By Megan Fitzgerald Dunn

Tom Pietrogallo, licensed clinical social worker and CEO of The Poverello Center, has always felt privileged to help the underserved in the community. But lately, he has seen the needs of a particular group grow—the homeless in Wilton Manors.

The Poverello Center provides nutritious food, health services, and basic living essentials to people living with critical and chronic illnesses including HIV in South Florida. Last year the center served 3,493 people throughout Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County.

However, the homeless, who are not traditionally served by the center, are showing up hungry.

“They come and they say, ‘I’m hungry. I need something to eat’ and we’ve never turned them away,” Pietrogallo said. “What’s happening these days is an increasing number of people are coming, but food is not their main problem. They have a diverse set of problems that are quite severe, requiring, in my estimation, intervention and the community is not really responding in a way we would want them to so we’re trying to put together resources here to help with some of their needs.”

Some of this increase in homelessness in Wilton Manors is due to the lingering impacts of the pandemic.

“You know, people lost work. People are on the edge sometimes anyway and then they are knocked a few steps back,” he said. “Some of them were knocked into homelessness and they still haven’t recovered.”

While others are homeless because they have been unable to keep up with increases in the cost of living in South Florida, such as rent, Pietrogallo said that most of the homeless he has seen at the center have severe substance abuse or mental health issues. 

Pietrogallo recognizes that homelessness is a complicated situation.

“It’s a complex issue. It would have been solved a long time ago if it were simple,” he said.

Broward Health has partnered with The Poverello Center to help to aid the homeless who are turning to the center for food and support—donating $85,000 to help purchase healthy foods. Even with the support of Broward Health, Pietrogallo said that, with about 300 homeless people a month turning to them for help, additional support is needed.

Although the partnership has helped, Pietrogallo said that more resources are needed to feed people healthy meals. These resources can include money or the donation of ready-to-eat food, such as healthy natural peanut butter or tuna packed in water.

The Poverello Center is also piloting a medically tailored nutrition program for homeless people with HIV. The program would provide hot meals that are medically tailored to their specific needs. The program also aims to better connect them to resources and care in the community.

“The issues are complex, and I think that the helping system, in some ways, is broken,” Pietrogallo said. “It works for a lot of people. It’s just not working for all homeless people right now. And the people that it’s not working for are the most complex.”

The Poverello Center located in Wilton Manors had over 400 volunteers last year and served 29,029 weeks’ worth of wholesome, healthy foods that program participants selected. For more information on the center visit: https://poverello.org/about-us/values/