TAMPA - The discovery of long-lost family and the promise of a roof over his head couldn't keep Robert Tyson from being homeless.

"My daughter tried," Tyson said last month from inside the Falkenburg Road Jail. "But my head is hard."

A year ago, he sat on the front porch of an abandoned Tampa Heights house and talked about being homeless, about needing more help. He wore a fresh hospital band on his wrist. His breath smelled of beer.

His picture in The Tampa Tribune caught the eye of Sheritta Flowers, a Riverview wife and mother of three girls. Tyson is her father, and she hadn't seen him in 11 years.

The family reunited a week later.

But Tyson didn't feel right about living with his family or letting them pay for his apartment. The 63-year-old former truck driver returned to the street and landed in and out of jail.

He spent the past five months locked up for trespassing. It gave him time to think -- and sober up. He called his daughter.

"I told her, 'This time, you don't have to worry,' " Tyson recalled. " 'Just come and get me.' "

He planned to call her again Oct. 10, the day of his release. Flowers didn't hear from him.

"I don't even know where he is," she said the next day.

As of last week, Flowers and her family still couldn't find her father. They knew where he wasn't, though. Back in jail.

Tyson is representative of a number of Hillsborough County inmates who are homeless. They're often jailed for such offenses as public urination, trespassing or panhandling. Sometimes the arrest is for failing to pay court fines.

Jail officials don't track homeless inmates separately. A tally by the Hillsborough County Public Defender's Office found that between July 1, 2004, and May 31, 290 inmates had an "at-large" address, which may denote homelessness. Most were repeat offenders, accounting for about 1,000 jail bookings.

The public defender's office represents such inmates and other indigent clients for about $200 per case, paid for by Hillsborough County and Tampa. Public Defender Julianne Holt met recently with city officials to offer an alternative.

Holt wants to use the money the city and county spends for such representation -- about $300,000 a year -- to hire social service workers to help homeless or mentally ill people receive treatment or other aid instead of being jailed.

"If we can figure out the first time people get arrested what their problem is, maybe we can keep them from coming back," said John Skye, spokesman for the public defender's office.

Other Services Available

Social workers could refer clients to the county's Benefit Bank, which lists available shelters and procedures to acquire food stamps, mental health and medical care and other services.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and Tampa Police Department support reducing the number of homeless inmates in jail.

"The real point of this endeavor is to try to identify the chronic, minor offenders," police Chief Steve Hogue said.

Arresting them time after time is a nuisance, but officers must uphold the law, Hogue said.

Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jose Docobo agreed.

"We certainly feel there's a problem that needs to be addressed," he said.

But the department has yet to determine what the savings would be and whether that would offset any added expense, Docobo said.

Diverting Pinellas Homeless

Pinellas County diverts homeless people from jail with a partnership between its sheriff's office and public defender's office. The program began as an experiment about a year and a half ago with a volunteer group of mental health professionals.

"We kept hundreds and hundreds out of jail," Pinellas County Public Defender Bob Dillinger said, although no official numbers were available.

That success prompted the sheriff's office to provide Dillinger with a $125,000 grant in June to continue the work.

"We hired a lawyer and a diversion specialist who is multilingual," Dillinger said.

The workers go to homeless shelters with a laptop computer and look up outstanding warrants. If a homeless person agrees in writing to perform community service at the shelter, and the shelter approves, the warrant is dissolved. The homeless person stays out of jail.

From June to September, the program reached 463 people, said Stacy McNally, the lawyer overseeing the program. Forty warrants were withdrawn, 213 people were diverted from jail and an additional 210 were referred to other programs or civil lawyers, she said.

Dillinger's office also hopes to sway Pinellas law enforcement agencies to issue notices to appear in court rather than arrest homeless people for minor offenses.

If a notice is given, the homeless person can be guided to community service or a health evaluation before the court date and avoid a fine or jail time, Dillinger said. Not so with an arrest.

Docobo said one of the problems with issuing notices to appear in court is that a person must have a residence, according to the state's legal guidelines.

"Although they've committed a relatively minor offense, we've had no choice but to take them in," he said.

It costs Hillsborough County, and ultimately taxpayers, about $61 a day to house each inmate, Hillsborough sheriff's Col. David Parrish said.

Tyson's latest jail stay, from May 15 to Oct. 10, his fifth arrest since November 2004, cost the county $9,041.32.

Previous arrests were for having an open container and trespassing. Tyson spent 81 days jailed at a cost of $4,948.29 for those offenses.

"The jail's the place of last resort for all society's ills," Parrish said. "We're the biggest mental health provider in Hillsborough."

Tyson said he has never been diagnosed with a mental or physical disability, although he said he has arthritis in his right shoulder that keeps him from work. He said he doesn't do drugs but described himself as an alcoholic.

"I've been homeless so long because I wanted to," he said.

Keeping a homeless person in jail does force sobriety and health care, Parrish said, but it doesn't provide a person with future housing or a job.

"If you can break the cycle with some," he said, "maybe you can get them off the street."

ABOUT THE SERIES

Today, after more than a year of meetings, the Tampa-Hillsborough Citizens Task Force on Homelessness is expected to release its recommendations for how to serve an increasing homeless population that advocates fear will grow with hurricane evacuees.

In this final installment of Solutions for the Homeless, we focus on the jailing of homeless people.

Since The Tampa Tribune began the series last year, Hillsborough County's homeless population has grown 36 percent, reaching 11,023 at last count.

A LOOK BACK

2004

March 18: The Salvation Army ends free evening meals, citing an annual loss of $200,000.

March 21: Three members of Food Not Bombs are charged with trespassing while sharing food with the homeless in Massey Park. Two others are arrested later.

May 5: The city drops the trespassing charges and agrees to revisit the ban on feedings.

May 19: Hillsborough County commissioners refuse to form a task force on homelessness. The Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County will create the task force with county and city representatives.

Sept. 22: The first task force meeting is held at TECO Energy Inc. headquarters. Among the officials and leaders is Sherrill Hudson, TECO's chairman and chief executive officer, who helped pursue funding for Miami's homeless programs.

Oct. 26: Former Broward County Administrator Jack Osterhold tells the task force about Broward's tax for programs for the needy.

November: Mayor Pam Iorio's special assistant, Fran Davin, and Rayme Nuckles, of the homeless coalition, tour Broward's major homeless program, which provides 200 shelter beds.

Nov. 15: The task force names Christine Burdick, of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, and Anthony Borrell Jr., of Borrell Electric Co., to seek ways to fund a $6 million to $7 million, 200-bed Homeless Emergency Lodging Program.

2005

June: The task force hires a consultant to put together recommendations from its yearlong study on homelessness. The move delays a planned presentation to city and county officials in July.

Sept. 20: Recommendations to help the homeless are revealed, but there is no plan to pay for the added services, which include more housing. Iorio points to existing money in the county budget; the county says it's already spending more than $1 million this fiscal year to help the homeless.

Today: Task force expects to release plan to create affordable housing, one-stop help centers and other programs for homeless and needy.