S.T.O.P.—Stop the Ordinance Partnership BLOG

Homeless Persons' Memorial Day: Dec. 21

2007-12-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

Local Activist Groups to
Hold Homeless Persons
Memorial Day Observance

Dec. 20, 2007

For immediate release

Local Contact:
Ben Markeson
407.252.1379 (cell)
reporter2@mpinet.net

National Contact:
Michael Stoops
National Coalition for the Homeless,
Washington, D.C.
202.462.4822 x19
mstoops@nationalhomeless.org

ORLANDO--A commemoration of Homeless Persons' Memorial Day will be held Friday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m., in front of Orlando City Hall. The purpose is to honor the memory of homeless people who have died in our community during the preceding 12 months. The event will consist of a candlelight vigil, a reading of the names of our community's deceased homeless, speakers--local clergy and activists--and a "speak-out" segment during which the homeless can talk about their deceased compatriots and about what it's like to be a homeless person in the Orlando area.

This event is being sponsored by Orlando Food Not Bombs, S.T.O.P.--Stop the Ordinance Partnership, the Young Communist League (Orlando chapter) and the Orlando Progressive Alliance. In addition, the congregation of the First Vagabonds Church of God, a local homeless ministry, will attend the City Hall commemoration following their own National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day event in the Lake Lucerne neighborhood at 6 p.m.

The groups also will distribute clothing, blankets, personal hygiene items--toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.--and food to the homeless during the event. They have either gotten the items donated from within the community or have used their own resources to purchase them.

This commemoration is being held at Orlando City Hall to remind the public and local government that the homeless are citizens and members of the community and are entitled to be treated with dignity and to have their civil rights respected. The organizers also wish to remind City officials that their punitive policies towards the homeless--such as a ban on sharing food with the homeless in public parks downtown, restrictions on panhandling and regular harassment by Orlando police--criminalize homelessness but do nothing to address its underlying causes and only serve to make life more difficult for our community's homeless population.

The organizers hope their event will highlight the City of Orlando's misplaced priorities, such as spending more than a billion dollars on sports and entertainment venues while failing to direct sufficient resources towards addressing the problems and underlying causes of homelessness in our community. These include a chronic shortgage of shelter beds for our area's homeless population, inadequate treatment options for homeless individuals suffering from alcohol and drug addiction and mental illness, failure to ensure that jobs pay living wages and to address the lack of affordable housing in our community, and the delay in establishing a homeless drop-in center, a "one-stop shop" where the homeless could obtain the help and resources they need to get off the streets permanently.

National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day has occurred on the first day of winter, December 21, since 1990. The event is sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, the National Consumer Advisory Board, and local groups nationwide. It is intended to bring attention to the tragedy of homelessness, and to remember our homeless friends who have paid the ultimate price for our nation’s failure, at all levels, to address the issue.

An Example of How Homelessness Can Happen

2007-11-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

Comment: The article below is an example of one of the ways in which homelessness happens: low-income people--in this case the residents of a rooming house in Parramore--are forced out of housing that is affordable for them to make way for redevelopment--in this case a new publicly-financed arena for the Orlando Magic, a team owned by a billionaire. Often when this happens, the units lost in the community's stock of affordable housing are not replaced and the people who lived in them can't find new affordable housing, so they wind up on the streets. This doesn't have to happen, of course, but does because the powers that be usually don't give a damn about poor and marginalized people. Their concerns are doing the bidding of the wealthy, of business interests and developers and increasing the City's tax base since the more money a City government can spend the more power it has. The opportunity to raise more money is about as irresistible to government as free booze is to an alcoholic.

The City, to its apparent credit, does seem to want to make sure the residents of the rooming house don't join the ragged ranks of Central Florida's 9,000+ homeless. That is if we can believe City Attorney Mayanne Downs when she says "Our goal would be to leave each one of these residents better off than they are now." One usually doesn't expect a City Attorney to exude anything resembling compassion or concern especially in a redevelopment situation. Maybe the City is finally beginning to understand the social processes of homelessness, and figures it's easier to prevent it than to deal with it once it exists.

People, foolishly or not, usually do expect more from elected officials. City Commissioner Daisy Lynum in whose district the rooming house lies, given the chance to do the right thing--i.e., give a damn about the welfare of the low-income and marginalized people who can be found in abundance in her district--once again with her quote in the article provides plenty of ammunition to her critics and those who are, rightly in our view, cynical about politicians. Plumbing new depths of crassness, Lynum boldly (or was it just stupidly?) revealed to the Sentinel that she really doesn't give a shit about the soon-to-be displaced residents of the rooming house. Says Ms. Lynum, who, believe it or not, once was a social worker(!) for what was then called the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services and later for the Orange County Public Schools: "They've had plenty of time to relocate. There's a lot of turnover of those tenants. Why would we pay to relocate someone who's been there two weeks?"

This is in keeping with Ms. Lynum's sorry record towards the already homeless. Last year she voted for the City ordinance that essentially bans sharing food with homeless people in public parks downtown and earlier this year she voted for the ordinance that further restricts panhandling. As far as she is concerned the homeless should just starve to death, preferably someplace besides downtown Orlando.

Maybe if those rooming house residents would wise up and hire Ms. Lynum's son, Juan, as their lawyer, she would care since the City by helping them would also be putting some money in the Lynum family's pocket.

And maybe it's nothing more than a coincidence that in the 1997 District 5 City Commission race, one of Lynum's opponents was none other than Charlie Jean Salter, owner of the aforementioned rooming house. Or perhaps it's not a coincidence. Perhaps Lynum is as spiteful, petty and mean-spirited as she appears to be, perversely taking out her dislike of a political opponent on the poor African Americans who have the misfortune to live where the City wants to build a facility to provide more entertainment opportunities for affluent white people.

--Ben Markeson

Homes stand in way of arena
City, property owners fight over land that is planned for stadium

Mark Schlueb |Sentinel Staff Writer
(published) November 12, 2007

Orlando Magic fans and executives celebrated when plans for a new state-of-the-art arena got the green light, but more than three months later, the city still doesn't own all the land where the facility would be built.

Smack in the middle of where the wooden basketball floor would be laid sits a small house, a duplex and a rooming house that are owned by the last holdout in the city's attempt to buy the real estate earmarked for the arena.

"Their view is that someday that property would be worth a whole lot of money. Our view is that today it's not," City Attorney Mayanne Downs said.

If the two sides can't agree on a price by Dec. 5, Orlando officials will go to court and ask a judge to allow the city to take ownership of the land and let a jury determine a fair price later.

Complicating matters further, the house and the rooming house are occupied by as many as 15 tenants. City leaders don't want a repeat of when they built the Magic's current arena. The displacement of dozens of renters fed years of mistrust among longtime Parramore residents.

"I feel like I'm in a spot," said Robert "Sarge" Kent, who said he is one of a handful of tenants who have lived in the rooming house for at least five years. "Where am I going to go? They don't care -- they have a roof over their heads."

The city bought most of the West Church Street property from Carolina Florida Properties a year ago. That 9.4 acres tucked in the elbow of Interstate 4 and the East-West Expressway went for $35.5 million.

City officials reached an agreement with the owners of one of the last pieces of land during a recent mediation session. The owners of E Sciences Inc., an environmental-engineering firm, will be paid $3.95 million for their building, land, relocation costs and other damages. The deal, which still must be approved by the City Council, would pay attorneys an additional $446,000.

Charlie Jean Salter and her family own the last of the property, which has been in the family since 1947. It's not clear how much the Salters want for the land, though some city commissioners said the price had gotten as high as $15 million.

According to city records, the Salters' two parcels were listed for sale at $7 million each in July, a month after commissioners authorized the use of eminent-domain court proceedings to take the land if need be. But in January 2005, the lots were on the market for $1.2 million each, records show.

Attorney Richard Milian, who represents the Salters, said recent negotiations put the price substantially lower than $15 million. Still, there is still "significant ground" between the Salters' asking price and the city's offer, he said.

A court hearing has been scheduled Dec. 5 to decide whether the city has a right to take the land because it would serve a public purpose. If that happens, jurors will decide its worth.

City officials said they hope the hearing won't be necessary and that they'll reach an agreement within 10 days.

Regardless of the price paid to the Salters, city officials' plan to relocate and compensate the buildings' renters will add to the cost. Downs said the city plans to meet with each of the tenants and help them find other housing. Longtime residents will likely be compensated, she said, though no details have been decided.

"Parramore is a very important part of this administration's mission," Downs said. "Our goal would be to leave each one of these residents better off than they are now."

Commissioner Daisy Lynum, who represents the district, said the city should let the court decide a fair price. And she doesn't support the plan to compensate the tenants.

"They've had plenty of time to relocate," she said. "There's a lot of turnover of those tenants. Why would we pay to relocate someone who's been there two weeks?"

Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.

Community group creates fast-food jobs for the homeless

2007-11-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Comment: These jobs and the 25 housing units that this community group created are a drop in the bucket compared to the need in the community. It shouldn't be overlooked that Central Florida has a homeless population estimated to number 9,000 individuals. Also, low-wage fast food jobs hardly seem like the key to self-sufficiency for the homeless. An abundance of low-wage jobs that don't pay enough to make housing affordable are part of the reason that so many people in this community are homeless. What's really necessary are systemic changes to the local economy not private charity (as commendable and well-intentioned as that may be) and Band-Aid efforts. This project seems like a way for the City of Orlando to try to whitewash its image when it comes to its policies towards the homeless. Notice that Mayor Dyer was only too eager to get a photo opportunity out of this.

Homeless are feeding the rest of us at Orlando sub shop

Mark Schlueb |Sentinel Staff Writer
(published) November 8, 2007

A year after Orlando enacted a law to stop people from feeding the homeless, the city is trying it the other way around.

Using federal money and help from the city, a nonprofit community group opened a Sobik's Subs shop last week and staffed it with workers who until recently were living on the streets or in homeless camps in the woods.

"Sobik's was the only one that had any interest in talking to us," said Helaine Blum, president of Grand Avenue Economic Community Development Corp. "This is basically the first opportunity some of these people have been given."

The project represents a shift away from the traditional method of warehousing the homeless in crowded shelters with few services. Providing training and job placement for the homeless isn't new, but launching a business that relies solely on a work force struggling with the addictions, disabilities and other problems underlying homelessness is still rare.

The Ben & Jerry's ice cream empire waived its franchise fee for shops in Harlem, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., that are run by homeless charities. There's also a pet-sitting business -- Virginia Woof Dog Daycare -- in Portland.

In Orlando, the new Sobik's at 4049 S. Orange Blossom Trail bears no outward sign that it is any different from any of the Heathrow-based chain's other sub shops. But the owner of the franchise is the Grand Avenue nonprofit, and its workers live in a former motel behind the restaurant that has been converted into housing units for people with extremely low incomes and no other place to live.

Darrell Frazier, 47, was briefly homeless before moving to the housing complex, known as Maxwell Gardens, about four months ago. He is one of the first half-dozen people to take jobs at the Sobik's.

"I was laid off from my job with a construction company and couldn't find any work. I fell behind on my rent and ended up on the street," Frazier said Wednesday. "I just want to be able to work."

The city and the Homeless Services Network helped Grand Avenue obtain $885,000 in federal funding to add 25 units at Maxwell Gardens for those with mental illness or physical disabilities. It's this population -- a particularly hard one to serve -- that Blum thinks can learn job skills through training at the sandwich shop.

Orlando gave another $200,000 from its allotment of federal community-improvement money to add the Sobik's, and the company drastically reduced its usual franchise fee.

"We felt this was a wonderful opportunity to do a good deed for the community," Sobik's president Jodi Kobrin said.

The city is a key funding source for shelters and homeless-service agencies, but Orlando has gained a national reputation as an unfriendly place for the homeless. That image has been fueled by an anti-panhandling law and last year's restrictions on feeding the homeless in city parks.

"We want to look at comprehensive approaches to ending homelessness. Whether it's working here or getting job skills somewhere else, it's lifting them up and helping them to get past homelessness," said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who ordered a sub during the shop's official opening Wednesday.

The same day, national housing officials cited the type of transitional and permanent housing offered at Maxwell Gardens as a reason for a drop in the number of long-term homeless people across the country.

A national report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed an 11.5 percent decline in the number of people who had been homeless for a year or more in the United States, from 175,914 in 2005 to 155,623 in 2006.

