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Scattering the Homeless, But Not Helping Them    [

    In Orlando, a Law Against Feeding Homeless - and Debate Over Samaritans' Rights
    The Associated Press

    Saturday 03 February 2007

    Orlando, Florida - At Lake Eola park, there is much beauty to behold: robust palms, beds of cheery begonias, a cascading lake fountain, clusters of friendly egrets and swans, an amphitheater named in honor of Walt Disney.

    Then there are the signs.

    DO NOT LIE OR OTHERWISE BE IN A HORIZONTAL POSITION ON A PARK BENCH ... DO NOT SLEEP OR REMAIN IN ANY BUSHES, SHRUBS OR FOLIAGE ... per city code sec. 18A.09 (a) and (o).

    Visit the park's restrooms, and you'll find this sign on the wall above the hand dryers:

    BATHING AND/OR SHAVING IN RESTROOM IS PROHIBITED ... per city code 18A.09 (p) ... LAUNDERING CLOTHES IN LAKE EOLA PARK IS NOT PERMITTED.

    Since joggers and dog walkers tend not to snooze in flower beds, and because employees at the glittering office towers around Lake Eola don't scrub laundry in park sinks, it's clear, says Monique Vargas, at whom the notices are targeted.

    "They're talking to us, to the homeless," says Vargas, 28, who says she has lived on the streets, in parks or under overpasses, since age 16. "It's a way of saying, 'Your kind isn't wanted in our city.'"

    Orlando, population 200,000, works hard to conjure the image of a true-life Pleasantville. But its spotless sidewalks and twinkling skyline belie a real city with real maladies - most notably, a surging homeless population that authorities are struggling to control.

    After a law that banned panhandling was struck down by the courts, the city tried to discourage aggressive beggars by obliging them to carry ID cards, and later by confining them to 3-by-15-foot (90-centimeter-by-4.6-meter) "panhandling zones" painted in blue on sidewalks downtown.

    Despite these laws, the number of people living on the streets of the metro area swelled, from roughly 5,000 in 1999 to an estimated 8,500 today, dwarfing the city's shelter capacity for 2,000 people.

    So in July, the city commission tried a "supply-side" approach: It passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups of people in Orlando's downtown parks.

    Those who wished to feed more than 25 hungry individuals at parks within a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) radius of City Hall could do so, but only if they obtained a "Large Group Feeding Permit" from the parks department - and no one would be granted more than two feeding permits a year.

    For the first time anyone in Orlando could remember, not only would panhandlers find themselves in the crosshairs of the law, but so would those trying to help them.

    A week before Orlando's ordinance took effect, Las Vegas criminalized giving food to even a single transient in any city park.

    In August, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the Las Vegas ban, saying it violated constitutional protections of free speech, right to assembly and right to practice one's religion. A federal court in Nevada has prohibited the city from enforcing the ordinance until a final ruling is issued.

    Advocates for the homeless feared it wouldn't be long before other cities passed similar laws.

    Already, the cities of Dallas, Fort Myers, Florida, Gainesville, Florida, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Atlanta have laws restricting or outright prohibiting the feeding of the homeless. In Fairfax County, Virginia, homemade meals and meals made in church kitchens may not be distributed to the homeless unless first approved by the county.

    "We've seen cities going beyond punishing homeless people to punishing those trying to help them, even though it's clear that not enough resources are being dedicated to helping the homeless or the hungry," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, a non-profit in Washington, D.C.

    A 2006 report on 67 cities by her group and the National Coalition for the Homeless, a nonpartisan, non-profit network, found an 18 percent increase since 2002 in laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling; a 12 percent jump in laws outlawing "passive" begging; a 14 percent rise in laws defining sitting or lying in public places as criminal acts.

    Says Michael Stoops, the coalition's executive director in Washington, D.C.: "The idea is to drive the visible homeless out of downtown America, so that cities can attract developers, big money."

    What's wrong with attracting investment?

    Nothing, Stoops says - unless it comes at the expense of decency. "It's a sorry state of affairs when you can feed the squirrels, the doves and pigeons at Lake Eola, but not a hungry guy down on his luck."

    On streets around Lake Eola, where drug dealers and prostitutes once roamed, residential towers like "The Paramount" and "The Metropolitan at Lake Eola" are now rising. In addition, the city is finalizing plans to renovate the downtown Citrus Bowl and build a new performing arts center and arena by 2011 - at a cost of $1 billion ([ 770 million).

    Homelessness, in the view of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and members of his staff, adversely affects public safety and economic development, and therefore must be addressed.

