City to set up feeding center to overcome homeless crowds downtown

[thelakelander]

Not Jacksonville.  Instead a story about how Fort Lauderdale has decided to deal with their downtown homeless problems.

By Scott Wyman
December 7, 2010 06:10 PM

Fort Lauderdale plans to test feeding the homeless daily in a warehouse district off Sunrise Boulevard, in hopes of ending the throngs that gather downtown.

If it works, they will consider doing the same at locations around the city or creating a mobile program to rotate the feeding to different spots.

Downtown business owners and residents have put increasing pressure on the city to do something about the use of Stranahan Park next to the main library as a gathering place for the homeless. But as officials explored sites for a feeding center, opposition repeatedly arose from nearby neighborhoods.

“This is a tough issue, a divisive issue, but we owe it to ourselves to try a pilot project because we know we have a problem,” Mayor Jack Seiler said. “If we can feed the homeless and provide some relief and some hope, I’d like to do that.”

City commissioners decided Tuesday to try to lease a building at 901 NW 5th Ave. off Sunrise Boulevard for at least three months and allow non-profit groups to provide meals to the homeless there.

Most of the major groups that feed the homeless in downtown Fort Lauderdale have agreed to try the proposed center. The building has enough space to contain a meal program as well as to allow social workers to direct the needy to other assistance.


Officials are far from certain whether the plan will work.

They suspect many of the homeless will return downtown once they finish eating. And although the creation of a feeding center will allow the city to ban meals in Stranahan Park, city attorneys expect a legal challenge over whether the center is too far from downtown.

The number of homeless in the city center has grown since the nation’s economy fell into recession. The county has estimated that 900 people were living on the streets in 2009, up from 700 in 2007. A larger number, thousands more, called themselves homeless but were staying in shelters or living temporarily with friends.

Downtown business owners and activists complain about an increase in crime and litter and said both residents and tourists feel unsafe.

“The parks are unsightly, and people do not want to visit them” Ron Centamore, president of the Downtown Fort Lauderdale Civic Association, wrote in a letter to the commission urging action.

Tim Petrillo, who owns several restaurants downtown and serves on the area’s development authority, told commissioners that they could no longer continue to do nothing. “The way the feedings are being handled now in the public parks is not safe for our residents, tourists or humane for the homeless being fed,” he said.

The city turned to the industrial location after an uproar in June over a proposal to locate the feeding center in a small office building a block from the entrance to Holiday Park. Residents of Flagler Village and Victoria Park feared a feeding center there would drive the homeless into their communities.

The warehouse plan faces similar concerns.

Former City Commissioner Tim Smith, an activist in the Middle River Terrace neighborhood, compared the decision to the city’s botched effort to congregate the homeless in a tent city in the early 1990s. “This is probably the worst idea this commission has come up with since it came to power,” Smith said.

The choice also came over the objections of commissioners Charlotte Rodstrom and Bobby DuBose, who represent the areas around the proposed feeding center. DuBose said the feeding center was an example of the city using its northwest section as a dumping ground.

“When you put something like this in a location, it will spill over for blocks,” DuBose said. “They will be walking into our neighborhoods.”

But Seiler and commissioners Bruce Roberts and Romney Rogers said the city had to try something. The city, they said, would close the center if it creates problems for the surrounding area or if it doesn’t help downtown as believed.

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2010/12/city_to_set_up_feeding_center.html