Okaloosa County Commissioners voted unanimously on June 16 to declare panhandling, vagrancy and a range of related community issues a matter of urgent public importance and to create a task force charged with studying the problem and recommending action.

• The agenda item, brought by Deputy County Administrator Craig Coffey and sponsored by Chairman Trey Goodwin, identified a list of concerns affecting residents countywide. According to the staff document, those include panhandling and vagrancy, traffic safety, people sleeping on the side of the road, littering, illegal camps and squatting, drug use, theft, breaking and entering, and other crime. 

The document states these issues affect quality of life and property values and add costs to taxpayers through law enforcement, emergency medical services, the judiciary and the correctional system.

The three-part item asked the board to declare the issues a countywide priority, agree the county should take a leadership role, and authorize the creation of a task force. The staff document notes that none of the three actions commits funding, adds ordinances or fees, or obligates the county to any specific solution. All three passed in a single motion.

As approved, the task force will have 11 members. Each commissioner will make two appointments, which can include themselves, and Commissioner Paul Mixon will serve as chair. The body will operate under Florida’s Sunshine Law.

Goodwin said the discussion is not about ending homelessness or targeting any individual.

• “This is not an indictment of our nonprofits, our churches, our community stakeholders,” Goodwin said. “It’s clear that those entities have a desire to do the right thing to help provide relief for those in need.”

He said the task force should focus on people he described as abusing the system rather than those genuinely seeking help, and said constituents have told him the level of panhandling and vagrancy in the county is not what they expect.

Goodwin also said the issue has affected local military installations. He said illegal camps have appeared on base property and that local commanders have raised the matter as a mission impact concern.

The agenda document notes that some parts of the county and nearby areas appear to experience these issues at lower levels, including the 30A corridor, the Niceville and Valparaiso area, and Laurel Hill. It poses questions about what factors may account for those differences, including geography, available shelter locations, transient services and the presence of locations conducive to panhandling.

The document also references existing city-level efforts. Fort Walton Beach has cracked down on panhandling and recently enforced electrical usage at its parks. Destin has addressed private property owners who allow nuisance activities to occur on their property.

Mixon drew a distinction between three terms used during the discussion.

• “Homelessness is not vagrancy, and vagrancy is not panhandling necessarily,” Mixon said. “So there’s big differences in that.”

Mixon pointed to existing county efforts to address housing instability, including a first-time homeowner program and a rental pipeline managed in coordination with the Affordable Housing Advisory Council. He said the task force should include voices from existing service providers such as Bridgeway and from local law enforcement. He referenced Major David Allen with the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Office as a potential participant.

Mixon shared an incident he witnessed at a local restaurant where a man panhandling outside the establishment was asked by the manager to leave before law enforcement arrived. Mixon said he watched the man walk to a vehicle in an adjacent parking lot, remove the trench coat he had been wearing over his work attire, and place the coat in a bag in the trunk so it would not dirty his vehicle, which Mixon described as two to three years old. Mixon said the man told him he made more money during a lunch hour panhandling than in a full day at his job.

Commissioner Drew Palmer said he had participated in a campsite cleanup through Keep Okaloosa Beautiful and described the conditions as something “you would never wish on anybody.”

• “This is both a humane thing, and it’s also a, ‘we recognize there’s a problem,'” Palmer said. “We recognize that things are maybe worse than what we’ve seen in the past, and we’d like a shot at trying to address it.”

Commissioner Sherri Cox said she planned to serve on the task force and raised concerns about ensuring people in need are connected to existing resources. She specifically referenced One Hopeful Place, a nonprofit that provides workforce redevelopment services for people experiencing homelessness.

“My underlying concern is that we get people to the resources that help them the most,” Cox said. She said she wanted to better understand how enforcement-driven approaches would rehabilitate people and that she hoped affected municipalities would also serve on the task force.

Goodwin said his expectation is that the task force will deliver concrete recommendations rather than open-ended discussion.

“I want a task force. I want action items,” Goodwin said. “Bring us something back. Here’s what you’re doing right. Here’s what you’re doing wrong. Here’s where you can better spend your money. Here are some things you can adopt. Here are some people you can partner with or contract with.”

Commissioner Carolyn Ketchel was absent from the meeting.

Staff is expected to bring an outline of the task force structure back to the board at a future meeting. Commissioners will begin identifying potential appointees in the meantime.