The greater Orlando area, including the city, unincorporated Orange County, Osceola and Seminole counties, saw a slight reduction in chronic homelessness. It reported 1,189 long-term homeless individuals in 2006, a decrease of 70 people from the year before.

Agency spokesman Brian Sullivan attributed the decline to a shift from emergency shelters that house the homeless for a night to transitional and permanent housing. President Bush's budget would increase funding for such housing from $286 million to $1.6 billion in 2008.

The funding is meant to help people such as Sandra Parvu start the long road back to normalcy. The 48-year-old amputee, a recovering alcoholic who suffers from bipolar disorder and liver problems, moved into one of the new units at Maxwell Gardens on Tuesday after living in the woods of east Orange County for six years.

"They're going to give me support and a place to live while I get my life back together," she said. "I just want my family and life back."

Victor Ramos of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

2007-11-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

By KIMBERLY HEFLING (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press
November 07, 2007 11:24 PM EST

WASHINGTON - Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

The Veterans Affairs Department has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 of them have participated in its programs specifically targeting homelessness.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. 2005 data estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.

Some advocates say the early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable.

"We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.

While services to homeless veterans have improved in the past 20 years, advocates say more financial resources still are needed. With the spotlight on the plight of Iraq veterans, they hope more will be done to prevent homelessness and provide affordable housing to the younger veterans while there's a window of opportunity.

"When the Vietnam War ended, that was part of the problem. The war was over, it was off TV, nobody wanted to hear about it," said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which provides substance abuse help, job training and shelter to veterans.

"I think they'll be forgotten," Keaveney said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "People get tired of it. It's not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They'll just be veterans, and that happens after every war."

Keaveney said it's difficult for his group to persuade some homeless Iraq veterans to stay for treatment and help because they don't relate to the older veterans. Those who stayed have had success - one is now a stock broker and another is applying to be a police officer, he said.

"They see guys that are their father's age and they don't understand, they don't know, that in a couple of years they'll be looking like them," he said.

After being discharged from the military, Jason Kelley, 23, of Tomahawk, Wis., who served in Iraq with the Wisconsin National Guard, took a bus to Los Angeles looking for better job prospects and a new life.

Kelley said he couldn't find a job because he didn't have an apartment, and he couldn't get an apartment because he didn't have a job. He stayed in a $300-a-week motel until his money ran out, then moved into a shelter run by the group U.S. VETS in Inglewood, Calif. He's since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

"The only training I have is infantry training and there's not really a need for that in the civilian world," Kelley said in a phone interview. He has enrolled in college and hopes to move out of the shelter soon.

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness - mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA's homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness and more than three out of four have a substance abuse problem, while 35 percent have both, Dougherty said.

Historically, a number of fighters in U.S. wars have become homeless. In the post-Civil War era, homeless veterans sang old Army songs to dramatize their need for work and became known as "tramps," which had meant to march into war, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Penn State University's Beaver campus who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

After World War I, thousands of veterans - many of them homeless - camped in the nation's capital seeking bonus money. Their camps were destroyed by the government, creating a public relations disaster for President Herbert Hoover.

The end of the Vietnam War coincided with a time of economic restructuring, and many of the same people who fought in Vietnam were also those most affected by the loss of manufacturing jobs, DePastino said.

Their entrance to the streets was traumatic and, as they aged, their problems became more chronic, recalled Sister Mary Scullion, who has worked with the homeless for 30 years and co-founded of the group Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia.

"It takes more to address the needs because they are multiple needs that have been unattended," Scullion said. "Life on the street is brutal and I know many, many homeless veterans who have died from Vietnam."

The VA started targeting homelessness in 1987, 12 years after the fall of Saigon. Today, the VA has, either on its own or through partnerships, more than 15,000 residential rehabilitative, transitional and permanent beds for homeless veterans nationwide. It spends about $265 million annually on homeless-specific programs and about $1.5 billion for all health care costs for homeless veterans.

Because of these types of programs and because two years of free medical care is being offered to all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Dougherty said they hope many veterans from recent wars who are in need can be identified early.

"Clearly, I don't think that's going to totally solve the problem, but I also don't think we're simply going to wait for 10 years until they show up," Dougherty said. "We're out there now trying to get everybody we can to get those kinds of services today, so we avoid this kind of problem in the future."

In all of 2006, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point during the year.

The group recommends that 5,000 housing units be created per year for the next five years dedicated to the chronically homeless that would provide permanent housing linked to veterans' support systems. It also recommends funding an additional 20,000 housing vouchers exclusively for homeless veterans, and creating a program that helps bridge the gap between income and rent.

Following those recommendations would cost billions of dollars, but there is some movement in Congress to increase the amount of money dedicated to homeless veterans programs.

On a recent day in Philadelphia, case managers from Project H.O.M.E. and the VA picked up William Joyce, 60, a homeless Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair who said he'd been sleeping at a bus terminal.

"You're an honorable veteran. You're going to get some services," outreach worker Mark Salvatore told Joyce. "You need to be connected. You don't need to be out here on the streets."

---

Associated Press writer Kathy Matheson contributed to this story from Philadelphia.

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On the Net: National Alliance to End Homelessness: http://www.naeh.org/

New Directions: http://www.newdirectionsinc.org/

Project Home: http://www.projecthome.org/

County of Lancaster: http://www.co.lancaster.pa.us/

Veterans Affairs Department: http://www.va.gov/

U.S. Vets: http://usvetsinc.org/

Opponent of Homeless Feeding Ban May Run for Mayor

2007-10-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

GOVERNMENT WATCH
Dyer could get competition in mayoral race

October 25, 2007

ORLANDO - A member of Orange County's Soil and Water Conservation District board announced his intention to run for mayor of Orlando late Monday.

Tim Adams -- who ran against the incumbent mayor, Buddy Dyer, in a race for state Senate in 1992 -- said in his announcement that he wants the community venues put to a public vote, and he opposes the ban on feeding the homeless at Lake Eola Park that was enacted by the Dyer administration.

Adams would seem a long-shot candidate, with the Jan. 29 election just three months away. Dyer had raised more than $350,000 in campaign contributions as of Sept. 30, reports show. Adams said he supported businessman Ken Mulvaney in the past mayoral election. Mulvaney also has said he might run again, but neither he nor Adams has yet filed papers to formally launch a candidacy.

Feeding the Hungry is a Crime

2007-10-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3358/feeding_the_hungry_is_a_crim/

October 10, 2007

Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
City councils are cracking down on charity groups that feed the homeless without a permit

By Megan Tady

The stake-out was almost comical in its absurdity: On April 4, 2007, undercover police counted how many times Eric Montanez, a 22-year-old volunteer with Food Not Bombs, dipped a serving ladle into a pot and handed stew to hungry people.

Once Montanez had dished up 30 bowls, the police moved in, collecting a vial of the stew for evidence as they arrested him for violating an Orlando, Fla., city ordinance: feeding a large group. Two days into his trial yesterday, Montanez was acquitted by a jury of the misdemeanor charge, but was cautioned to obey the law.

As activists celebrate the verdict, the Orlando Police Department has said it will continue to ordinance, making the fight for the free flow of food in the city far from over.

"He is on trial for the crime of feeding the homeless--literally," says George Crossley, a member of the Stop the Ordinance Partnership (S.T.O.P.), an alliance of 19 advocacy groups, including Orlando branches of Code Pink, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women.

What Crossley and others are trying to stop is a "large group feeding[s]" ordinance passed in July 2006 by the Orlando City Council that essentially bans groups from providing food to more than 25 people in downtown parks without a permit.

Under the ordinance, groups can only obtain two permits a year per park for the purpose of sharing food with a large group. Although the ordinance does not explicitly target the homeless, the guillotine falls on their heads, as they are largely the benefactors of churches, charities and activist groups serving free food in easily accessible parks.

"Eric's arrest shows both the heartlessness of Orlando towards the destitute and those who aid them," the Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) chapter said in a statement in April.

Just as Orlando is cracking down on free meals that make life more bearable for homeless people, so too are other cities. This month, West Palm Beach, Fla., passed a similar ordinance that criminalizes feeding the homeless in public places, and last week officials in Cleveland, Ohio, prohibited groups from sharing food in the city's Public Square. In February, a man in Jacksonville, Fla., was given a citation for handing out food to the homeless without a permit, though it was later thrown out. And FNB says fear is spreading in Albuquerque, N.M., that city officials may pass a similar ordinance, which has long been an avenue used to force out homeless people.

Volunteers and activists are decrying the laws, calling any measure that keeps free food out of the hands of the needy inhumane.

"It's essentially saying that homeless people are not worthy of attention or respect and they’re nothing more than pigeons who should be fed some place else so they’re not a bother to mainstream society," says FNB Co-founder Keith McHenry.

McHenry says feeding the homeless is part of a larger social justice agenda.

"There's a broader principle in America that we're trying to address, and that is, food is a human right, not to be relegated to being a commodity," McHenry says. "People who are hungry in this country deserve good, nutritious food without having to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get that food, and without having to be demeaned."

As with the other city ordinances, Orlando designated a specific area away from downtown businesses where groups could offer food without a permit. But McHenry says the purpose of visibly feeding homeless people is to draw attention to the problem, and that FNB rejects hiding a situation that the city refuses to confront compassionately.

"They say, 'If you want to feed people, why don't you do it out of sight?'" McHenry says. "That's not our goal. Our goal is... to change society."

The designated area in Orlando, however, is gated and groups must notify the authorities to unlock the space before every food sharing.

Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, says Cleveland police notified the group on October 3 that groups and churches could no longer provide food in the Public Square because of health hazards. Davis was told the city had discovered rat holes at the park. The Cleveland City Council did not return calls seeking comment.

According to a recent blog post by Davis, "The Chief of Police and the entire command staff stopped a group from unloading their food on the Square. Then they tried to move to another park and that did not work because law enforcement stopped them. The group was told that if they unload that they would be arrested."

The groups were also given an alternate site for food sharing, but Davis told In These Times, "It couldn't be a worse place to go."

Shawn, an FNB volunteer in Cleveland reluctant to give his last name, says the regulation on feedings in the park is taking a toll. "What [the ordinance] has accomplished is probably diminished the amount of people getting fed when you're forced to move to a location that's too far for people to walk to," he says.

Shawn says FNB would return to serving food in the Public Square. "It hasn't stopped us," he says. "There should be no law against feeding people."

But feeding people, says McHenry, is bad for business. As tables of free food attract a larger than usual number of homeless people to city parks, nearby businesses fear their revenue streams may suffer.

"[Business owners] believe that people won't shop in those neighborhoods. They're not attractive," McHenry says.

He also says cities fear the presence of readily available food will bring more homeless people into their community, and "they'll have to raise tax money to provide affordable housing and public assistance and shelters."

Heather Allebaugh, constituent correspondent for the City of Orlando, says the city council enacted the ordinance in response to "complaints from residents and businesses immediately following the feedings of activity and drug use around the area."

Allebaugh also says the ordinance was designed to help maintain the parks. "It's a balance between the residents and their safety when they come to the park when the feedings are taking place," she says.

In response to criticisms that an ordinance curtailing the availability of free food is inhumane, Allebaugh says the measure is "not a ban, but a regulation."

"It's just about maintaining a regulation just as we do for parades and garage sales so we have an idea of what’s happening at public parks," Allebaugh says. "Maybe there's extra security needed for the people attending. Maybe they need extra trash receptacles. It's just to help us manage events that are happening within our city. I don’t think it was targeted at any group. It was more about the proper location to feed, rather than whether to ban feeding."

The city did not enact any provisions to feed the homeless people who relied on the routinely accessible free food. Allebaugh says such services do not fall within the jurisdiction of the city.

The crackdown on food sharings follows other policies designed to penalize and ostracize homeless people. Orlando's estimated 9,000 homeless people are subject to laws that prevent them from lying on benches and from panhandling during certain hours. Cleveland recently enacted a law that sets a 10 pm curfew at the city's Public Square, intending to stop people from sleeping in the park.

"[The City Council] is brutal about this," says Crossley of S.T.O.P. "This is not a game to these people. They're not trying to find a solution to why these people are out there."

Allebaugh count[er]s, however, that the Council is addressing homelessness through a regional commission expected to issue "findings and suggestions" in February on how to "address homelessness and hopefully come up with a 10-year plan to end homelessness."

