Jeanne Moeller is a board member with the Homeless Coalition of St. Johns County and has been deeply involved with the nonprofit organization since 2012. She is proud of all the homes they have provided for families in need over the years and asks for the community’s continued help in their initiatives moving forward.
Tell us a little about yourself and your background.
I was born and raised in Pennsylvania and came down here to Florida in the summer of 1969 to visit my favorite aunt in St. Augustine, and my husband and I have been married 50 years.
In 2004, I ran for Mosquito Control Board after I got breast cancer and thought about what kind of chemicals are being used in the pesticides and maybe I should take a closer look into that.
I lost my first attempt, but then ran again and won in 2008.
How did you get involved with the Homeless Coalition of St. Johns County?
In 2012, the Lead Agency was looking for an elected official to be on their Homeless Coalition board and I raised my hand and said that I would be willing to help.
I had two younger brothers, one was a substance abuser, and he would get straight for about nine months and then would dissapear for months at a time, while my youngest brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
They asked me and I’ve been on the board ever since.
What are some of the changes that you have seen on the board?
They were working on getting two houses when I got on the board and have since acquired two other houses that have liens on them.
We also purchased the old African-American school building on McLaughlin Street and that houses 25. Many of the people there are veterans and some are just too disabled to work.
However, the healthier ones have to get a job or be activily looking for one, and we have two case managers that help them with that process.
What are some of the ways the Homeless Coalition strives to help?
The houses come with everything they would need from furniture to a toothbrush and toothpaste, because a lot of them really come with nothing.
We’ll help them with constructing resumes to get a job within 30 days and we require that if they have children, they be enrolled at school or in daycare, and we help with all of that.
We have seen this approach be very successful, as we have one tenant who is qualified to buy their own house and two other families that are on their way to reaching that point.
Most of our families come from the Betty Griffin Center or St. Francis House and when we have the space available, we’ll open it up to Care Connect and take families directly off the street.
We have an 85% success rate to get our families into permanent housing.
What are some of the Homeless Coalition’s future goals?
We are trying to raise $350,000 because we need to build a new office space because the one we’re using currently could be used as another house.
Our goal is to turn the current administration home into a children’s center. At the last count we had 48 children on our campuses.
We are in the permitting stage right now.
Homeless families are growing because the rents are so high. We just had eight families at the end of June call us because they can no longer afford to pay their rent or mortgage.
It’s hard even if they want to qualify for Habitat for Humanity housing because they used to do their own mortgaging, but they don’t do that anymore and you must have a credit rating of 640 and also make a minimum of $18 an hour, which our families just don’t make that.
What are ways the community can get involved?
All of our houses are more than 100 years old, and they were originally built by the Florida East Coast Railroad to house the families of those who worked for them.
They are all up to code, but it really does take a lot to keep up with the maintenance, which is why we are always looking for volunteers.
We have a lot of volunteers with churches doing service days.
We are also going to be starting a fundraising campaign where we will be hoping to get 1,000 people to donate $1,000 each and that will go toward our children’s center project.
There’s lots of money in St. Johns County, where we can really make a difference in a person’s life.
Items that are always in need of being donated include personal hygiene items, canned and dehydrated foods, preferably canned items with pop-top lids, and paper products.
Mentors for the children in our homes are also important, as we have students from Flagler College that come on a regular basis and offer tutoring for the children.