    "It's a balancing act," says Brie Turek, Dyer's spokesperson. "We need to balance the needs of our citizens and our businesses with the needs of the homeless."

    The large feedings were unbalancing constituents who lived near the parks, she says.

    "We were receiving dozens of complaints about individuals sleeping in people's bushes, urinating on private properties. Some citizens reported finding homeless people doing drugs in their stairwells. There were reports of carjackings. There was even a stabbing."

    Alana Brenner, a city clerk who serves as the mayor's point person on the homeless problem, says the city has set up "an alternative location near downtown," where "feedings can take place any day, any hour."

    The locale Brenner refers to is roughly a 15-minute walk from City Hall, a sweep of blacktop where charities fed groups of destitute men and women several years ago.

    Jacqueline Dowd, a lawyer with the ACLU, which has also sued to overturn Orlando's feeding ordinance, says the neighborhood is unsafe. "I've documented five cases of homeless people being beaten around there in the past year."

    One was August Felix, 54, who was found on March 26, severely beaten and lying motionless on a sidewalk one block from the designated feeding site. He died in the hospital a month later from the head injuries, police say. Five boys, aged 15 and 16, were arrested on second-degree murder charges.

    Permanent housing for those with very low incomes is also in short supply, despite Orlando's decade-long residential building boom. Says Brent Trotter, president of the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida: "What's being built today, the average family in the service industry can't afford."

    In December, Orlando sponsored "Project Homeless Connect," an outreach program that placed 22 individuals in apartments. And last fall, the city earmarked $860,000 ([ 660,500) to refurbish 299 apartments for low-income families and homeless people. It plans to spend $329,258 ([ 252,886) more this year to renovate the Health Care Center for the Homeless, and this year, it will give $2 million ([ 1.54 million) to established agencies and charities that care for the homeless.

    More is needed, concedes Turek, the mayor's spokeswoman, but "the city itself can't shoulder the burden of the homeless problem for the entire central Florida region."

    It's ideal apple-eating weather; coppery sunlight descends the purest of skies, and a warm breeze rustles the silvery moss in the live oaks above the 22 or so men and women waiting in a crooked line along the sidewalk.

    Winter rewards the homeless who have persevered through Orlando's humid summer months, and now Suzanne Peters, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs, a group that feeds the homeless here once a week, wants to reward their patience.

    It's nearly 5:15 p.m. when her tan, Chevy Blazer rolls up to the corner. The homeless stir and chatter as Peters opens the hatch.

    "Folks!" she calls out, "you can't sit on that wall. That's private property. The big, bad men will come and arrest you." She motions to the curb. "You can stand on the sidewalk, or sit on the curb here. Sorry."

    Peters and her partners used to feed 75 to 150 homeless people at a time in Lake Eola Park, just a block north. Then, after the ordinance took effect, patrol cars, four at a time, would roll up, officers would step out and ask who was in charge.

    "They'd tell us it was a 'no-feeding zone,'" says Brett Mason, a 19-year-old college student, who joined Food Not Bombs when it came to Orlando in January 2005.

    The officers, he says, would say, "'You have to get a permit to feed here,' and shoo us away."

    So the group retreated to this street corner and began feeding out of the back of members' cars. On occasion, to show defiance, Food Not Bombs fed in front of municipal buildings, even City Hall.

    That's because the ordinance, says Ben Markeson, who belongs to the group, is based on a misguided premise.

    City officials "think groups that share food with the homeless are attracting the homeless to downtown neighborhoods. But the homeless are already here. And they'll be here with or without the food."

    Go to Original

    Scattering the Homeless, But Not Helping Them
    By Steve Lopez
    The Los Angeles Times

    Sunday 04 February 2007

    The last time I talked to Joe McMichaels, he was heading down Main Street near skid row. It was October 2005 and McMichaels, who'd lost a leg in a truck accident a couple of years earlier, was propelling his wheelchair with one foot.

    I went looking for him Friday after a call that got me thinking. Adlai Wertman of the Chrysalis job-training program wanted me to be on a UCLA panel titled "What Happens When the Media Drives Social Policy, or Be Careful What You Wish For." He wants me to discuss a series I wrote about skid row in late 2005 and what kind of impact it had.

    I found McMichaels at 6th and San Julian on Friday. "What's new?" I asked.

    "Nothing," he said, except that his wheelchair was coming apart. "The back is falling off. I need a new one, or I need to get some screws."

