Local

Daytona Beach will have a ‘1st-class' homeless shelter, official says; residents skeptical

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Lacking a proper shelter, homeless people in Daytona Beach are making do with a faucet and a couple of toilets in a “safe zone” set up by the city.

The hope is that will not be the case for very much longer, Daytona Beach community relations manager the Rev. Ronald Durham said.

“In the end, I believe we will have a first-class facility here in our city,” he said.

The city has been approved to establish a nonprofit organization to run a shelter, but no official plans for the facility have been released.

In 2015, Volusia County offered Daytona Beach land and $4 million to establish a shelter, but progress continued to move slowly and residents grew frustrated.

Getting the different governmental organizations on the same page has been part of the reason the city’s homeless shelter plan has been slogging along, Durham said.

“Whenever you are talking about government, you’re talking about a little bit of bureaucracy that you’re going to face,” he said.

The city still needs to get federal approval to establish the shelter as a nonprofit organization, but officials believe it will be granted by the end of the year.

The city has not said what the next step will be for the proposed homeless shelter once federal nonprofit approval is granted.