The harsh treatment of homeless people also comes as the number of displaced people rises. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that there are an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the United States, although the figure is difficult to pinpoint.

"The criminalization of homeless people shows that there's no political will by our society to deal with the crisis in a humane and logical way," McHenry says. "The reality is that homeless people are regular Americans who lost their jobs due to all the different policies that are happening, like outsourcing, and the huge redirection of our infrastructure toward the military and away from things like education and health care."

Despite the ordinances, and the recent arrest of Montanez, activists are refusing to back down. Coinciding with Montanez’ trial, Orlando FNB has been holding a three-day event [Lake Eola Ladle Fest] with multiple food sharings that violate the ordinance. Crossley says more than 100 people were served breakfast on Monday. As of press time, no other arrests have been made.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, representing the First Vagabonds Church of God and FNB, filed suit against the Council last October, calling the ordinance unconstitutional. In 2006, a federal court judge issued an injunction on a Las Vegas measure that prohibited "providing food or meals to the indigent for free or for a nominal fee."

McHenry says he thinks the ordinances will spur a new wave of activism. "People are already going to Orlando to risk arrest because they're so outraged," he says.

Crossley says volunteers already in Orlando have no plans to back down.

"Are we going to keep the fight up? You bet," he says. "There's not going to be any give on the part of the progressive community. The only way that S.T.O.P. would disband would be if the ordinance was repealed or defeated."

Megan Tady is a National Political Reporter for InTheseTimes.com. Previously, she worked as a reporter for the NewStandard, where she published nearly 100 articles in one year. Megan has also written for Clamor, CommonDreams, E Magazine, Maisonneuve, PopandPolitics, and Reuters.

Orlando: Home of Unenforceable Laws

2007-10-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

Commentary

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/09/30/a2e_moffettcol_0930.html

Orlando: Home of unenforceable laws

By Dan Moffett

Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer

Sunday, September 30, 2007

A government can get full of itself from time to time and think that it can solve a complicated problem by holding a meeting and passing a new law.

Hubris and frustration form a lethal combination in the hands of power.

So it was in West Palm Beach last week, when Mayor Lois Frankel used her vote to break a deadlocked city commission and push through a new ordinance that bans the feeding of homeless people near the library and amphitheater downtown.

The law is intended to satisfy Clematis Street merchants who have complained that gatherings of homeless people are driving away business. Church groups and political activists henceforth will be prohibited from handing out food in the public places.

Before diving headfirst into what figures to be a sinkhole of constitutional quicksand, Mayor Frankel should have studied closer the experiences of her old pal Buddy Dyer, the mayor of Orlando. The two served together as ranking Democrats in the Legislature.

Mayor Dyer has one of the worst homeless problems in the state. Estimates put the population around Orlando at more than 8,000.

Last year, he heard the same complaints from business and tourism officials that Mayor Frankel is hearing. With Mayor Dyer's blessing, the Orlando city commission passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups in downtown parks. Within weeks, the Central Florida ACLU filed suit in federal court arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

But forget about constitutionality for a moment. Let's look at enforcement.

In April, Orlando police actually sent a team of undercover officers to shut down a coalition of groups - antiwar activists such as [Orlando] Food Not Bombs, [Orlando] CodePink [Women for Peace] and [the] Young Communist [League] - who were trying to circumvent the law on a technicality: It prohibited feeding more than 25 people, so each group purported to serve only 24.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, plainclothes police shot photos from the bushes and counted how many ladles of vegetable stew the activists served. When the 30th homeless person walked off with a full plate, the police moved in and arrested [Eric Montanez,] a 21-year-old [member of Orlando Food Not Bombs] and put him in jail.

Then police collected a vial of the stew as evidence. It wasn't exactly the kind of duty they had in mind back when they entered the academy.

But the city has all sorts of homeless laws that must be enforced.

It is illegal to be caught in a horizontal position on a park bench in Orlando. Bathing or shaving in a public restroom is prohibited. It is illegal to wash clothes in the downtown park. And don't even think about sleeping in the shrubs and bushes.

Panhandling has been a chronic problem, and Orlando has tried all sorts of laws to restrict it after the courts rejected an outright ban - including issuing ID cards to panhandlers, limiting them to daytime hours, and, seven years ago, restricting beggars to 36, 3-by-15-foot blue squares painted on downtown sidewalks.

Now, how well do you think that blue-square idea has worked?

Orlando has proved conclusively that government cannot solve the homeless problem by writing new laws. Ask the city police who have to enforce them or the city attorneys who have to defend them in court. Or, ask the downtown merchants who see no improvements and still are complaining.

The best chance government has of making gains against this complex social problem is to work harder with charitable groups who do not come with political or overtly religious agendas - groups that want to help chronically homeless people with their underlying physical, mental and substance-abuse problems.

In West Palm Beach, that means the United Way, the Salvation Army, the Lord's Place and dozens of churches that provide services to poor people for the right reasons.

Mayor Frankel has her new ordinance. Soon, she will have the new problems that go with it. Orlando knows what's coming.

CITY BACKS DOWN ON LAKE EOLA CHAIRS & TABLES

2007-09-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARY

CITY BACKS DOWN; RESTORES PUBLIC'S ACCESS TO CHAIRS & TABLES@LAKE EOLA

In a surprise development, late this afternoon, after getting a few media calls--WFTV-Channel 9, WDBO-AM (580), Orlando Weekly, the City of Orlando backed down. From now on, everyone, not just those who care to pay for the privilege, will be able to use the tables and chairs at the Lake Eola Park picnic area. The "No Trespassing" signs have even been taken down.

The City, naturally, tried to get us to believe that this whole situation had been a "mistake" or a "misunderstanding." They even went so far as to blame a park ranger for deciding to padlock the fence gates. How pathetic. We know better, of course. The changes, including the padlocks, to the picnic area that initiated this latest skirmish between the City and Orlando Food Not Bombs and homeless activists have two possible sources. One is the Mayor's Office; the other is the Downtown Development Board. Take your pick. Both are determined to leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding measures they believe will make the homeless feel unwelcome downtown. To them human beings and human needs and rights are unimportant compared to helping developers, gentrifiers and businesspeople make more money.

This time, however, the City did something to the homeless that also greatly deprived and inconvenienced the citizens who live in the Eola Heights and Thornton Park neighborhoods. That may have begun to erode support for future inhumane and unnecessary measures that further criminalize homelessness.

Note: Articles from Channel 9 are below the pictures.

###

http://www.wftv.com/news/14211553/detail.html

City Of Orlando Unlocks Gate At Park After Facing Questions

POSTED: 3:40 pm EDT September 26, 2007
UPDATED: 5:22 pm EDT September 26, 2007

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The city of Orlando made changes after Eyewitness News started asking questions about a controversial decision to lock up picnic tables and chairs at Lake Eola Park.

The city says the new fence around a public picnic area has nothing to do with the homeless feeding that goes on there every Wednesday, but some people don't buy it and only Wednesday afternoon did the city agreed to unlock the gates that were keeping everyone out.

The new black metal fence came with a bold message, telling people they are not allowed inside on the blue picnic tables and chairs at Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando. There were even padlocks on the gates to make sure.

"I don't understand why," Jennifer Tussel told Eyewitness News.

She came to Lake Eola Park to spend some time outdoors with her baby, Violet.

"We should be able to sit there. I don't see why not. We work hard every day," Tussel said.

The city said a farmer's market that operates there on Sundays got a permit to serve beer and wine, but an area had to be gated off for people to drink. The park manager told Eyewitness News the gates were to remain locked on the other days to prevent vandalism.

"Taxpayers obviously pay for these, why shouldn't they be available to everybody?" Eyewitness News reporter Eric Rasmussen asked Lake Eola Park Manager Leo Falcon.

"They are available, if they want to rent it, they can rent it," he said, laughing.

But after asking that question, city officials said the locks would come off and the "no trespassing" signs would come down. They insist the fence had nothing to do with an on-going battle to stop homeless feeding at the park, but homeless advocates say everyone suffers.

"The people who live in this neighborhood and other parts of Orlando pay taxes to build and maintain this park and all of a sudden they're being deprived of the use of one of the amenities of this park and we think that's wrong," said Ben Markeson, an advocate for the homeless.

The city told Eyewitness News the decision to permanently lock up the area was a mistake and the gates should remain open.

Copyright 2007 by wftv.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.wftv.com/news/14209011/detail.html

City Fences Off Picnic Area That Group Uses To Feed Homeless

POSTED: 11:24 am EDT September 26, 2007

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A controversial group that feeds the homeless claims the city of Orlando fenced off a picnic area at Lake Eola to keep them from helping the hungry.

A "no trespassing" sign was posted on the black metal fence that now surrounds the picnic tables in the park.

The group [Orlando] Food Not Bombs believes the fence was put up to keep them and the homeless out.

The city has not yet commented on why the fence was put up.

###

source: Orlando Weekly blog

SO THERE ARE TWO OPTIONS

Either the people who run City Hall are effectively, deficiently retarded, or they're trying really, really hard to reclaim this city's rightful place on the National Coalition for the Homeless' annual list of meanest cities. Between the repeat crackdowns on people whose sole crime is feeding people who otherwise would go without food, to banning panhandlers from begging at night, and this, you get the sense that Dyer and Co. are doing their level best to eradicate the city's homeless population from their downtown white yuppie paradise, which is going to shit anyway with the rest of the goddamned overpriced condo market.

If you're too lazy to follow that link, don't worry. Here's the gist: Orlando Food Not Bombs, as bombastic and petulant and annoyingly hippie as they are, has been feeding homeless people in Lake Eola Park for the last couple years, despite the city's best efforts to force them out (including an arrest, which I wrote about here). Some genius under Dyer's employ - though the city hasn't returned my calls to tell me who, exactly - came up with a brilliant solution to the FNB "problem": Fence off Lake Eola Park, and require a permit to use the picnic tables.

Get a permit. To use a public park. The city's premier, spotlight park. In the middle of the day.

You read that right. We'll be putting up pictures here soon.

It didn't take long for this "plan" to dissemble. In fact, it took about one media report, which aired on Channel 9, for the city to, um, reassess or something. I fielded a phone call a few minutes back from FNB dude Ben Markeson, who informed me that the city has opened the gates and claims it was all some big misunderstanding or something and they really didn't want to keep the homeless out, except that, of course, they do.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling slightly embarrassed to live here. More details forthcoming.

Posted by: Jeffrey Billman on 9/26/2007 3:17:28 PM

City's Arrogance Knows No Bounds

2007-09-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Released Sept. 24, 2007

City's Arrogance Knows No Bounds As It Restricts Access to Lake Eola Picnic Tables to Paying "Customers"

The City of Orlando once again has shown that it will stop at nothing to drive the homeless out of public spaces such as parks and to try to stop groups that help them from using public spaces to do so. To achieve this goal, it is willing to inconvenience citizens and deny them access to the public amenities that their tax dollars pay for.

Within the last few days, the City has finished erecting a fence around the trees in the center of the picnic area at Lake Eola Park (the corner of Central and Osceola). It has placed the tables and chairs that formerly were on the circular brick walkway of the picnic area into the new fenced-off area and has put padlocks on the fence gates. It also has posted "No Trespassing" signs on two sides of the fence. Our understanding is that from now on only those who have paid rent to use the picnic area will be entitled to use the tables and chairs.

Orlando Food Not Bombs has been sharing every Wednesday at the Lake Eola picnic area for more than two years. It has continued to do so despite the fact that the City last year passed an ordinance that basically bans food sharings inside Lake Eola Park and more than three dozen other downtown parks. In recent months, Orlando Food Not Bombs has been joined at its sharings by other local groups who also bring food because of their desire to help the homeless, to show solidarity with FNB and to express their opposition to the ordinance. (OFNB is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the "large groups feeding" ordinance that will come to trial in June of 2008.) The City is, of course, greatly mistaken if it thinks that this petty action will keep homeless people out of the park, or deter Orlando Food Not Bombs and its allies from sharing food with them.

