New dashboard will track shelter beds available to Pensacola's homeless population

Escambia County has partnered with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office and state Rep. Michelle Salzman's office to create an online homelessness shelter dashboard.

Salzman is calling on shelter providers that receive government funding to provide data for the dashboard.

Similar to the county's Emergency Medical Services Dashboard, the webpage is designed to give the public and first responders a real-time look at the services available for people facing homelessness, with the topline number tracking the amount of shelter space currently available in the community.

Speaking to the Mental Health Task Force of Northwest Florida on Thursday, Salzman announced the creation of the dashboard and urged local service providers to participate in providing the county with daily data.

"How do we even take care of these people if we don't know where to send them?" Salzman said.

Ronnie Rivera, ECSO community relations neighborhood specialist, said the idea for a dashboard came about almost a year ago when Sheriff Chip Simmons asked him how many homeless shelter beds were available in the community and he realized that wasn't readily available information.

"He said, 'Let's figure out a way to make this happen,'" Rivera said.

Rivera said the issue languished for a few months as they couldn't find organizations willing to put together the data.

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Rivera said the issue came to head last month when he was sent out on a call to help a single mother and three children who were camping in a public park and he didn't know where they could get help that day.

When he told Simmons about the problem, Simmons brought together Escambia County Administrator Wes Moreno and Salzman, who committed to getting a dashboard released. Moreno said the county could create and host the dashboard.

Two weeks later, the county IT Director Bart Siders had a working prototype that was unveiled Thursday at the Mental Health Task Force's meeting.

Salzman credited Moreno and the county with being able to put together the technology to launch a dashboard so quickly.

Once the county starts receiving data from shelter providers, it will be available on the county's website.

"The Sheriff's Office (and Pensacola Police Department), we're not going to arrest our way out of homeless issues in Escambia County," Rivera said. "We're not going to go fill up our jails with people that are having life sustaining events, eating, resting on public parks. We can't do that, but what we can do is we can provide them some services."

Salzman said that organizations receiving public money should be willing to share their data.

"If you can take public dollars to service the public, the least that you can do is tell the public what you're doing," Salzman said. "The least you can do is tell us you have 10 beds available or zero beds available."

Salzman said the data will also be used to inform the Mental Health Task Force's strategic plan for future goals of the task force.

Salzman said they are not asking any organization to do anything but provide data within the next two weeks. However, she warned that if an organization doesn't want to provide the data, it may jeopardize its public funding.

"We're going to have to make sure that those facilities that are providing homeless care, if they want to continue to get the funding from the government agencies, they are going to have to submit their data," Salzman said.

Rivera said the dashboard will be a tool for both law enforcement to practice "relationship policing" and the public to find the best information on where services are available that day.

"I think it is going to be a great tool for us, but that's all it really is," Rivera said. "It's just a tool."

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia County homelessness shelter dashboard set to launch