The Tax Burden Accusation

I was living in my van, running delivery gigs to keep gas in the tank and food in my dog’s bowl. One of the most common myths about homelessness is that we’re “tax burdens” who contribute nothing.

I had just paid 7% sales tax on the bottle of water I bought at the gas station. I’d paid excise taxes on the fuel I needed to work. Every delivery fee, every grocery order, every dollar I earned while trying to stay afloat—all of it flowing through a system that taxes consumption, not addresses.

But the myth persists.

This isn’t just my story—it’s the reality for countless unhoused workers in Putnam County. Let me show you the actual ledger.

The Consumption Tax Reality

Florida is one of the few states with no state income tax, which means our state and local budgets rely heavily on sales and excise taxes. This is a system that taxes transactions, not housing status.

• Every Transaction Counts: When an unhoused neighbor buys a bottle of water, a meal, or a pair of socks in Palatka, they pay the same 7% sales tax (6% state + 1% county) as any other resident. There’s no checkbox on the receipt that says “exempt if homeless.”
• Excise Taxes: Those who own a vehicle or purchase fuel are paying heavy excise taxes that go directly toward infrastructure and public works—revenue streams that don’t require a permanent zip code. When I was filling my van’s tank to run deliveries, I was paying for roads just like everyone else. So is every other unhoused person who owns a vehicle and works.
• The “Hidden” Property Tax: Even if someone isn’t a homeowner, if they scrape together enough for a week at a local motel or a spot at a campsite, a portion of that payment goes toward property taxes and the county’s 4% tourist development (“bed”) tax that funds local government services.

The Working Taxpayer

As we established in Part 1 of this series, roughly 40% of unhoused individuals are employed. But even beyond traditional W-2 jobs, gig workers and self-employed people like I was are paying into the system constantly.

• Self-Employment Taxes: When you’re self-employed—running a small business, doing gig work, trying to piece together income—you’re paying self-employment tax at 15.3% on every dollar you earn. I paid it. Every unhoused person doing DoorDash, Instacart, or freelance work pays it. That’s Social Security and Medicare contributions, whether you have an address or not.
• Payroll Deductions: For those working W-2 jobs in kitchens or warehouses in Putnam County, employers are legally required to withhold federal taxes, Social Security, and Medicare from every check.
• The Refund Gap: Many unhoused workers lack a stable address to receive tax documents or the funds for tax prep, so they often overpay by never claiming the refunds they’re owed. They’re overpaying the government while sleeping in their cars. That’s not a burden—that’s being robbed.

The Real Tax Burden: The Cost of Inaction

Here’s what actually costs Putnam County taxpayers money. From an executive perspective, the real “tax burden” isn’t the individual experiencing homelessness—it’s the cost of our current system of crisis management instead of solutions.

The math is stark:

• Keeping someone unhoused costs taxpayers approximately $85 per day
• Providing permanent supportive housing costs approximately $28 per day
• That’s a $57 per day difference—over $20,000 per year in savings per person

Where does that $85 per day come from when we don’t provide housing?

1. Police Response: Approximately $31,000 per year in law enforcement costs ($200-800 per call for “no trespassing,” “loitering,” or welfare checks that cycle the same individuals through the system repeatedly)
2. Emergency Medical Services: Approximately $31,000 per year in EMS transport and hospital visits (Central Florida data)—often for preventable conditions like heat exhaustion, hypothermia, or infected wounds that wouldn’t happen with stable housing
3. Court Processing: Up to $415 per offense for citations and court processing for minor infractions that are essentially “the crime of being homeless”

This is the most expensive possible way to handle homelessness. We’re spending $85 per day per person to keep people in crisis instead of $28 per day to stabilize them.

The Bottom Line

Our unhoused neighbors are consumers, they are often workers, and they are taxpayers. They contribute to the very pot of public funds that—right now—is being spent on expensive crisis management instead of the permanent housing and support services that would actually save money.

I paid taxes while living in my van. I paid sales tax, fuel tax, and self-employment tax. I was contributing to a system that had no room for me, while that same system spent $85 per day managing my homelessness instead of $28 per day solving it.

I’m not unique. This is the reality for working unhoused people across Putnam County.

We don’t have a “lack of contribution” problem in Putnam County. We have an allocation problem. We’re spending taxpayer money in the most wasteful way possible.

Get Involved:

The Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition is advocating for the investments that actually save taxpayers money while treating people with dignity and helping them get back on their feet.

• 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.

The Cruelest Myth

I’ve heard people say that “people choose to be homeless.” Let me explain what that “choice” actually looked like for me, as someone with lived experience of homelessness, and for many others who’ve shared their similar stories with our coalition.

