WMBB News 13 - The Panhandle's News LeaderCommunity Resource Center Task Force Discusses Next Steps

After a national expert on homelessness visits our area, the Panama City Community Resource Center Task Force digests his advice.  

The group met at Panama City Hall Tuesday afternoon to discuss the advice given by Dr. Robert Mabrut, who visited the area in January to see what options are available to decrease the homeless population. He thought building a centralized location, that would bring all of the social services together to help the homeless, especially those with mental and substance abuse issues, would be the best for Bay County. The group discussed assigning different organizations on board to different responsibilities tied and looked to see what the need is to reach the final goal of creating a community resource center.  

"We are in agreement that, yes this is a good concept we realize that some coordinated or more coordinated case management is going to be necessary for these folks to make major change in their lives and that we can do that better in a central location so the next big step is where are we going to put it," said task member Laurie Combs. 

Panama City Mayor Greg Brudnicki announced at the meeting that he hopes to continue conversation with Bay County officials to get a site for the building within a month or so.  

At the meeting the group also revealed the results of the annual Point in Time Survey required by the Federal Government. The survey counts how many homeless people are in the area and this year the survey showed there were 28% less homeless people. However, Combs says there are a lot of variables like weather that could have attributed to the numbers this year.