Advocates with the Beaches Homeless Coalition are seeking an extension of Duval County services to provide additional resources for the local homeless community.
Ellen Glasser, co-founder of the nonprofit organization, appealed to Jacksonville Beach officials during the Sept. 8 City Council meeting to consider a joint resolution with Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach requesting that homeless services not be limited to the city of Jacksonville.
She previously addressed the Atlantic Beach City Commission at its Aug. 24 meeting and made the same request of Neptune Beach officials during a Sept. 9 special City Council workshop.
The Beaches Homeless Coalition does not receive public funding and partners with several local churches to host cold-night shelters and other events that provide safety and services for members of the homeless community.
“We have a lot of people, many who have been here for years and others who come and go, but it is an issue here at the beach,” Glasser said. “Because we are part of the consolidated county and we pay our property taxes for county services, there are at least four programs that we don’t get anything back from Jacksonville on. This is not a new issue.”
The Beaches have access to regional homeless services and maintain their own relationships with service providers, but several Jacksonville-run homeless-response programs, including the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department’s (JFRD) PATH outreach and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s (JSO) Homeward Bound relocation program, do not extend to the Beaches under the existing interlocal arrangement.
“They stop when they get to the city limits,” Glasser said. “We are not a social services agency, but we so much support Mission House and the work of the Sulzbacher Center. We work closely with our police departments, our city leaders and we are all in this together.”
In a 2025 point-in-time count, Glasser said 277 unsheltered individuals were identified countywide, with 96 located in the Beaches area, although she acknowledged the number could be higher.
“We started counting about three and a half years ago and we have provided overnight housing to over 4,000 people through cold-night shelters, weather events, dinners and other one-night things,” Glasser said.
“A very large percentage of them were counted at the beach. That’s 35%,” she said. “Some of the uptick may be as a result of the ban on public camping, but many of us would contend that the numbers have always been high. They are not going down. They are just hiding better.”
The Jacksonville City Council approved $413,900 in August 2026 to increase shelter capacity through the Sulzbacher Center. The existing Jacksonville-Beaches interlocal agreement does not specifically guarantee the Beaches access to Jacksonville’s homeless outreach programs.
In January 2025, Jacksonville staff confirmed that the JFRD PATH homeless outreach team and the JSO Homeward Bound program did not serve the Beaches the same way they served Jacksonville.
Homeward Bound provides transportation for homeless individuals seeking to return to their home communities, including purchasing a bus ticket to another state when appropriate. Jacksonville statistics show that the program helped 93 people return home since October 2024.
Atlantic Beach officials discussed the issue in January 2025. City officials said they also were not included in the JFRD’s transportation-to-shelter process or Homeward Bound and questioned why an interlocal agreement should be necessary for the JFRD to provide those services in the Beaches.
“We deserve to get some of the funding that goes toward [those programs] at the beaches,” Glasser said. “I would hope that the three beach cities would consider that joint resolution so we can make this more well-known and get some parity.”
The JSO Co-Responder program pairs crisis-trained law enforcement officers with licensed mental health clinicians to respond jointly to calls involving psychiatric crises, substance abuse or emotional distress. The program helps de-escalate challenging situations through the presence of civilian, plainclothes clinicians.
Glasser said the recent attack beneath the Jacksonville Beach Pier highlighted the need for more mental health-related programs to prevent such tragedies before they happen.
“We unfortunately had a tragedy at the pier where a homeless gentleman was stabbed to death,” she said. “The Jacksonville pier is Jacksonville city property, so this is a great opportunity to sort of poke Jacksonville and say, ‘What are you doing to help us?’ It’s only fair.”
Ellen Glasser is also on the Board of Directors for Beaches News, Inc., the nonprofit organization that published the Beach Gazette. Board members do not have input into the content or topics covered by Beach Gazette.