I lost my wife to cancer. The grief locked me away—clinically depressed, unable to leave the house for anything beyond survival. I crashed my business not through laziness but through paralysis: I could handle repeat customers who already knew me, but every new phone call felt insurmountable. I moved friends in who had nowhere else to go, hoping they’d help me stay afloat. Instead, on a single day while I was out working, I came home to find I’d been robbed and my property destroyed. That was day one of living in my van with my dog.

As we discussed in Myth Part 1, 40% of unhoused people are employed. So the question isn’t ‘Why don’t they just get a job?’—it’s ‘Why does having a job still leave them homeless?’ The answer: Because when you’re fighting depression while living in a van, even having work doesn’t create the stability you need to escape.

That’s not a “choice.” That’s a cascade of loss that moves faster than any human can recover from.

And yet people still ask “Why don’t you just try harder?” As if depression, grief, and systemic barriers could be overcome through sheer willpower. As if the problem was my work ethic, not the fact that I’d lost everything in a matter of weeks. I was trying—every single day. I was running delivery gigs while living in my van. I was trying to rebuild my business from a parking lot. But “trying harder” doesn’t create affordable housing. It doesn’t erase grief. It doesn’t fix a broken system. The bootstrap mentality assumes everyone starts with boots—and a stable place to put them on.

The myth that people “choose” homelessness suggests that living in a tent in the Florida humidity, facing constant threat of theft, losing access to basic rights like voting (no address for registration) or even standing in a public park without being told to move along, is somehow a “preferable” lifestyle. What people mistake for “choice” is actually the absence of viable exits.

Beth, who shares her experience as @voiceofbeth on Instagram, made what looked like a “choice” to become homeless: “I was leaving a bad situation and I thought that homelessness would be better for my mental health, and it is.” But that’s not choosing homelessness as a preference—that’s choosing homelessness as the least bad option when you’re fleeing danger. When the alternative is staying in an abusive situation, living in your car or a tent isn’t a “lifestyle choice”—it’s survival.

The “Service-Resistant” Fallacy

In Putnam County, we often hear that people are “service-resistant”—that they “refuse help.” But we need to ask: What is the actual quality of the “help” being offered?

• The Vanishing Safety Net: Palatka’s only overnight shelter closed in November 2025 due to city zoning and code violations at its church-based location, leaving dozens without any local alternative. The “choice” for many wasn’t between a bed and a tent; it was between a tent, the back of a car, or a jail cell. There was no “right” option—and no replacement overnight facility has opened since.
• The Impossible Rules: With our local shelter gone, the nearest alternatives often require: no pets, mandatory religious services, or a 30-day substance-free verification. For someone with an untreated mental health crisis or someone whose only companion is the dog that’s kept them safe and gives them purpose to keep living, “refusing help” isn’t about wanting to be homeless—it’s about refusing to surrender the last shred of stability or dignity you have left. When your choice is between a shelter bed and abandoning the dog that watched over you in that van on your first night homeless, what would you choose?
• The Bureaucratic Maze: I remember sitting in a library trying to fill out a housing application while simultaneously calculating whether I had enough gas to make it to the free meal site and back to where I was sleeping. My brain kept choosing the gas calculation. Every. Single. Time. That’s not laziness—that’s survival mode.

The Neuroscience of Survival

When you’re unhoused, your brain shifts into what researchers call “Survival Mode.” Your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain used for long-term planning, budgeting, and career moves—effectively shuts down to prioritize immediate safety.

• Decision Fatigue: When every ounce of energy is spent finding water, avoiding the police, and keeping your gear dry, you don’t have the bandwidth to navigate complex social service systems that take months to yield results. You can’t “plan your way out” when your brain is wired for “survive today.”
• The “I’m Fine” Defense: After being turned away enough times—wrong zip code, missed a deadline, didn’t have the right paperwork—it becomes psychologically easier to say “I prefer it out here” than to keep admitting the system has no space for you. The “choice” becomes a defense mechanism against the repeated trauma of rejection.

The Operational Reality

In Putnam County, poverty affects about 20.7% of residents (per recent Census estimates), and unemployment hovered around 5.7% in late 2025 (higher than Florida’s statewide average). Statewide, Florida faces a massive affordable housing shortage, with only 26 rental homes affordable and available for every 100 extremely low-income households, and a need for over 411,000 more such units. When the “exit ramp” out of homelessness requires a $3,000+ down payment (first month, last month, and security deposit) plus a 650+ credit score, the path out is effectively blocked for someone making minimum wage—especially someone whose credit was destroyed during the crisis that made them homeless in the first place.

