & More backs up to the northwestern boundary of the Broadwater property. Owner Tommy Craft strung razor wire across the top of his fence to keep out homeless people.
Undeterred, vandals have cut holes in his fence five times, at one point maneuvering a box fan from his property to the Broadwater. His wife, co-owner Melonie Craft, couldn't imagine what the campers would do with a box fan, but then she saw that they were powering the fan with extension cords connected to an electrical outlet at one of the businesses.
Tommy Craft had to cut back holly bushes he had planted 22 years earlier and remove screening from air conditioning units on his building's north side because people were camping behind the bushes and under the raised units. At the end of a weekend, campers left behind wigs, blankets, pillows, shoes, clothes, syringes and more.
He would rake everything into a tarp, tie it up and throw it in the dumpster.
Maegan Maddox, owner of Miss Mae's Pre-K, which also backs up to the Broadwater property on Beauvoir, said she had to call public safety seven times in 2024 over uncontrolled fires, some near the fence line.
'It's just nightmare after nightmare,' said Maddox, who is moving her pre-K to the other side of Beauvoir, where she has a learning academy for older children.
'There's such a massive homeless problem here,' she said. 'If they kick them out, they're just going to go somewhere else.'
Clifton 'Pops' Williams, 65, was homeless not so long ago in Biloxi and Baltimore and Florida and Texas and Washington D.C. and New York and a whole lot of other places.
He is from Pascagoula and graduated high school in Moss Point. He dates his struggles to 1999, when he and his wife were in a car accident. He woke up from a coma three days later to learn his wife of 20 years had died instantly. He could never get over losing the woman who knew him so well that she finished his sentences.
He worked, he said, but was unable to hold down any job for long.
'I decided to go homeless in 2015,' Williams said. 'I said, 'Well, I'm just going to the woods. That way, I won't have to pay nobody.'
He lived for a time as a hobo, hopping trains and landing in different places. He met a few kind people along the way and even worked on a Quaker farm for a while. But he also got those sidelong glances and eye rolls that homeless people so often encounter.
Williams prided himself on dressing neatly and staying clean-shaven, even when he was living in the woods. It wasn't easy.
'I always tried to hustle and get me some clothes,' he said. He befriended restaurant workers for scraps. Without a home, Williams survived heart surgery and cancer. He recuperated, he said, in someone's garage in Texas.
He returned to the Deep South in 2018, living for a time in New Orleans before making his way back to the Coast and the old abandoned campus of Mercy Cross High School, also devastated by Katrina. Many homeless people were living on the isolated property.
Williams said all sorts of things were happening, including robberies. He saw other men with long, scraggly hair and beards. 'They done gave up on life,' he said.
Somehow, he did not. He read his Bible, went to church every chance he got and counseled his fellow campers, some of whom called him Dr. Phil.
But Williams had problems of his own. In addition to heart trouble, he was losing his eyesight.
One of his buddies told Williams about the Open Doors Homeless Coalition.
'They help homeless people,' his buddy said.
'I don't believe that,' Williams responded.
Nonetheless, he called Open Doors. Cathy Pitalo, a planning coordinator at Open Doors, and a colleague 'knocked' on Williams' tent a couple of days later. Within another two days, she had found him an apartment.
Pitalo said she started crying when she went to pick up Williams. He was standing outside his tent with a duffel bag, one sock up, the other down.
She said, 'The first words out of his mouth were, 'You came.' '
Organizations that assist homeless people work with a variety of programs, always with the goal of helping their clients become self-sufficient.
Williams was able to move into an apartment because he qualified for a program that offered rental assistance. He also was signed up for food pantries. He was lonesome, so Pitalo helped him adopt a shelter cat named Felix.
About three months ago, he moved into a Gulfport apartment building for senior citizens that is sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi. Rent is based on income. Various groups donated furniture.
Pitalo has also made sure that Williams gets support — training and equipment — available to the blind, plus assistance through Medicaid with light housekeeping and shopping. Coast Transit Authority picks up residents for shopping and appointments.
Williams now wishes he could get a job. He's glad to have a roof over his head. He said the worst thing about being homeless was sitting in the rain.
'It's strange,' he said. 'I appreciate all the people who helped me along the way, especially Open Doors.'
His voice cracked as he continued: 'They made me realize that life is worth living, that somebody cared.
'Love thy neighbor. That's what Jesus said.'
Williams is one of the 1,100 households that have found stable housing in the past two years in South Mississippi through Open Doors and the agencies that partner with it, Executive Director Wittmann said.
Still, the homeless population continues to grow.
'We are seeing a lot of new faces,' Wittmann said, with an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The cost of rent, in some cases, simply outpaces pay.
Homeless advocates have seen no evidence that other localities are dropping off busloads of homeless people on the Mississippi Coast, as rumors fueled by fear sometimes indicate.
Instead, Wittmann said, individuals come to South Mississippi seeking jobs, cheaper housing or a milder climate.
Homelessness, she said, is a complex problem. Lack of affordable housing, untreated mental illness, substance abuse disorders, unexpected bills and other issues can all lead to homelessness.
'The issue is that homelessness is multi-faceted,' Wittmann said. 'There is no quick fix and each situation is different.'
'It is a complex social problem that requires a community response.'
She said South Mississippi needs emergency shelter for homeless people and the case managers trying to help them. A Supreme Court decision that allows cities to ban the homeless from sleeping or camping in public places means the population could continue to grow here, she said.
But support for emergency shelter has been hard to build. The city of Biloxi in 2017 considered putting a homeless shelter at the old Beauvoir Elementary School, which sat just north of the Broadwater property.
Residents objected. More than one person has pointed out the irony of rejecting a shelter while homeless people lived nearby in the woods, with no trash receptacles, security, laundry room or other essential services.
'Some of the encampments were so massive, it was like communities,' said Michael Rowan, the lead housing case manager at Back Bay Mission, which provides homeless services in East Biloxi.
He has visited the property multiple times. He saw makeshift houses with walls, rooms, artwork and furniture. One veteran had a kitchen table with chairs and a tablecloth. Rowan has also met families, people with pets and a veteran in a wheelchair.
Since the no trespassing signs went up, homeless people are on the move. This makes them harder to locate when a home or other services have been secured for them.
'People aren't setting up camps anymore,' Rowan said. 'They're moving hour by hour, night by night.'
And some people, he said, are following the train tracks until they reach Gulfport, where they can still find woods to camp out of sight.
'The need outpaces the resources,' Wittmann said. 'That is the issue.'