SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) – Streets of Paradise spent 18 months raising money for a custom-built shower trailer. The nonprofit organization aimed at helping the homeless unveiled the portable shower station back in June.

During the height of the pandemic, the nonprofit filled a gap for the unsheltered community, providing food and showers as other local services were suspended due to COVID-19.

Now, many of those services are back up and running. After ten successful weeks of ‘shower days’ in the City of Sarasota, Streets of Paradise founder and president Gregory Cruz says the portable shower trailer has been shut down by the city.

“We were told that we were no longer allowed to give showers in the thruway, our shower trailer was not allowed in the streets anymore,” said Cruz. “I was very surprised to get pushback and part of the reason is, the city kind of leaned on us during the entire COVID situation,” he continued.

8 On Your Side reached out to the City of Sarasota for comment Thursday. No one was available to speak with us for an on-camera interview. A city spokesperson sent us this statement.

“The City of Sarasota welcomes and appreciates all community members and organizations willing to help Sarasota’s unsheltered population, and we invite them to join the Continuum of Care and participate in our regional, collaborative effort to address homelessness in our community.
Through this partnership of local governments, faith-based and nonprofit organizations and the philanthropic community working together with our “housing first” approach, Sarasota has drastically reduced homelessness in our community in the past five years and experienced great success helping hundreds of individuals attain permanent housing.
Several services for the unsheltered, including showers and meals, that were initially suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic have now resumed and are available seven days a week from multiple providers in Sarasota. Offering these redundant services without effective case management in the coordinated entry system does not help individuals get on a path to being housed, but rather enables and sustains their homelessness. We have invited Streets of Paradise to work with the City through the permitting process and to collaborate with the community to provide effective services in an appropriate location.“

“Once the world starts opening back up, they call us redundant and now are trying to discredit our work..it hurts but at the same time, it is not surprising,” said Cruz.

Cruz says his nonprofit has furnished around 380 apartments/homes with an 87% success rate of people staying in that housing. He says the portable shower trailer was meant to be a new tool to help keep that rate climbing closer to 100%.

“The dignity that this trailer gives people and makes them feel and the self-esteem that it restores during their brief encounter with taking a shower, getting some laundry done that is why we do it,” said Cruz. “Once someone is cleaned and fed and showered, we then sit down to have that conversation with them…’ what are you doing here, how can we help you, what needs do you have’. Because of this tool, we have been able to push some of those people into the system just because of our relationships with them,” he continued.

The city tells 8 On Your Side Streets of Paradise has not filed any applications for permitting.

“We don’t really fit into that box and the way I feel is, if we apply for that permit, we are admitting that we need that permit and as of right now, we are not trying to run an open air market, we are not trying to host a food truck rally which is what these permits are normally used for.. so at this point, I don’t think we will be pursuing that specific permit,” said Cruz. “I just want to assure our community, our homeless family, our friends, our supporters, our donors that we are not going out without a fight. We are going to do everything within our legal capabilities to hold the city accountable the same way they hold other people in the community accountable,” he said.

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