In 2003, the city of Hollywood wanted us gone from our previous location, causing us to move without a choice. At that time we had no cash and asked you, our fellow supporters, to help us buy a new building. Through your generosity, we were able to raise $400K to purchase a building and an additional $900K was then donated to pay off the mortgage within a few years.
Over the time spent at our present location, we have encountered numerous problems with the nearby communities as well as the city of Hollywood. Now, the year is 2015 and we must once again move for reasons including to meet the needs of the surrounding community and because of the lack of correct services given to us by certain providers.
To prepare for this move, I developed a plan to get the city to help us relocate the main shelter to another place by asking them to buy our main shelter. After I told the city my plan to relocate the main shelter, the city of Hollywood contacted us stating that they no longer wanted any of our properties to be located in the city. They wanted to purchase not just our main shelter but all of our properties and even my own personal house. They have gone, to the extent of exiling me from ever living in the city of Hollywood for the next 30 years, which I don’t think has ever happened before in the history of America.
Nonetheless, in order to keep our organization up and running, I have taken one for the team, giving up my own house and personal rentals. It is very clear that the city of Hollywood does not want the homeless, our organization, nor me in their region anymore. The city has given us $5 million dollars for all of our properties and have ordered us to leave by April 15, 2015.
Despite all of these oppositions, we will continue to assist the homeless.
Concerning our next relocation, we will be going from providing 300 beds in Hollywood to possibly 800 beds in Central Florida. This time our facilities will be a low-income hotel for the poor. The new location won’t be a shelter, instead we will have mini shelters throughout the state and once the person is stabilized they can go to one of our long term hotels. This will allow us to have many free beds wherever we want to. In fact, it will be less stressful for me. Those of you who know me know that most nights I stay at the Hollywood shelter and have lived there for almost 11 years, in which almost half the time I spent sleeping on the floor with Lois. Soon I think I will be able to take care of myself and go from working 7 days a week to 6 days a week and instead of 18 hours a day to maybe 10 hours a day. I can finally work on getting back into shape. I need to or there will be no Sean Cononie to run these places.
We will still have beds in our other building in Broward County and we still will have the Homeless Voice except now it will be statewide. We can never be in Hollywood except I did get the city to budge so that we can do emergency cold weather outreach in their city or if I personally feed a homeless person on the streets- as long as it is not in groups. I would not sign the contract unless they allowed those two exceptions.
After the city pays the Cosac Foundation $3.2 million, I get paid for my personal property that the city made me sell, and I pay the $2 million for the new place, we are left with some funds to help us move. The cost of moving people and starting over is going to be a lot. So this is the time I ask you to, once again, help us raise at least another $500,000. Your support will help keep our medical outreach divisions in Broward and Dade counties open as well as fund us until we establish ourselves in our new location. We need each of you who buy our paper to send in one check. If everyone sent in $75 in the next 60 days this project would be able to run as smooth as possible.
The new place will have the following:
* 125 rooms, making it 5 times bigger than our current building in Hollywood.
* A hot tub and swimming pool for therapy
* Restaurant
* Gym
* A Doctors office
* Medical Outreach Service
* A separate building for a 300 person church
* Our own state-certified sewer system, eliminating the need to buy water & pay for sewer
* Commercial laundry service
* Rec Room
* Classrooms
* Office center with computer laptops
I would like to take the time to thank each and everyone of you for all the donations you have given us over the years to help our shelter system grow, help our Haiti division respond to the earthquake in a timely manner by delivering 70 doctors to Haiti just a few days after the earthquake hit, help our de-worming division in Haiti de-worm kids, and our medical outreach team in South Florida. We are the only agency that hits the streets, taking care of the homeless whether during times of cold weather or just routine medical check ups with a doctor on-board or by video. None of this would be possible without your support over the years. This new place will become a national model where others can learn how to do what we did and we hope it can reach one community at a time in the USA.
Please send your check to:
COSAC Moving Fund
P.O. Box 292-577
Davie Florida 33329