OFNB's sharings only last around 2-2 1/2 hours once a week; however, the City is so determined that the homeless get the message they are not welcome in downtown Orlando that it apparently doesn't give a damn about how its actions affect other citizens. Thanks to the arrogance of the Dyer administration those who live and work near the park have one less place where they can consume a bag lunch, rest, read or whatever. although Orlando's citizens pay taxes to build and maintain public facilities such as the picnic area the City is telling them that iif they wish to use this particular public facility they must rent it. Civic boosters and elected officials like to talk about how Orlando is on the cusp of becoming a "world class" city, but it's hard to see how citizens can have the sort of lifestyle that would seem to be in keeping with that exalted status when they city keeps restricting how they can use public parks. We are sure some Orlando residents will find this sort of treatment to be unacceptable and outrageous, and will wish to express themselves to the public officials who are supposed to represent citizens in the halls of government.

We hope that Orlandoans will realize that the changes to the park, besides being a high-handed way to treat those to whom the park supposedly belongs, represents something even uglier. It is another shameful attempt to practice discrimination against homeless people by seeking to deny them access to public facilities based upon the fact that they are destitute and homeless. Creating a category of second-class citizenship for poor and homeless people should not be tolerated by anyone who believes in equality, democracy and basic decency.

Contacts for Orlando public officials.

MAYOR BUDDY DYER
Phone: 407-246-2221
Fax: 407-246-2842
E-mail: buddy.dyer@cityoforlando.net

COMMISSIONER PHIL DIAMOND
407-246-2001
407-246-3010 Fax
phil.diamond@cityoforlando.net

COMMISSIONER BETTY T. WYMAN
407-246-2002
407-246-3010 Fax
bwyman@cityoforlando.net

COMMISSIONER ROBERT STUART
407-246-2003
407-246-3010 Fax
Robert.Stuart@cityoforlando.net

COMMISSIONER PATTY SHEEHAN
407-246-2004
407-246-3010 Fax
Patty.Sheehan@cityoforlando.net

Commissioner Daisy W. Lynum
407-246-2005
407-246-3010 Fax
Daisy.Lynum@cityoforlando.net

Commissioner Samuel B. Ings
407-246-2006
407-246-3010 Fax
Samuel.Ings@cityoforlando.net

Commissioner Stuart on Panhandling Ordinance

2007-09-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-forumword21_1207sep21,0,3475971.story

Stuart: Let's look for real solutions

Robert F. Stuart
(published) September 21, 2007

For the past few weeks, the city of Orlando has been involved in the continuing issue of panhandling. I, for one, welcome these types of discussions as they lead to a more clear understanding of the roles of our local government and of our citizens.

Panhandling, like many other similar issues, has people expressing their opinions. Based upon my experience as a city commissioner and director of an established, downtown outreach ministry, let me share some facts.

First, many continue to say that panhandling is directly linked to homelessness. While many who engage in panhandling may be homeless, we simply don't have any sound analysis of the population of panhandlers. It is true that the best homelessness research reports that as many as 8 percent of our homeless population have engaged in panhandling within the past 30 days. As to the hard numbers of panhandlers who are homeless, we simply don't know.

Second, panhandlers don't make a lot of money. According to some similar research in Pittsburgh and other Midwestern cities, most panhandlers make at the most $70 per week in this activity. Most of us have heard the stories of those who claim to have made $30,000 or more, tax-free, panhandling. While these stories may be true, they are, at best, very rare and hardly a sound example on which to develop public policy.

Third, givers need other alternatives. Since we know that panhandling, or begging as others have called it, will continue, it seems practical that our local communities provide alternatives for those willing to give. In places like Pittsburgh, Memphis and even Winnipeg, local downtown communities have advertised to "donors" about those in need and offered options, such as giving to local agencies willing to help. Drying up these resources from donors will have a significant impact on those looking to take advantage of our citizens and visitors through panhandling.

As I reviewed this issue, it became apparent to me that the city has ample ordinances already on the books to curtail aggressive panhandling. Prior to the current ordinance's passage, it was already unlawful in the city of Orlando to panhandle in public parks and venues, on private property without owner permission, within parking lots and garages, and in downtown -- outside the blue boxes -- anytime, day or night.

Here's my singular concern. If we are to become an even better city, then we must look for a real solution to all of the issues surrounding panhandling by seeking other alternatives to complement the enforcement portion of the equation. Discipline and order require both the "hammer" of enforcement and the "carrot" of viable alternatives for those who choose to donate in this way.

I'm buoyed by the public and private comments of Mayor Buddy Dyer and my fellow commissioners, Patty Sheehan and Daisy Lynum, who have each encouraged the city to explore better alternatives for our donors.

Let's take this opportunity to develop similar ideas to other great cities, and create a downtown environment that will be a great place to live, work and play for our community.

Robert F. Stuart is the Orlando city commissioner for District 3.

Good Orlando Weekly Article on Panhandling Ordinance

2007-09-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

Source: Orlando Weekly

(published) 9/20/2007

BEYOND THE BOX
Another questionable move in Orlando's war on panhandling

By Billy Manes

In the vacant expanse of Church Street Station, a wheelchair-bound veteran who refers to himself as "Sarge" bakes in the sun on the sidewalk, a plastic cup clutched in front of him.

"I just do this for food. I only get $10 in food stamps," Sarge says. "I served this country!"

By being on the street and asking for money, Sarge is already pushing his luck with the city of Orlando, which confines such activities to "blue boxes," specific areas delineated by blue paint where cash solicitation is allowed. Now he will find his actions further restricted. A new amendment to the city's panhandling ordinance – Chapter 43 of the city code – passed on second reading Sept. 17 forbidding panhandling from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily.

And it is only the latest in a long history of city attempts to curtail panhandling in Orlando, efforts that landed the city on the National Coalition for the Homeless' list of the 20 meanest cities in America in 2003.

Orlando's war on panhandling dates to the 1990s when an initial ban – one that was similar to those being challenged in court in other cities – was superseded by a 1997 law requiring panhandlers to attain permits.

In 2000 the city came up with the blue boxes: 35 three-by-15 spots, outlined in blue, designated as downtown panhandling zones. And last year, the city made national news with a feeding ordinance designed to restrict homeless gatherings in public areas.

The group-feeding ordinance is facing legal challenges, and most of the blue boxes are no longer visible. A stroll along the downtown stretch of Orange Avenue reveals streaks of paint on the sidewalk – many of them blue – to mark irrigation, power and construction projects, but no designated panhandling zones.

"This is one here," says Sarge, pointing to a barely there blue border on Church Street, within which he sits. "There's one down there under the bridge, there's one in front of the courthouse by the Lymmo pick-up and one behind there near the parking garage."

But the blue-box ordinance is still in effect, even if you can't find one.

"There were originally 35 of those blue boxes, and a lot of those are now in construction zones," says Orlando Police Department Sgt. Russ Waters. "And if they're in construction zones, then the boxes are pretty much gone because they’ve torn up all of the sidewalks. And some of the paint has faded. However, we are still enforcing that they have to be in the blue box." Waters clarifies that if someone is asking for money where a box once was, but the lines are no longer visible, officers will not penalize the panhandler.

"As a result of the construction (both building and transportation improvements) some of the blue boxes have been impacted," says city spokeswoman Heather Allebaugh in an e-mail. "In addition, the [Downtown Development Board] is aware that some of the blue boxes have faded. Now that construction is beginning to level out, the DDB is in the process of inventorying the blue boxes and surveying any impacts. In the coming weeks, they will be meeting to refresh the blue boxes."

The new law piggybacks on the blue boxes with a proposed nighttime ban on begging, even in designated zones. Once again, the goal is to keep downtown user-friendly by diminishing "aggressive" panhandling behavior. The new law is rooted in citizen complaints. Orlando enlists an undercover "downtown transient detail" to catch offenders that has resulted in 287 arrests since December 2005 (eight of them over 22 hours of patrolling this August). The punishment for panhandlers can be severe as a $500 fine and/or 60 days in jail, but typically isn’t.

"The fine is whatever the court determines at the time, but a lot of times they don't necessarily get anything other than time served, realistically, because they don't have any money," says Waters. "It’s not a ticket, it's a second-degree misdemeanor, because it’s an ordinance and they violated the ordinance."

Waters says that after dark is when the panhandlers become more aggressive, because that's when there are more people downtown drinking.

"I mean, a lot of people are fearful of transients," he says.

That includes members of city council. At the Sept. 10 meeting, council members Patty Sheehan and Sam Ings couched their support of the new ban in terms of frightening personal encounters with beggars.

"We get called mean because we don't want people chased and we don't want people harassed," said Sheehan.

Commissioners added that the city provides adequate social services downtown to address the needs of the homeless.

Commissioner Robert Stuart, the only council member to vote against the new ordinance, suggests that this is a bad ordinance at the wrong time. He believes that ordinances already on the books are enough to protect citizens from aggressive panhandling.

Now that the new law has passed, the city can almost certainly count on a challenge.

"I think that the city of Orlando is trying to be on the cutting edge of how far it can push it as far as the restricting of the homeless," says Glenn Katon, director of the central region for the ACLU. "I think it's continuing that."

Katon suspects that there may be some holes in the city's ordinance; notably the poorly marked blue-box zones.

But the bigger issue may be free speech.

"The government cannot limit speech simply because it finds it unpleasant – that's unconstitutional," said Rosalind Matos, a South Florida staff attorney for the ACLU, in a June press release regarding the group's challenge of a Miami Beach ordinance.

"What surprises me about the whole thing is that with all of the uproar and controversy that's likely to result from this, why is the city so intent on pushing the envelope?" says Katon. "Why not just go with some normal restrictions? They're willing to take on the potential challenges in court and protests and all that; is it really a worthwhile trade-off? This goes beyond the constitutional component of it. But that's the part that I find so stupid, frankly."

Katon says the city's contention that it already provides adequate services for the homeless downtown is beside the point.

"If the services that they're offering downtown are so adequate, why are people out panhandling?" he says. "I mean, is it because they like to be out in the heat or all their needs are met by these services? To me, that's great if they are providing services. That's a nice step. ... If it's constitutionally permissible, it's constitutionally permissible regardless of whether you're giving them vouchers to the Hilton. People have a right to be out there and say, 'I'm hungry, could you spare some change?' If that doesn't comport with their vision of the 'City Beautiful,' well, that's too bad."

bmanes@orlandoweekly.com

Orlando bans night panhandling but fails to enforce day rules

2007-09-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

source: orlandosentinel.com/orl-beg18sep18,0,7715362.story

PANHANDLING CRACKDOWN
No begging after dark
Orlando bans night panhandling but fails to enforce day rules

Mark Schlueb
Sentinel Staff Writer

(published) September 18, 2007

Orlando beefed up its panhandling rules Monday by outlawing begging after dark, but a review by the Orlando Sentinel has found that the city hasn't been sticking to the rules already on the books.

Monday's action means those caught panhandling anywhere in the city between sunset and sunrise will face fines of as much as $500, up to 60 days in jail, or both. Mayor Buddy Dyer and police Chief Mike McCoy said the measure approved 6-1 by the City Council makes Orlando safer.

"The concept is ... that you don't have strangers coming up to you after dark asking for money," McCoy said. "It frightens most people."

The nighttime ban is the city's latest effort to crack down on panhandling without banning it, which courts in other jurisdictions have found unconstitutional. Since 2000, downtown panhandlers have been allowed to beg only in a "panhandling zone," blue boxes painted on the sidewalk in about three dozen locations.

But the Sentinel review found that most of those blue boxes no longer exist. Of the 36 boxes painted downtown seven years ago, only five are still visible. Most were never repainted and disappeared or faded to a vague blue smudge. Many were lost to the condo and office building boom.

"They're all gone, with all the new sidewalks and construction," said Chester Kaczneski, 38, who was panhandling Monday morning at Robinson Street and Orange Avenue -- where there used to be a blue box -- after failing to find work in a labor pool.

"I'm looking for work," he said. "But if they catch you out of a box, you're going to jail."

The city's panhandling ordinance also requires the Orlando Police Department to hand out maps showing panhandling zone locations upon request. But a clerk at police headquarters said the department long ago ran out of the maps and no longer distributes them.

Courts have ruled panhandling is free speech that can't be outlawed entirely. An attorney who represents the homeless said the city's ordinance might be on shaky ground because officials haven't maintained the blue boxes.

"If they're going to regulate the time, the place or the manner you express yourself, they have to provide an alternative. For the government to promise an alternative and not follow through raised constitutionality problems," said Jackie Dowd of Legal Advocacy at Work, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to the homeless.

Dyer said there have been few arrests for begging outside the blue boxes because police have instead focused on "violent or aggressive" panhandlers. Arrest statistics were not immediately available.