    The Porta-Potties that were at 6th and San Julian are long gone and so are the prostitutes who used them as brothels. One of them hasn't been seen for a while, and another was thought to be in jail, but no one could be sure with all the coming and going out here of late.

    The population of skid row has thinned some. But all the forces that created it are still in place.

    Since Los Angeles police cracked down on skid row last fall, some of the homeless have moved on, taking up residence in Hollywood, Echo Park, Santa Monica and beyond.

    "The mischievous side of me is smiling just a little bit," said Orlando Ward of the Midnight Mission.

    Me too. One way to get everybody's attention would be to bus skid row dwellers - the destitute, the bomb-rattled vets, the mentally disturbed - back to where they came from, particularly to places that have shunned them, such as Burbank, West Covina, Santa Clarita and Kagel Canyon.

    You can't blame the cops for doing what they're told, but nearly 18 months after city and county officials flapped their gums about how they were really going to get serious this time about homelessness, it's crystal clear that police can't make a lasting difference if they're in this all alone.

    "The cops have chased people off 'The Row,' which makes real estate values go up, but other than that we haven't removed a single person from homelessness. Not a single person, because we haven't created new programs," Wertman said. The city's policy, he said, "while making the streets look better, was never really meant to deal with the issues of homelessness."

    Wertman told me the increased police presence has cleaned up a huge drug problem near his Main Street office, where two gangs controlled the trade.

    "But what's going to happen when the police leave?"

    All the problems will be back, he said, propelled by the one driving force that is seldom acknowledged.

    "It's all about poverty. The tale of two cities is really real here, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer."

    I wasn't sure about being on Wertman's panel. To the extent that I and others at the Los Angeles Times have influenced public policy, I have mixed feelings about the impact. Skid row was lawless beyond belief a year ago, and I welcomed the arrests of drug dealers who preyed on people fighting to go straight. And I can't say I shed a tear when they carted away the Porta-Potties that were used as drug dens as well as brothels.

    But with relatively few exceptions, only the simplest and least expensive steps have been undertaken. Skid row forces have been expanded by 50 police officers, but fewer than 10 county mental health outreach workers have been added. Even if there were more of the latter, however, there'd still be a critical shortage of mental health services and proven, modern drug and alcohol rehab programs.

    Last April, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced a $100-million plan that called for five regional homeless service centers.

    Today, they haven't broken ground on any of them.

    Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has pledged $100 million since late 2005 for housing that includes supportive services.

    Not one project has been built.

    Ward recalls the promise of specially staffed courts in downtown Los Angeles to offer sentencing alternatives to homeless people and those charged with minor drug offenses.

    "But we don't know if we're going to get one."

    Andy Bales of the Union Rescue Mission said he's happy that skid row is much safer for his clients even if other care providers claim mentally ill people are routinely handcuffed for minor offenses.

    But Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich still has not endorsed Bales' plan to rescue 200 women and children from skid row and put them in a remote former nursing facility near Sylmar, where objections have been raised by residents who live more than a mile away.

    All this is bad enough. But throw into the mix the fact that city and county officials are notoriously inept at coordinating efforts on anything and the outlook is bleak. I don't know what their problem is with each other, but Mayor Villaraigosa and L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky - whose relationship is noticeably icy - need to put aside their egos and work out a plan and a timetable, which means running roughshod over the likes of Antonovich.

    It will all take time, Torie Osborn was telling me the other day. She's the mayor's advisor on homelessness, and she said that getting the money into the pipeline and building housing and other infrastructure takes about three years. She may be right, but as things stand, there isn't enough money in that pipeline and no permanent source of funding.

    New York City is spending roughly $1.7 billion a year on homeless services, Osborn concedes, roughly half of it for services and half for housing, which keeps the city on a pace to build 6,000 supportive housing units annually. The city of Los Angeles has roughly one-third as much money and roughly one-sixth as many supportive housing units in the planning stages.

    USC professor Michael Dear is one of 50 local scholars who have united to condemn our shortsighted approach to ending homelessness. New York is the model to use, he said, and the initial investment could save money over the long haul. It's inefficient and too costly to "keep on churning people through jails, prisons, hospitals and emergency shelters without putting them onto a path out of homelessness," he said.

    Until then, there will be no end to the misery.

    At the Midnight Mission on Friday, James Hufft, Vietnam vet, was bent over in his wheelchair, fighting the pain.

    "What hurts?" I ask him.

    "Everything," says the Texas native, whose right leg was blown off by a land mine more than 35 years ago.

    He was hoping to get a cot for the night and said it's been a long, long time since he had a place of his own.