Staying on the street isn’t a choice; it’s a consequence of a market where the bottom rungs of the ladder have been removed entirely.

Break the Stigma:

The Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition is building the exit ramps that don’t currently exist. We advocate for Housing First solutions and programs that meet people where they are, rather than demanding they solve their own crisis before they deserve help.

• 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.

Guest Voice: Beth shares her experience of homelessness across multiple states on Threads and Instagram as @voiceofbeth. Her full testimony is ‘Voices from the Street // Beth: Sober, Employable, and Breaking Every Stereotype‘

The Boardroom vs. The Street

As someone who spent years as a VP of Operations and running my own service businesses, I’ve seen the world through the lens of spreadsheets, P&L statements, and hiring cycles.

But as someone who was homeless myself before co-founding the Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition, I’ve also seen the world from the pavement—right here in rural Putnam County, Florida, a place where poverty affects 23.9% of residents and the unemployment rate sits at 6.3%—higher than Florida’s statewide average of 4.2%. I’ve walked those streets myself during tough times, experiencing firsthand the exhaustion of trying to hold down work while sleeping in a vehicle or tent, constantly worrying about where my next meal or shower would come from. That lived experience drives every bit of our coalition’s work.

The most common “solution” I hear from well-intentioned people is simple: “They just need to get a job.” It’s logical, but it collapses under scrutiny. Here’s why that “simple” solution is a logistical nightmare, especially in a place like Putnam.

The Logistics of the Impossible

In the professional world, we talk about “barriers to entry.” For our unhoused neighbors in Putnam, those barriers are often insurmountable without a front door:

• The Paperwork Trap: Federal law (I-9 requirements) requires valid ID and social security cards to start a job. If your bag is stolen during a camp sweep—as happened to dozens when Palatka’s only overnight shelter closed last fall—you’re effectively “un-hireable” until you spend weeks navigating a bureaucratic maze to replace them, with no money, no transportation, and limited resources in our spread-out rural county.
• The Address Filter: Most HR software automatically flags applications without a physical residential address. Before a hiring manager even sees your skills, the system has already discarded you. In rural Putnam County, where over 40% of renter households are cost-burdened—spending more than 40% of their income on housing—finding stable housing becomes nearly impossible without steady employment, creating an impossible catch-22.
• The Hygiene Hurdle: Try staying “office ready” or even “manual labor ready” when you have no place to shower, iron a shirt, or even store your work boots safely overnight. With public facilities scarce and transportation limited, basic upkeep becomes a daily battle.

The Invisible Workforce: The “Double Life”

Here is the reality that many people miss: Many of our homeless neighbors in Putnam County already have jobs. They are the “Invisible Workforce”—the person stocking the shelves at 3 AM or the prep cook making your lunch. In fact, national trends show up to 40% of unhoused individuals are employed, and local anecdotes from our coalition partners confirm this pattern here. Because of the stigma I’ve seen firsthand in the business world—and felt myself when I was in their shoes—they live a high-stakes double life:

• The Silence: They don’t talk about their “weekend” because their weekend was spent moving their car every few hours to avoid a trespass notice—or relocating after the recent shelter shutdown left dozens without options.
• The Hygiene Hustle: They use gym memberships or gas station sinks to stay professional because they know the moment a boss finds out they are unhoused, they become a “liability” in the eyes of HR.
• The Constant Friction: There is nothing less “operationally efficient” than a human being forced to spend 40% of their mental energy just pretending they have a home to go back to, all while navigating Putnam’s limited public transit and rural isolation.

The Bottom Line

Employment is a tool, but a tool is useless if you have nowhere to store it and no foundation to stand on while using it. We have people working 40 hours a week in our county who still cannot save enough for a security deposit and first month’s rent—especially with market-rate rents averaging around $1,500 monthly (even HUD’s “fair market rent” for a two-bedroom is $996), far outpacing wages in our service-heavy economy. Add in that 28% of children here live in poverty, and the cycle deepens.

We need to stop telling people to “get to work” and start building the infrastructure that makes keeping a job possible. Housing First isn’t a handout; it’s the only logical starting point for a stable workforce—particularly after events like the Palatka shelter closure highlight how fragile our local support systems are.

Get Involved:

The Putnam County Homelessness Solutions Coalition is working to remove these barriers—from ID recovery to hygiene resources and advocating for permanent shelters.

Help us build a stronger, more stable community.

• Support our mission
• Join our Facebook Group and Like/Follow our Facebook Page
• Share this post to help break the stigma.

Follow this series: Over the coming weeks, we’ll debunk more myths—from “they choose to live this way” to “it’s too expensive to fix.” Each post draws from lived experience and local data to challenge the narrative around homelessness in Putnam County.