Dowd wasn't convinced.

"My clients tell me over and over about being hassled for not being in the blue boxes or sitting down," she said. "The police use the blue boxes as leverage to move them along."

Officials said they are aware that many of the boxes are gone. They plan to repaint some and move others.

"It's to our advantage to have defined blue boxes," Dyer said. "We probably need to take a look at redesignating new ones."

The council approved the night ban, with Commissioner Robert Stuart dissenting. He argued that the city should concentrate on educating residents to donate to homeless services rather than panhandlers.

"My problem is, there is no alternative today other than enforcement," said Stuart, executive director of a Christian charity. "This issue needs to have something else that comes along with it."

Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.

•••

[Comment from Scott Maxwell's "Taking Names" column in the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 18, 2007]

Don't pols beg, too?

The Orlando City Council passed its no-panhandling-after-dark law Monday, brushing aside free-speech arguments that people have a constitutional right to ask for money.

Mayor Buddy Dyer and the council may be right on the legal front. Still, it's kind of interesting to compare the way politicians in this town treat asking for money in very different ways.

Take, for instance, the reluctance to embrace serious campaign-finance reform. Apparently we live in a community where politicians think free-speech laws were meant to protect special interests' right to give them thousands of campaign dollars -- but not the right of the destitute to ask for spare change.

W. Palm Beach to Bar Some Handouts for Homeless

2007-09-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2007/09/15/s1b_minor_0915.html

City set to bar some handouts for homeless

By Emily Minor

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

(published) Saturday, September 15, 2007

The word "homeless" isn't anywhere in the proposal, but everybody knows it's the homeless they're talking about.

West Palm Beach commissioners are about to outlaw feeding the homeless at three downtown spots. No more free "food distribution" at the Centennial Fountain, the library or Meyer Amphitheatre.

And I don't think they're referring to me handing out snacks to my family.

"It says everything but 'stop feeding the homeless,'" said City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell.

For years, various groups of mostly faith-based individuals have provided meals downtown, and the outreach was always noticeable because the fountain, library lawn and amphitheatre are popular play areas.

Years ago, it was students from Palm Beach Atlantic University, the Christian-based college a few blocks from the library, that did the feedings.

Gary Richmond, the administrator at First Presbyterian Church of West Palm Beach - where the homeless are still fed every Monday night - said the student ministry started doing bag lunches and handing them out at the fountain on Wednesday nights.

"But they got told by the city to get out of there," Richmond said.

"They moved to CityPlace, but the management there said, 'You have to move on.'''

Homeless and the just plain hungry

Eventually, the PBAU students wound up at Richmond's church at 301 S. Olive Ave, where the church added a Tuesday-night feeding that the students handled. The church and the college aren't affiliated.

Richmond said the college kids eventually faded out and the church added Tuesday night to its program. It lasted until this past August, when the church did away with it for money reasons.

"We started this program six years ago, and back then it was 25 to 30 street people," Richmond said.

But things change.

Richmond said their Monday dinners began to attractlow-income individuals and families who knew about the free food. The meals are prepared at the church kitchen, and these days the Monday night dinners can draw as many as 150 - many of them construction workers, he said.

"The workers knew there was a meal, and they started walking over," said Richmond, who said they're always looking for volunteers and donations.

Meanwhile, at the fountain, other groups kept the feedings going on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and business owners - already hard-pressed to convince customers that downtown West Palm is safe - didn't much like it.

Some understand businesses' concerns

Lela Jordan, the youth and family services coordinator for Vickers Houseanda longtime advocate for the homeless, said this ordinance - which is scheduled for a public hearing on Sept. 24 - has been a long time coming.

"You really can't blame them," said Jordan, about the worried business owners.

Frankly, Jordan says all those homeless individuals around all those kids made her nervous - and not for the reasons you might think.

She worried about her homeless clientele.

"One time I came around the corner of the library and there was a homeless individual relieving himself," she said. "That poor homeless guy could have been put in jail for life for exposing himself.

"I think this will keep everybody safe."

Plus, Jordan knows you have to give and take.

Me? I'd be shooting my mouth off about how wrong this is.

It's a public space. Of course they can feed the homeless there. Stupid politicians. Nutty rules. Heartless businessmen.

But Jordan sees the bigger picture, the greater good.

Which is why she's Lela Jordan and I'm not.

[Mote: Another of the groups that would be affected by this ordinance is West Palm Food Not Bombs.]

City Council Approves New Panhandling Ban

2007-09-17T23:55:00.000-07:00

source: Orlando Sentinel website blog

Nighttime panhandlers are persona non grata

posted by Mark Schlueb on Sep 17, 2007 4:39:22 PM

The Orlando City Council banned panhandling after dark anywhere in the city limits.

Commissioners gave the sunset-to-sunrise ban final approval after hearing Police Chief Mike McCoy and Mayor Buddy Dyer describe it as a public safety measure.

[Comment: It seems like every new measure the City adopts against the homeless is called "a public safety measure" in an effort to justify it. It would help if the press would ask officials to cite facts and figures to back up their "public safety" claims.]

Commissioner Robert Stuart voted against the measure, arguing that the city should instead concentrate on educating residents to donate to homeless service agencies rather than to panhandlers.

[Comment: Kudos to Commissioner Stuart for once again exhibiting common sense and compassion. He also was one of only two "no" votes against Orlando's anti-homeless food sharing ordinance.]]

NOTE: A previous version of this post incorrectly said the ban would be in effect from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

SPEAK OUT AGAINST PANHANDLING ORDINANCE

2007-09-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

S.T.O.P.--Stop the Ordinance Partnership http://stop-orlando.org strongly encourages local concerned citizens and homeless advocates to attend tomorrow's (Mon., Sept. 17) Orlando City Council meeting, which starts at 2 p.m., to speak out against the City's new panhandling ordinance. This measure bans panhandling anywhere within the City limits "after sunset or before sunrise." It is being justified by exaggerated claims about "aggressive panhandling." What it really does is give the Dyer administration and the Orlando police another tool which they can use to harass and punish homeless people by further making their status as homeless people a crime. It sends the homeless the message that they are not welcome in Orlando. It stigmatizes the homeless and marginalizes them, which encourages people to see them as less than equals, as people who are inferior and socially unacceptable and undeserving of respect and dignity. This in turn will lead to further instances of violence against the homeless (a real problem throughout Florida including Orlando).

This measure attacks a symptom of homelessness rather than the problem's roots causes--low wage jobs, not enough affordable housing for working poor people, the lack of a homeless drop-in center (where they could get services), the chronic shortage of shelter beds in Central Florida (2,000 for a homeless population estimated at 9,000), a shortage of mental health and substance abuse treatment programs for the homeless, etc. It also represents another black eye for the City of Orlando since it shows that Orlando--at least its politicians, its civic elite and the developers and business interests they represent--lacks compassion for the least among us and would rather push them aside than provide the sort of substantive assistance they need to become self-supporting and domiciled. This ordinance is authoritarian to its core--it criminalizes free speech (asking for alms or charity) and takes away the autonomy of the homeless to survive as best they can without breaking the law since giving money to a panhandler is totally consensual; this ordinance seeks to change that by interfering with interactions between panhandlers and the panhandled and seeks to make an act of compassion--giving spare change--into a socially unacceptable act, which is wrong. Finally this ordinance shows that while Orlando may aspire to be a "world-class city" (one of the rationales for spending more than $1 billion on the three venues), it's really a small town at heart that wants its downtown to resemble main street at Disney World rather than the urban corridors one finds in real cities, teeming with people from all walks of life.

Enforcement of this ordinance will require the use of scarce police resources that could be better used to deal with an ever-increasing violent crime rate in Orlando and will not result in any improvement in the quality of life for residents or visitors in downtown Orlando. It will not even probably noticably reduce the level of panhandling downtown since laws designed to prohibit certain behaviors have a dismal track record of compliance (drug laws and America's failed experiement with the prohibition of alcohol are two good examples). Undoubtedly, many of the homeless people arrested and convicted for violating this ordinance will serve a few weeks to two months in the county jail, using taxpayers' money to incarcerate non-violent offenders who pose no threat to society. Those arrested will undoubtedly accumulate fines (and penalties for not paying them) that will pose another barrier to their ability to reintegrate into the mainstream of society.

Speaking against this ordinance is not going to change the outcome of the second vote (only one commissioner, Robert Stuart [to his credit] voted against this measure at first reading). However, it's still important that our voices be heard. The City Council and Mayor Dyer need to know that they're actions are being monitored by citizens who believe that respect and compassion for the homeless and respect for civil liberties and finding real solutions--ones that are humane, effective, and constitutional--to the problems of homelessness in our community are important.

Pleas be warned that speaking out against this ordinance will require some patience since it will require sitting first sitting through many other items on the Council agenda. It may not come up for discussion, citizen input and a vote until at least some time between 3-4 p.m.

The ordinance (which is described as "An ordinance amending Chapter 43 of the City Code - Section 43.86(5) and Section 43.87(2)(c). Time of Panhandling") is the LAST item on the agenda (under the heading Ordinances/2nd Read). It comes after the Opening (which includes the invocation, Pledge of Allegiance, etc.); awards presentations; Mayor's Update (which has items A-L); Hearings/Ordinances/2nd Read; and Ordinances/1st Read.

For more information, e-mail stop-orlando@stop-orlando.org or call 407.252.1379.

Panhandlers Still Haunt City Hall

2007-09-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-maxwell1307sep13,0,7235642.column

Panhandlers still haunt City Hall

Scott Maxwell

TAKING NAMES

(published) September 13, 2007

Once again, Buddy Dyer and the Orlando City Council are trying to deal with the complicated issue of homelessness in the simplest possible way -- by arresting the destitute.

This time, the council is expected to give final approval Monday to make it a crime to panhandle after dark.

That comes on the heels of Dyer and company making it a crime for volunteers to feed groups of people in a public park. And after making it a crime to sit down on sidewalks.

If there's a way to throw poor people in jail, Orlando seems interested.

The city's willing to throw resources at the matter, too. Undercover cops have been used, to nab not only panhandlers, but also those who perpetrate the heinous crime of ladling out unauthorized stew.

To be fair, Buddy has simply followed suit. Before he ever took office, the City Beautiful tried everything from banning panhandling to forcing beggars into little blue boxes.

And yet still, we have homeless people. In fact, Dyer claims the problem is as bad as ever.

Doesn't that say something?

It does to Robert Stuart.

The Orlando commissioner whose full-time job is running the Christian Service Center was the only member of the council who opposed the latest panhandling law.

"We take the easy way," he said. "I mean, it's easy to pass an ordinance. What's hard is to look for a solution."

Let's be clear. Nobody likes panhandlers.

When I'm walking with my 4- and 7-year-old, I pull them a little closer or cross to the other side of the street if I see one in our path.

But afterward, I often think that, whatever fear or discomfort I just encountered, the person asking for the money has it even worse.

And then you start to wonder: How can we change that?

I know that Buddy has asked himself that question.

He and his wife have personally helped the Coalition for the Homeless raise money. And he was intimately involved in the creation of the Regional Commission on Homelessness.

The regional commission -- which involves bringing experts together from throughout Central Florida -- is a great idea. In fact, it's such a good idea that Stuart couldn't figure out why there was such a rush to pass another law before the commission completed its work.

"We've got a regional commission," he said. "Why don't we listen to them?"

Dyer said Wednesday that he didn't think he needed to wait, arguing that panhandling doesn't have "anything to do with homelessness" and that a large percentage of beggars go back to their homes every night. I'm sure some would debate that.

But Dyer also said he was ready to take action to protect residents -- and that if he waited for consensus on everything, little would get done.

To truly make a difference, however, there has to be more than punitive measures.

According to one report I saw, 41 percent of the homeless are families with children; 23 percent are mentally ill; and 5 percent are minors without parents.

Jail cells aren't the solution for all those people.

That report, by the way, came from City Hall.

It was prepared for and given to Dyer a few years ago.

The report stressed that the city should look for long-term goals "and not only short-term solutions."

It recommended more substance-abuse programs and mental-health treatment. It talked of job training and affordable housing.

All of those suggestions drove home the same point -- that helping the homeless learn new skills, kick a drug habit or get the right medication can be crucial to ending a cycle of destitution that jail cells alone never can.

And yet many of those goals remain unfulfilled -- most of them, in fact, Stuart said.

