DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Robert Marbut hadn't shaved, and he looked terrible. His bushy brown hair, normally parted neatly, stuck out at odd angles. His clothes stank of beer. Standing in line for lunch at the Halifax Urban Ministries building downtown last spring, Marbut looked much like the hundreds of homeless people who assemble there daily for a free hot meal.
"He just blended right in with the homeless in line," said Michael Pastore, 60, a local activist who works with the homeless. "He was disheveled and had his hair messed up and was wearing dirty clothes, but I recognized him."
The difference between Marbut and the others was that he was a welcome guest in the city. Daytona Beach has been trying to rid its streets of homeless people for years. Finding the problem insurmountable, however, the Daytona Beach City Commission decided last year to bring in an expert. They're paying Marbut six figures to investigate the city’s homelessness problem and devise a solution.
Pastore tried to talk to him, but Marbut, 54, persuaded him not to blow his carefully crafted cover. As his first order of business, Marbut had created this disguise -- including the beer-soaked clothes and a pack of 305 cigarettes, despite the fact that he doesn't smoke or drink -- so he could embed with Daytona’s homeless people in order to understand their struggle to survive, if only for a few days.
On a Wednesday evening in October, Marbut presented his findings to an eager Daytona Beach City Commission. Clean-shaven and dressed in a dark suit, he stood at a lectern facing the commissioners, his back to an overflow crowd of more than 100 concerned citizens, local business owners and a handful of homeless people.
There are 41,542 homeless people in Florida, the third-highest number out of all states in the country. The state has the third-highest unsheltered population as well, with more than half of its homeless on the streets at night. There are more than 1,000 homeless people in Daytona Beach and the surrounding Volusia County alone, according to the most recently available official estimate.
"It is weather that brings people to our community here," Marbut told the commission. "Where your palm trees are, your golf courses, your beaches are is where your homeless people are, just throughout Florida. You will always have an inflow."
Daytona Beach can’t do anything about its balmy temperatures, of course, but there was one approach it could take. Over the past decade, national homelessness experts have come to a consensus about how to end homelessness: by giving the homeless homes. The approach, called Housing First, has been thoroughly vetted through independent studies.
Continue reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/robert-marbut_n_6738948.html
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