The biggest daily delivery is to a homeless shelter for adult men and women called "Safe Harbor." The building is an old bus depot turned county jail that Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri converted to a shelter in January 2011, in part to prevent the homeless from being arrested for minor crimes.
"The criminal justice system should not be a dumping ground for a social problem," Gualtieri said. "They can come here, diverted from the jail, and they can get services that will help them break the cycle of homelessness, whether it's anything and everything from mental health services and alcohol and substance abuse to job training and literacy and those things that will help them become a productive members of our community."
While the shelter costs $1.6 million a year to operate, Gualtieri says it actually saves taxpayer money, because it costs $13 per day to keep a person in the shelter, compared to $106 per day in jail, where the annual budget exceeds $100 million.
Gualtieri said one homeless man was arrested 76 times in five years by St. Petersburg police, and served a total of 560 days jail, costing the county $80,000.
Safe Harbor's 400 bunk beds are almost always full - with three cavernous rooms for men and one for women.
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