We have, however, come up with new ways to arrest people for feeding the homeless or asking for spare change.

And yes, new laws were, in fact, recommended in that report. Even Stuart, who served on that committee, says as much.

"I think that was the 21st suggestion," he said. "Out of 23."

Orlando City Council Approves Panhandling Restrictions

2007-09-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

orlandosentinel.com/community/news/conway/orl-beg1107sep11,0,4226728.story

No panhandling in the dark, Orlando says
City moves to limit begging -- ACLU says it can't

Mark Schlueb

Sentinel Staff Writer

(published) September 11, 2007

If you need spare change, don't wait until after dark to ask for it.

The Orlando City Council voted 5-1 Monday to grant preliminary approval to an ordinance that would prohibit panhandling anywhere within city limits between sunset and sunrise.

For the past seven years, the city has confined beggars downtown to a few dozen "panhandling zones," which are 3-by-15-foot rectangles painted on the sidewalk.

Police Chief Mike McCoy said the nighttime ban is a matter of public safety.

"We ought to be able to go outside without being worried about being accosted after dark," McCoy said. "It makes it a lot safer for everyone involved to limit it to the daytime hours."

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida spoke against the proposal, arguing that it is unconstitutional.

"It tramples the most basic and fundamental of rights that are guaranteed by the constitution: the right to free speech," Matt de Vlieger said.

In 1997, the city began requiring would-be panhandlers to go to police headquarters to obtain a special permit before asking for money. When courts began overturning similar laws in other cities, Orlando dropped that rule in favor of the painted panhandling boxes.

Sean Kane, who has been battling the city's anti-panhandling efforts for years, predicted the nighttime ban would be overturned if challenged in court. The city's justification for the ordinance -- complaints about aggressive panhandlers -- doesn't hold up, Kane said.

"Everything we've listened to is anecdotal hyperbole," he said.

But city officials said other cities, such as Sarasota and Pittsburgh, have adopted nighttime bans. Orlando's original proposal was to ban panhandling from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., but the council changed it.

Commissioner Robert Stuart, executive director of the Christian Service Center, was the City Council's lone dissenter. He said the council should put off a decision until the Regional Commission on Homelessness, which was formed in June, issues its recommendations. Stuart also said the ban isn't necessary because there are already laws on the books to deal with aggressive and abusive panhandlers.

"I think this is a bad ordinance at the wrong time," Stuart said. "If people feel threatened today, they can call, and that situation can be taken care of."

But other commissioners said more needs to be done.

"We get called mean because we don't want people being chased, we don't want people being harassed, we don't want people being assaulted," Commissioner Patty Sheehan said. "I'm constantly getting panhandled, and it's scary."

The council is expected to grant final approval to the ban at its next meeting.

Mark Schlueb can be reached at 407-420-5417 or mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com.

Orlando May Further Restrict Panhandling

2007-09-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-mbeg0807sep08,0,3650433.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout

OrlandoSentinel.com

Orlando might ban nighttime begging
Reports of aggressive panhandling spur a push for the City Council to consider more limits.

Mark Schlueb | Sentinel Staff Writer

(published) September 8, 2007

First, Orlando made panhandlers apply for permits before asking for spare change. Then the city restricted downtown begging to a few dozen "panhandling zones."

On Monday, the City Council will be asked to consider the next step: an outright ban on panhandling at night.

"We get reports just about every day of a panhandler using abusive language or threatening people," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said Friday. "We want to be able to provide a safe environment in downtown and in the entire city."

The proposed ordinance, which if approved Monday would have to come before the council again for a final vote, would prohibit panhandlers from soliciting donations from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Those are generally some of the busiest times for panhandling, particularly downtown, which is flooded with bar and nightclub traffic into the early-morning hours.

Panhandlers who defy the rule would face a fine of as much as $500, up to 60 days in jail, or both.

Advocates for the homeless described it as another in a string of actions aimed at criminalizing homelessness.

"Another law targeting the homeless population is not going to work," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "Unfortunately, people sometimes have to panhandle to survive."

Last summer, the city barred activists and church groups from feeding groups of more than 25 people in city parks without a special permit. Groups can get two permits per year. That rule was sparked by complaints from businesses around Lake Eola Park, where large groups of homeless people gathered for regular meals.

The city once prohibited panhandling altogether but backed away when courts began striking down similar laws as unconstitutional. So in 1997, the city passed a law requiring beggars to go to the police station for a permit before panhandling.

Three years later, the city did away with the permit system and painted 36 blue boxes on sidewalks. Now, panhandling is allowed downtown only within the 3-foot-by-15-foot rectangles.

Since then, Orlando has also made it illegal to sit or lie down on the sidewalk, and it has occasionally used undercover cops to nab beggars.

Although the blue boxes restrict panhandling only in downtown, the proposed nighttime ban would apply citywide.

Activist Ben Markeson said that instead of spending money to enforce panhandling and anti-feeding laws, the city should use the money to fund more alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment programs. That would reduce the homeless population, he said.

"They're trying to address the symptom of the problem rather than a root cause," said Markeson, a member of Orlando Food Not Bombs, a group challenging the feeding restrictions in court.

City officials say they are only reacting to complaints about aggressive panhandlers from downtown business owners, residents and workers.

At Orlando's Church Street Station, chef Mark Dollard said he supports the proposed ordinance because aggressive panhandling drives away his customers. Dollard ran Absinthe Bistro and Bar until recently and is now renovating the building to house his Brick & Fire Pizza and Wine Co.

"After dark, do you want someone coming up to you shaking a cup in your face? I'm spending 40 grand a month over here. I don't want panhandling," Dollard said.

Robert "Sarge" Kent was unobtrusively panhandling from inside a blue box next to the tracks on Church Street on Friday afternoon.

Kent, who uses a wheelchair and said he's a Vietnam veteran, said he panhandles because there's little of his disability check left after rent and utilities.

Still, Kent, 55, said he supports the nighttime ban.

"I don't come out here at night because it's dangerous," he said. "There are a lot of homeless people out here who are disrespectful, laying in front of businesses."

Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.

Resources:

National Coalition for the Homeless http://nationalhomeless.org

Orlando Food Not Bombs http://orlandofoodnotbombs.org

###

TEXT OF ORLANDO'S PROPOSED NEW PANHANDLING ORDINANCE

AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 43, MISCELLANEOUS OFFENSES, OF THE CODE OF THE CITY OF ORLANDO BY
ADOPTION OF NEW SECTION 43.86(5), TIME OF PANHANDLING, AND BY ADDING NEW SECTION 43.87(2)(C), TIME OF PANHANDLING, TO PROHIBIT PANHANDLING THROUGHOUT THE CITY BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7:00 P.M. AND 7:00 A.M.; AND PROVIDING FOR SEVERABILITY AND AN EFFECTIVE DATE.
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ORLANDO, FLORIDA:
SECTION ONE: Section 43.86, Chapter 43, of the Code of the City of Orlando be, and the same is hereby, amended to read as follows:
Sec. 43.86. Panhandling.
* * *
(5) Time of Panhandling
(a) It is unlawful for any person to panhandle, as defined in this Chapter, in the City limits of Orlando, between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 7 a.m.
SECTION TWO: Section 43.87(2), Chapter 43, of the Code of the City of Orlando be, and the same is hereby, amended to read as follows:
Sec. 43.87. Solicitation and Off-Premises Canvassing on Public Property in the Downtown Core District of Orlando, Florida.
* * *
(2) Prohibitions
* * *
(C) Time of Panhandling: It is unlawful to panhandle, as defined in Section 43.86 of the City Code, between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. in the Downtown Core District, including within designated exempt zones.
SECTION THREE: If any section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or portion of this ordinance is for any reason held invalid or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction, such portion shall be deemed a separate, distinct, and independent provision and such holding shall not affect the validity of the remaining portion hereto.
SECTION FIVE: This ordinance shall take effect as provided by law.
ADVERTISED: , 2007.
READ FIRST TIME: , 2007.
READ SECOND TIME AND ADOPTED:

, 2007.

CITY OF ORLANDO, FLORIDA

ATTEST:

Mayor / Pro Tem

Alana C. Brenner, City Clerk

APPROVED AS TO FORM AND LEGALITY
for the use and reliance of the
City of Orlando, Florida, only.
, 2007.
City Attorney
Orlando, Florida

Homeless people to tell Cent. FL teens about life on the street

2007-08-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Homeless people to tell teens about life on the street

Kristen Reed

Sentinel Staff Writer

[published] August 27, 2007

David Pirtle thought the worst of homeless people. They were bums, derelicts, worthless.

They were lazy, crazy and smelly.

It was a notion he believed as a teen and a young adult.

"Right up until I became homeless," he said.

Now, the Washington, D.C., man shares his story with youths across the country in the hopes of breaking down stereotypes and putting an end to violence against homeless people.

The message is coming to a city near you.

The National Coalition for the Homeless is creating up to a dozen local speakers' bureaus in Florida cities this fall. Daytona Beach and Orlando are among them.

The effort began in the early 1990s when a "Faces of Homelessness" speakers bureau was established in Washington. Small panels of people who have been or still are homeless speak at high schools, colleges and youth groups and share their experiences on the street.

That group travels across the country, and a handful of other bureaus have popped up in cities. But this is the first time the coalition is targeting an entire state.

"Florida is one of the meanest states for the homeless," said Michael O'Neill, head of the Washington-based bureau.

Florida has experienced more attacks against the homeless than any other state, according to the coalition. Statistics show eight homeless people died here in 2006 as a result of attacks, mostly at the hands of young people.

Groups try to stop attacks

In 2005, Michael Roberts was killed in the woods of Holly Hill when four teens repeatedly beat him with sticks, fists and logs. Earlier this year, John D'Amico suffered lifelong injuries when a cinderblock was smashed into his face in Daytona Beach during an attack by a 17-year-old and two 10-year-olds, who are thought to be the youngest attackers of the homeless.

Organizers also say Florida has a record of criminalizing homelessness by enacting policies that target the group.

The Orlando City Council last year passed an ordinance that prohibits groups from feeding the homeless on city property downtown without a permit. Each group can get two permits a year.

"When cities debate, pass and support such laws, it gives the impression that homeless people are the scum of the Earth," said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "The city wants to get rid of them, so young people think they'll do it."

His organization will coordinate with local homeless coalitions and assistance groups to set up the panels of speakers, who will receive a small honorarium for their time. They should be in the schools by November.

George Crossley president of the Central Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, welcomes the speakers.

"I am all for anything that will cause young people to stop thinking about homeless people as worthless," he said. "I think that is some education that's much needed."

Raymond Adkins has been homeless for seven years. He thinks having homeless people go into the schools would debunk stereotypes and show teens what it's really like to live on the streets.

"It would show the kids to not mistreat the homeless," he said outside the Homeless Assistance Center in Daytona Beach, where meals are served each afternoon. Adkins, who lost his home and business after a "nasty divorce" and also served time in prison, said he would be willing to share his story. "It's rough out here."

Daniel Hargett, who is passing through Daytona Beach on his way back to Ohio, said it would probably be better to make the teens hit the streets with the homeless.

"Take all the kids that throw the rocks and put them on the streets with [the homeless] . . . and see how they live," he said. "They wouldn't make it one day without their mommy."

Barbara Burns, the sister of Michael Roberts, already shares her brother's story with youth groups and told the coalition she would participate in a panel discussion. Her hope is that the speakers will be able to motivate teens to become activists for the homeless.

"It just starts with one," she said. "Then it just carries on over."

'Earth-shattering'

Pirtle, who lived on the streets for three years, already is seeing change by telling his story.

He had a "normal" life and worked as a restaurant manager in Phoenix until he began experiencing symptoms of schizoaffective disorder, a type of schizophrenia. His unexplained actions caused him to lose his job and his apartment, and he started hopping trains east.

He slept on park benches, rummaged for food in garbage and stayed in abandoned houses before heading to Washington, where he stayed in a shelter.

"I remember the very first night -- it was earth-shattering," Pirtle said. "It's a completely other world when you're standing outside in the middle of the night and you realize you have no place to go."

He began speaking to teens last fall and said it's amazing to see teens change their attitudes and get out in the community to help the homeless.

"No matter what you think about people who are homeless, you are wrong," he said.

