While other children his age jump dirt bikes off sidewalk curbs and tackle each other playing freeze tag, 10-year-old James squirms in his chair as he listens to the "facility rules" at the local homeless shelter. "Children are to be with their parents at all times," a caseworker tells him during a resident meeting at St. Francis House, the shelter where he and 34 other homeless people find refuge. The 16 children that have resided at St. Francis House this past month shatter the stereotypes of Gainesville`s homeless population, but because of the shelter`s efforts and partnerships they have safety and hope for the future. According to the 2007 Annual Report on Homeless Conditions in Florida, there are about 9,735 homeless children in Florida, making up more than 21 percent of the state`s homeless population. Most people perceive the homeless to be 40-year-old males panhandling on the side of the road, Lee Smith said, the facilities manager at St. Francis House. "It`s survival of the fittest, so you don`t see families and children out there," he said. However, families make up the majority of the residents at St. Francis House, and if it were not for its temporary housing and casework, these children would be in atrocious conditions. "The person I was living with was shooting and selling drugs," a resident mother of four children living at St. Francis House said. "I don`t want my kids exposed to that." Homelessness is a cycle, and so the importance of getting these children out of shelters and into long-term homes cannot be overstated, Gail Monahan said, the executive director of Alachua County Housing Authority. "If you are raised in a pillar to post system as a child," she said, in explanation. "Do you think you will be able to establish yourself as an adult?" Boundaries are impossible for many homeless people, so the cycle must be broken at an early age, Monahan said. This was seen in the aftermath of evacuating Tent City, a homeless encampment near South Main Street. Being unable to handle structure, many of the homeless evacuees given vouchers to stay at St. Francis House left the shelter after only a few days, Lee Smith said. Two remained at the shelter. "If they`re working the program, then it`s a good outlook," Gerry Martello said, the case manager at St. Francis House. Martello recently relocated a family with five boys living at the shelter into a temporary housing unit. Because the children are "dragged with their parents," she wants to make families self-sufficient as soon as possible. Success stories do come and go at St. Francis House, but Martello clarified, "It`s a stressful place." Although many of the children are able to cope with life in the shelter, their childhood seems to lose its sense of play within the chain-linked confines of St. Francis House. "We have a playground outside," Martello said. "But very rarely do the children use it." Erin Leonhardt, a UF junior, has eye-witnessed this often-unrealized truth about child poverty while volunteering at St. Francis House as a front desk assistant. "I think Gainesville residents would be shocked to hear how many homeless children there truly are," she said. "It`s just sad." Throughout the community there are practical ways to work against this poverty, including volunteering, donating, and informing. With the right cooperation, it is more than feasible to end the Gainesville problem of homelessness altogether, Gail Monahan said. "If we could find 1,000 people in this town to help one homeless individual each," Monahan said. "There would be no homeless population." | 
