A downtown Vero Beach, Florida park that critics called a “tarnished jewel” due to problems with the area’s homeless population is in the first step of its recovery.
Residents were avoiding the park, due to the large number of homeless folks who were using it. The city even removed the public benches to make the park less appealing to the homeless, but that made it less appealing to everyone else, too.
Then, The Source, a local non-profit organization, had the brilliant idea of paying those same homeless folks to refurbish the park, with funding from local employer Piper Aircraft.