Kristen Reed can be reached at kreed@orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7924.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Vegas Ban on Feeding Homeless

2007-08-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

Vegas Ban on Feeding Homeless Struck

By Associated Press
8:10 PM EDT, August 23, 2007

LAS VEGAS - A federal judge permanently barred the city from preventing people from feeding the homeless in parks, but upheld some other park restrictions that critics targeted as equally unfair.

The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Jones allows the city to continue to enforce other laws, including trespassing laws, permit requirements for park gatherings of more than 25 people and the right to designate certain park areas for children's use only.

Jones ruled that the plaintiffs had not met the burden of showing that the laws showed a discriminatory intent.

"The City has a significant government interest in protecting children and providing public parks for their safe enjoyment," Jones wrote.

The ruling is the latest development in a 14-month-old federal court battle between the city and civil liberties and homeless advocates.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he plans to appeal.

City Attorney Brad Jerbic said the ruling affirms the city's position that the trespassing ordinances were solely intended to discourage criminal behavior in parks. One ordinance allows marshals to ban individuals from parks if they commit crimes on city property.

"It never had to do with being homeless; it had to do with conduct," Jerbic said.

Homeless advocate Gail Sacco [from Las Vegas Food Not Bombs], a plaintiff in the case who frequently hands out food and water in parks, said she is glad the ordinance prohibiting that was permanently blocked. But she is concerned about the law requiring permits for large gatherings because it's hard to predict how many people will show up when she is at a park.

"We aren't doing this to be arrogant," Sacco said. "We go where people are hungry. The food is a way to build a sense of community."

Homeless Camp Is Site of 3rd Killing in 10 Months

2007-08-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

Note: The victim has been identified as Stephen M. King, 49.

Homeless camp is site of 3rd killing

Walter Pacheco

[Orlando] Sentinel Staff Writer

[published] August 23, 2007

The slaying of a transient in a wooded area just half a mile west of tony College Park is the third killing in 10 months in the same camp frequented by homeless people, police said.

Orlando police on Tuesday arrested transient Robert Lloyd Davis, 47, on charges of first-degree murder in the death of a man whose body was found off John Young Parkway and W.D. Judge Drive. The victim's identity was withheld until relatives could be told.

Homeless camps offer open spaces, privacy and a chance to indulge in freedoms not allowed at shelters. But law-enforcement officials, advocates for the homeless and experts fear that homeless people are living under a false sense of security in the woods -- and they say the recent violence at the camps is proof.

"That area off John Young Parkway has been a homeless camp for the last 20 years," said Orlando police spokeswoman Sgt. Barbara Jones. "It's very dangerous and dark there at night and detectives said the area has booby traps to keep outsiders from entering the camps. The only time officers enter the area is when we receive a call of shots fired or a body in the woods."

In December, a homeless man at the camp shot another transient in the torso during an argument over a dog. Also found in that wooded area were the unidentified remains of a homeless woman. Police suspected foul play in her death.

Dennis Jackson bled to death on New Year's Day in 2006 at a camp off Technology Drive and John Yong Parkway -- about a half-mile south of Tuesday's killing -- after being stabbed in the leg. Charged was Richard Wayne Phillips, another transient.

But the violence isn't limited to the homeless camps on that stretch of road in Orlando. Four such homeless camps are in a three-mile stretch of John Young Parkway between Princeton and Columbia streets.

Deputies in January found the body of Michael Cowan in a homeless camp in the woods near Forsyth Road and Muskogee Street in east Orange County. Cowan had a gunshot wound to his torso.

Officials at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida estimate that more than 7,500 transients live in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties.

Social scientist Jim Wright, a professor at the University of Central Florida who also sits on the coalition's board of directors, conducted a study in January and estimates as many as 2,000 homeless people could be living in east Orange County -- more than half of them in homeless camps in the woods.

Racial lines divide homeless people between the camps and the shelters, according to Wright.

"The men living in the woods are predominantly white and feel uncomfortable in the shelters, which house mostly black men. They feel vulnerable in that closed environment," Wright said. "However, some of these men have been diagnosed with mental issues and they self-medicate with alcohol. That could certainly lead to violent altercations with each other."

Coalition spokeswoman Muffet Robinson said that despite these dangers, some transients still prefer the fragile freedom of the outdoors.

"We have these rules so we can provide the homeless with a safe environment," Robinson said. "But some people choose to stay in the woods because there they can do whatever they want and not have to abide by anyone's rules."

Walter Pacheco can be reached at wpacheco@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6262.

Teen Calls Beating of Homeless Man 'Wrong'

2007-08-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

Teen calls beating of transient 'wrong'

Kristen Reed
[Orlando] Sentinel Staff Writer

[published] August 23, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH [,Fla.]--Jeremy Woods wishes he had just walked away.

Instead, he punched a homeless man, initiating a fight that drew national attention to youth violence against the homeless.

The one blow could cost him more than a year in prison.

The 17-year-old pleaded no contest Wednesday to beating John D'Amico and will be sentenced next month. The plea did not come with an agreement on sentencing, but the prosecutor is recommending that Woods be sentenced as a youthful offender to 15 months in prison followed by 47 months of probation.

Woods was the last of three youths to face charges for the March 27 attack on D'Amico. The case made headlines because two 10-year-olds, Drew and Jordan, are the youngest to be charged with beating a homeless person.

"What I did was wrong," Woods told the Orlando Sentinel last week while in the Volusia County Branch Jail awaiting his court date. "I just want to go home," he said in his first media interview.

Drew and Jordan each were sentenced to spend time in a juvenile-detention facility. Drew made a deal with prosecutors and will spend at least six months incarcerated. Jordan might be in state custody until 2018. The Sentinel is not publishing the boys' last names because of their ages.

A hard life in jail

Woods said if he could go back to that day, "I would have walked away from it all."

He said the arrest was the first time he had ever been in serious trouble.

Life in jail is hard, he says. Woods goes to school, reads and watches television. He's scared about where he might end up.

His lanky frame is swallowed by the jail-issued orange jumpsuit, and he's quiet, keeping his head bowed and saying little during the visit.

Woods said he was a normal teenager who enjoyed surfing and hanging out at the beach. He played high-school football in Georgia.

"I like to have fun. I don't like to get into trouble," Woods said. "I stay on the right track -- that's what my mom always told me."

But Woods' life was on a troubling track at the time of the attack. He had come to Florida from Georgia in December to live with his mother. A week later, she was picked up on a warrant out of Georgia. She was sent to prison, but Woods doesn't know why.

Woods had left behind his ailing father, who died within a month of his arrest.

Alone in Daytona, Woods found a job and moved in with Jordan's family because the boys' mothers had been friends. He worked doing odd jobs at the Daytona International Speedway, which happened to be where D'Amico found work as a day laborer.

Woods said he didn't know D'Amico was homeless when the attack began. He said he has never had a problem with other homeless people.

"I feel bad for a lot of them because they don't have anything," he said.

The boys' case added fuel to the fight seeking stiffer penalties for attacks on the homeless and for better record-keeping of the assaults. After the attack, Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, declared Volusia the second most-dangerous county to be homeless in Florida, a state that sees more homeless beatings than anywhere in the United States.

"It's a young-person thing to attack the homeless," Stoops said, citing statistics that show 13- to 19-year-olds are responsible for nearly 70 percent of the beatings. "For whatever reason, it continues to be a problem."

Teen threw 1st punch

Woods, who was charged as an adult, said he played the smallest role in the attack with fists, stones and a cinderblock.

He said he threw the first punch in retaliation. Jordan, whom Woods lived with and regarded as his "little brother," had told him D'Amico had punched him earlier in the day.

"I didn't hit him hard enough to make him fall or put a mark on him," Woods said of D'Amico.

Then, Woods said, he left. He thought the younger boys were following, but the attack continued and a cinderblock was smashed into D'Amico's face.

The assault left D'Amico, who has adamantly denied initiating the attack, with lifelong injuries. Woods wonders what scars from the attack will linger in his life. He had hoped to complete his high-school equivalency diploma, join the Army and become a military-police officer.

"I don't know if that's going to happen anymore," Woods said.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

Z Mag Article on Orlando Food Not Bombs

2007-08-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

Note: Orlando Food Not Bombs is an active member of Stop the Ordinance Partnership (STOP)

Source: Z Magazine Online
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/curTOC.htm

July / August 2007 Volume 20 Number 7/8

Helping the Homeless

The Right To Food

By Dan Read

Eric Montanez could hardly be considered a criminal. As a volunteer with [Orlando] Food not Bombs (FNB), Montanez worked distributing food to the homeless in his native Orlando, Florida. Just 21 years of age, he is one of many volunteers who serve meals to the hungry and work to create a community atmosphere with those in need. If you find yourself wondering how such a person could be considered a clear and present danger requiring police intervention, nobody could blame you.

But on April 4, Montanez was working his usual stint, dishing out rice and stew to 30 or so dispossessed citizens that populate Orlando’s streets. Meanwhile, his actions were being monitored by two plainclothes police officers, who called for assistance to arrest Montanez and take a vial of stew as evidence of his crime.

Despite vibrant protest from other FNB volunteers, he was swiftly hauled off to a local police station. Phone calls to the mayor and other civic officials were not returned, but fortunately Montanez was released from custody later in the day after posting bail.

Montanez was the first to be arrested under a new city ordinance against “large group feedings.” Aimed at stopping individuals or groups from feeding the poor and homeless, the new rule claims to address the concerns of business owners who fear that customers may be put off shopping by the sight of a “rough sleeper.” Other Orlando residents have also complained that parks are being “turned into soup kitchens,” despite the fact that such activities fulfill a vital role in the lives of many of the city’s poor.

Even though the official word coming from local government is that the legislation would not be enforced until ratified by a court decision in 2008, unofficially the Orlando Police Department appears eager to begin. Keith McHenry, one of the co-founders of FNB, commented that the recent police actions amount to “a pattern of trying to drive the homeless out of sight.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any other reason for the city ordinance other than restricting the movements of the homeless to preordained areas, paving the way for further gentrification of working class neighborhoods and brushing poverty under the carpet. Such measures have been tried on and off over several years, with authorities in a number of urban areas across America often toying with the idea of reintroducing them, despite the staunch resistance they have provoked in the past.

Unfortunately, after having been inspired by the example of Las Vegas—which has successfully cracked down on the feeding of the homeless in city parks—various Orlando political figures seem eager to quash any further resistance. Orlando FNB is now witnessing a constant police presence at their feedings, with officers on at least one occasion being fully outfitted in SWAT uniforms. FNB feels that the police presence is intended to intimidate both the volunteers and the homeless, in the process paving the way for the expected full- scale implementation of the ban next year.

A Turbulent History

The situation may not be as grim as some fear. FNB has a proud history of vocal opposition to anti- poor legislation, having endured widespread surveillance and persecution over the course of its existence. Since its beginning in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, FNB now has hundreds of chapters, each playing an important role in the lives of the homeless. Activists not only hand out food, but also political literature that takes a strong stand against the occupation of Iraq and the ongoing “war on terror.”

Over its 27 year existence it has been a vocal component of the wider progressive movement for peace and social change. The first recorded arrest of a volunteer was on August 15, 1988, when nine activists were taken into custody at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Over the next 9 years, over 1,000 similar arrests took place; 700 of them directly due to an alleged violation of a court order prohibiting the feeding of homeless citizens.

FNB has been dubbed one of the country’s “most hardcore terrorist groups” by the U.S. military. How such a label could be applied was difficult to see, but after September 11, FNB clearly lived up to its “terrorist reputation” by supplying hot meals to rescue workers returning from the disaster area. In the wake of the Asian Tsunami, FNB helped feed many who might otherwise have gone without. In New Orleans FNB volunteers were among the first to respond after Hurricane Katrina.

In a climate of fear, it does not take much for organizations opposed to the status quo to be branded as “terrorists,” no matter how absurd it may seem. The difficulties affecting FNB and other organizations are a reflection of the current reactionary epoch. In order to change, we need a refreshing breeze of progressive politics to counter the stuffy rhetoric of capitalism and stake a claim to a future where food is not a privilege, but a universal right.

Z

Dan Read is an activist based in the UK.

Once homeless, east Orange woman fights to feed the needy

2007-08-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

Once homeless, east Orange woman fights to feed the needy

Kate Santich | [Orlando] Sentinel Staff Writer
[published] August 14, 2007

Migdalia Pagan is hardly a wealthy woman. She lives in a modest east Orange County mobile-home park with two of her children, a nephew and her husband, who makes about $400 a week as a roofer.

