When I was living in my van with Fisher, the idea that homelessness was “solvable” felt impossible. I was drowning—working gigs, trying to rebuild my business, dealing with grief from losing my wife—and there was no coordinated system to catch me. No Day Center where I could access case management without surrendering my autonomy. No pathway from “surviving in a parking lot” to “stable housing” that didn’t require me to be perfect first.

If R.I.S.E. had existed when I became homeless, I wouldn’t have had to feel ashamed and do it alone. I would’ve had the support I needed to get a new job and get back on my feet sooner rather than over three years later of struggling and driving a vehicle that is about to literally fall apart.

I’m still technically homeless, though I’ve been couch surfing. Trying hard to not end up back in my van. Through trying to find answers for the shelter closure, meeting everyone I’ve met through what became the Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition, I managed to get a job.

From my perspective, solving homelessness is exactly what R.I.S.E. is built to do. There will be employment programs, counseling, and structure. This is the support people suffering homelessness need to get back on their own two feet.

The Myth:

“Homelessness is unsolvable.”

“There will always be homeless people.”

“We’ve tried everything and nothing works.”

“You can’t fix human nature.”

This is the most dangerous myth of all—because if we believe it, we stop trying.

The Reality: In the professional world, no problem is “unsolvable”—it is simply a matter of resource alignment, strategic scaling, and persistent execution. The most dangerous myth of all is the belief that homelessness is a permanent, natural feature of Putnam County that we can only hope to “manage.”

When people say homelessness is unsolvable, they are usually looking at the results of fragmented, underfunded, and uncoordinated efforts. They’re right—those don’t work. But the Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition isn’t interested in repeating the past. We are building a system designed for Functional Zero—where homelessness becomes rare, brief, and non-recurring through sustained data-driven efforts.

Over these 13 parts, we’ve debunked myths about work, choice, addiction, cost, visibility, safety, demographics, outsiders, efficiency, and service resistance. Every myth had one thing in common: they blamed individuals for a systems failure. The truth? Homelessness isn’t unsolvable—it’s undersolved. We’ve never truly tried a coordinated, professionalized, data-driven approach in Putnam County. Until now.

The “Functional Zero” Framework

Solving homelessness isn’t about a “magic wand.” It’s about building a crisis response system where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring. Communities nationwide have achieved this for subpopulations (e.g., veterans, chronic) by maintaining real-time data and housing capacity that exceeds need.

• Data-Driven Coordination: Through our Coalition meetings, we are moving away from guesswork. We are identifying hundreds of homeless students in our schools (532 documented in Part 9), the veterans, and the working families, and matching them to specific interventions.
• Public-Private Alignment: This isn’t just a “charity” issue. It’s a community economic priority. By bringing together the City of Palatka Commissioners, business owners, and partners like Meridian, LSF, Heart of Putnam, Veteran Building Solutions, and Operation Lifeline, we create a unified front.
• The R.I.S.E. Infrastructure: As we detailed in Part 12, we aren’t just giving out tents; we are building a phased, professionalized pathway back to self-sufficiency.

The Roadmap Forward

We have a clear, phased plan that we are preparing to present:

• Phase 1 (The Day Center): Establishing a centralized hub for case management, skills training, employment programs, and counseling. This stabilizes the “Invisible 90%” (Part 7) before they fall further into the cycle.
• Phase 2 (The Managed Shelter): A soft-launch, high-barrier facility that provides a safe, professional environment to transition people off the streets for good.
• The Fiscal Reality: We are moving from the “Crisis Cycle” (ER visits, jail stays, and emergency calls) to a proactive system.

What Does “Solved” Look Like?

When homelessness is finally rare, brief, and non-recurring in Putnam County, there will be less people hiding all over the county because they’ll have somewhere to go for help. There will be less expense going to the jails and ER. There will overall be less complaints by those in the community that don’t understand homelessness because they won’t be on every corner panhandling—they’ll be rebuilding their lives.

Specifically:

• The 532 homeless students in our schools (Part 9) have stable housing so they can focus on learning, not survival
• Veterans like those served by Veteran Building Solutions and Operation Lifeline (Part 10) have immediate access to specialized housing
• Working families (Part 1‘s 40% employed) aren’t choosing between rent and groceries
• People fleeing domestic violence—like Beth (Voices from the Street)—have safe alternatives that don’t require choosing between abuse and homelessness
• The “Invisible 90%” (Part 7) don’t need to hide anymore
• People like me don’t spend three years struggling in a van, ashamed and alone, when coordinated support could have gotten us back on our feet in months

This isn’t utopia. This is what coordinated systems deliver.

The Boardroom Math (The ROI of R.I.S.E.)

Solving homelessness isn’t just the moral choice; it’s the fiscally conservative one. As we’ve analyzed throughout this series, the “Crisis Cycle” of doing nothing is the most expensive “service” we provide:

• The Hidden Cost of Inaction: In Part 6 (The Cost Myth), we broke down how leaving one person on the street costs taxpayers roughly $35,000 to $40,000 a year in ER visits, police calls, and jail stays **(national averages; Central Florida studies cite ~$31,000/year unhoused vs. ~$10,000 in supportive housing—a 68% savings).
• The Tax Base Truth: As discussed in Part 3 (The Taxpayer Myth), the vast majority of our unhoused neighbors—the “Invisible 90%” from Part 7—are already local residents and former (or current) workers who have contributed to Putnam’s economy.
• The Coordinated Dividend: By shifting from fragmented charity (Part 11) to a professionalized model like R.I.S.E., we can cut these emergency costs by 50% or more.

The Bottom Line: It’s a Choice

In Part 12, I asked: “Why haven’t we built something worth coming inside to?” The answer lies in our collective will. Homelessness is a choice—not a choice made by the person in the van or the woods, but a choice made by a community. We choose whether or not to build the infrastructure required to solve it.

Florida’s 2025 progress—a 9.13% statewide homelessness reduction and 19.1% drop in unsheltered cases (Council on Homelessness Report)—shows coordinated systems deliver results. In Putnam County, we are choosing to stop managing the symptoms and start curing the cause. We are choosing to R.I.S.E.

Final Call to Action:

• Join the Coalition or Volunteer for the Rapid Response Team
• Support our mission 
• Join our Facebook Group and Like/Follow our Facebook Page
• Share this post to your Nextdoor or Facebook groups to challenge the narrative.

Thank You to Our Guest

Special Thanks to Beth (who shares her experience of homelessness across multiple states on Threads and Instagram as @voiceofbeth) whose testimony in Parts 2, 4, 7, 8, and 12—and her full story in. Her full testimony is ‘Voices from the Street // Beth: Sober, Employable, and Breaking Every Stereotype‘—helped us challenge stereotypes with lived truth.

This is Part 13 of 13 in the Myths of Homelessness series covering the different Myths. Next Part, Part 14, is the final part putting all of Red’s story together into one post and explaining the reality of what making it out of homelessness actually looks like. Read the complete series here.