Yet each weekday at noon for the past three months, she has prepared a hearty hot meal for about 20 homeless people, spending a quarter of her family's income and sometimes even pawning her jewelry to buy the groceries.

"Right now, I have a two-tone cross -- white gold and yellow gold -- at the pawn shop," said Pagan, 42. "I have to do something. I can't let these people eat out of dumpsters. They might get sick."

To the homeless of east Orange County, many of whom live in the woods and rely on bicycles or walking for transportation, Pagan is a godsend. To the private owners of the Shadow Hills mobile-home community where she lives, Pagan is an aggravation.

After three months of letting her use one of two spacious, air-conditioned community centers for the hot lunches, the owners locked her out Monday. They told her last week that she can use the facility only to feed people who live in the park.

"The clubhouse is there for the benefit of the community," said Scott Gesell, president of corporate operations for American Residential Communities, which owns Shadow Hills. "We have no problem with her using it for that purpose, but our understanding is that there are only two to three people from the community at her feedings, while there are 15 to 20 from outside."

Moreover, Gesell said, the homeless have a tendency to "loiter" after the meal -- a claim that Pagan denies.

"These people don't bother anybody," she said. "And I'm going to feed them regardless of whether they let me use the clubhouse or not."

Pagan said Shadow Hills officials told her that she could continue her venture if she rented out the clubhouse for feedings -- at $400 a day. No one at Shadow Hills would comment, and Gesell said there would be a fee, but he didn't know how much.

The facility sat empty Monday as Pagan scrambled to find some shade for the diners. She settled on the parking lot of a now-closed Pizza Hut on State Road 50 -- though the heat was oppressive. Pagan shuttled over two of the homeless in her car, while a friend took several others.

Once there, she served up trays of barbecued chicken, baked potatoes, green salad, corn, bread, pudding and iced tea.

"She's a sweetheart -- a very Christian woman -- to come out here and feed us," said 44-year-old John Hensley, who handed her a small floral arrangement to show his appreciation. "I think the world of her."

Hensley, homeless for 10 years, has Parkinson's disease. His hands trembled as he carried his plate of food to a spot on the curb. Mark Mesluk, 45, said he is a veteran with a son killed while fighting in Iraq. He now battles post-traumatic stress disorder and is bipolar.

"Without this lady here, I'd have to hit the dumpster," he said. "But this beautiful lady -- she is a gift from God."

Of the two dozen diners, some were freshly showered and looking for work, and some weren't. Some were sober, others not.

It didn't matter to Pagan.

"I was homeless myself at one time," she said later. "I had a daughter who died from SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome] and that drove me to depression, and the depression drove me to into a heavy alcohol habit.

"I've been where they are. I know what it is to be hungry."

Those days -- now more than a decade ago -- were desperate. She even served a month in jail once for having beaten a man who stole from her. She was arrested on a charge of stealing a can of soup.

"I don't like remembering my past," she said. "I did things I should have not have done."

But now, she says, she has dedicated herself to following her faith. Her New Vision Ministries, as she has dubbed her charity-in-the-making, is aimed simply at helping people with whatever they need.

Today, with the purchase of an open-sided tent to offer shade and some tables and chairs borrowed from her church, she plans to serve lunch on the small patch of grass in her front yard.

"The homeless will be my guests," she said. "I can have anyone I want as a guest at my home."

To help Migdalia Pagan's ministry, call 407-233-4203.

Kate Santich can be reached at ksantich@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5503.

Transient victims are often nameless as well as homeless

2007-08-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

Transient victims are often nameless as well as homeless

April Hunt and Walter Pacheco

[Orlando] Sentinel Staff Writers

published August 1, 2007

Venus Martinez has a name in death because she had been arrested when she was alive. Other homeless die unrecalled and unrecorded.

The 29-year-old woman had no identification when her body was found late Sunday near Interstate 4 in Orlando. But police had her fingerprints from past charges, including a July 11 arrest for prostitution and possession of drug paraphernalia.

When the homeless die in abandoned buildings, from violent crime or in accidents, a police record could be the only way to determine who they are.

"Without a name, without ID, they're a marginally subhuman population," said James Wright, a sociology professor at the University of Central Florida.

Drivers licenses, Social Security cards and military identification are among the first things to be stolen or lost when a person hits the streets. Without it, the homeless can't get full-time jobs, stable housing -- or even a name on a death report.

"Every Monday I get calls from code enforcement or law enforcement, looking for help in identifying someone they found over the weekend," said Nancy Martinez, a senior outreach worker in Orlando with the Health Care Center for the Homeless.

Martinez, who is not related to Venus Martinez, comes into contact with many homeless people on the street and in camps. She said more homeless seem to be dying from being run over by cars, a major fear of transients.

'The driver never stopped'

"A few months ago, one of my clients was hit by a car, and I couldn't even identify him at first because of the tire marks on his face," she said. "The driver never stopped. The car just kept going."

Police records make identifying victims easier, as does help from other homeless people who knew them, said Orlando police Sgt. Roger Brennan, the department's homicide-unit supervisor.

But closing cases can be difficult because witnesses, who usually are other transients, move from one place to another without telling police or anyone else.

"Transient witnesses who leave no phone number or name are extremely difficult to locate so they can testify in court. That usually delays cases," Brennan said.

One of the best resources for identifying the homeless is the local media.

"We get most of our tips after people read about it in the paper or watch something on television," Brennan said.

Questions of identity come up regularly. Orange County spent $115,000 to give pauper's burials to 301 people during the 2005-06 budget year. And 231 unclaimed bodies have been buried in two county cemeteries so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

"We have some John Does and some Jane Does out there," said Pete Clarke, deputy director of the county's department of health and family services. "If we have a name, we put a little plaque in the ground."

August Felix has a plaque at his grave. The 54-year-old man died in May 2006 after five teens beat him to death for sport. He was identified because he had a record for trespassing.

"We're pretty much lost while we're alive," said John, a transient who goes by only his first name and fears dying alone and nameless. "Only other homeless people know me, and they would not tell police who I was if anything bad happened to me."

Even if a homeless acquaintance can provide information, as at least one did for Venus Martinez, transients often know each other by only first names or nicknames.

Dennis Wayne Pickett, 47, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in January and carried no identification. Friends who also are homeless helped police identify him and his dog Gloria, who also died in the accident.

But Ernest, another homeless man who uses only his first name, figures that no one would care if he were killed. He has no identification and no family.

"I mean, it ends here if I die," Ernest said. "I don't think anyone could even ID me."

Police seek killer

Now that investigators have identified Venus Martinez, the remaining job is to determine who killed her.

Originally from New York, Martinez had arrests locally dating from 2002. An October 2004 arrest for marijuana possession shows she had a home in Orlando. Two months later, she was listed as homeless when she was picked up on a warrant for theft.

To Nancy Martinez at the Health Care Center for the Homeless, the young woman was someone afraid of leaving the streets.

Their paths crossed just a few months ago, when Nancy Martinez was talking to homeless gathered at Compassion Corner in downtown Orlando about getting health care and other help.

Venus Martinez's boyfriend, whose name was not available Tuesday, wanted to be helped. Through the center, he got into a detox program and was given a ticket to return to his family out of state.

He wanted Venus to come with him, but she wasn't ready.

"He occasionally will call and check in and is doing wonderfully," Nancy Martinez said. "But every time, he asks if I've seen Venus and if we could help her."

"The biggest thing is, because you're homeless, no one cares," she added. "Her boyfriend cared. He wanted her to come home to him. He was in love with her."

April Hunt can be reached at ahunt@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6269. Walter Pacheco can be reached at 407-420-6262 or wpacheco@orlandosentinel.com.

Homeless vets: A hidden crisis

2007-08-11T09:49:00.001-07:00

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Homeless vets: A hidden crisis

Darryl E. Owens

Sentinel Staff Writer

published: August 6, 2007

Often, when Ryan Svolto manages to sleep, he finds himself back in Iraq preparing for triage, awash in blood and bodies. But he can't find his medical kit, and, helpless, he thrashes awake, damp with sweat.

As an infantry medic, he patched up soldiers wounded in combat in Iraq. Now, Svolto, 24, is trying to fix his own wounded life after a recent stint at a Daytona Beach homeless shelter.

Svolto is one of a growing number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who joined the ranks of Florida's homeless after returning home. Experts say a system already buckling under one of the nation's largest homeless populations might collapse under the weight of a new wave of veterans, many saddled with mental-health issues and crippling brain injuries.

"If I could identify and convince every homeless vet in the area to come to a shelter or a transitional-housing program," said Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, "we wouldn't have enough beds for them."

For Svolto, it's yet another battle, one he believes he won't be fighting alone.

"That's the scary part: when they get out of the Army and realize they're not who they used to be," he said. "It seems easier to disappear in the woods and live that way. A lot of these kids aren't going to be prepared. I wasn't prepared."

Nearly half of all homeless veterans served in Vietnam. Hamstrung by a lack of job skills, by drug addictions and psychological issues, they became homeless 12 to 15 years after discharge.

But veterans of the latest war are hitting the streets much sooner.

Problems emerge quickly

A recent report by the Swords to Plowshares' Iraq Veteran Project, a San Francisco advocacy group for veterans, says new vets "are already seeking housing services, some just months after returning from Iraq."

But few of them are asking for help so far in Central Florida. New veterans -- including those who served in Kuwait and now Afghanistan and Iraq -- account for just 1 percent of clients in the region using Veterans Affairs' Health Care for Homeless Veterans program, said Dan Robbin, homeless-network coordinator for the region that includes most of Florida.

But during the next decade, the VA is "ramping up" with new clinics and medical centers across the state to help new vets, he said.

What the VA doesn't provide is transitional housing, which grants vets safe harbor to kick drugs, build job skills and return to self-sufficiency.

"There is no 28-day treatment program that's going to wave the magic wand and throw a little bit of pixie dust out there and make it all right," said Thomas Griffin, CEO of The Transition House, a veterans-recovery program in Kissimmee.

It's a long, tough slog that largely falls to community-based programs. The VA paid $2.8 million in 2006 to partially defray 20 Florida programs, accounting for 450 transitional-housing beds. Another 50 beds are in the planning stages, Robbin said.

But that puts barely a dent in the problem, advocates say. The Department of Children and Families recently estimated that veterans comprise about 18 percent of Florida's homeless, with best estimates at about 18,000.

And women now count toward the tally: Though only a fraction of homeless vets (less than 5 percent in this region), new female vets are more vulnerable to homelessness than nonveteran women, a recent VA study found.

Stress tests relationships

Experts think thousands of new vets burdened with war-related psychological problems will make a bad problem even worse. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that nearly 20 percent of Iraq vets show clinical signs of major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Similarly, about a fifth of them have traumatic brain injuries, often the result of being wounded by roadside bombs. Such injuries can produce personality changes, mood swings and impaired memory.

Undiagnosed veterans become vulnerable to homelessness as relationships wither because they "may be blamed for their behaviors and struggles," said Dr. Shari Balter, a psychologist with Stand Down House, a Lake Worth drug program for homeless male veterans.

Svolto, who missed his daughter's birth while in Iraq, left the military last year. But he and his wife soon separated. Post-traumatic stress gripped Svolto, and he turned to alcohol to dull memories of the war.

"We were newlyweds when I left, but once you get back from combat, you're nothing like you used to be," he said.

War memories slow to fade

Svolto says he couldn't hold a job because of his condition. He maxed out his credit cards trying to stay afloat and lost his home in October.

He turned to Serenity House of Volusia Inc., a homeless shelter and substance-abuse-treatment program that provides transitional housing for veterans. He graduated from the program about three months ago and is receiving VA help with his post-traumatic stress.

Now, he's living with his parents in Deltona and working to win back his family.

Svolto says Serenity "kind of helped me to learn to cope with things and live life sober, but nothing [the memories] really went away. It's just a matter of accepting it more and more."

Shelters are decent, if also limited, stopgaps, but experts agree community programs geared to homeless veterans achieve the best results. The best offer transitional housing, sobriety programs and job training.

"When we start to look at the size of the facilities that we have and the number of homeless vets in the area, we don't have enough," Transition House's Griffin said.

Darryl E. Owens can be reached at 407-420-5095 or dowens@orlandosentinel.com.