Walk along the Riverwalk or through Esplanade Park in Fort Lauderdale and you will almost certainly see homeless people. Until Tuesday, they could sleep on the grass in the parks or on the sidewalks and bus stations.
But now that the new state law has taken effect, banning sleeping on public property, anyone who does so can be arrested, and everyone who works with the homeless in South Florida is bracing for this new reality.
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Up to 300 unhoused people come to LifeNet Families in Lauderhill every morning for a hot meal, a shower, and a hand up.
“We need to do something that’s a permanent solution, the housing crisis here, everybody’s just a paycheck away from becoming homeless,” said Mark Adler, LifeNet’s vice president.
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Broward County has an estimated 6,000-8,000 homeless people, with about 1,400-1,600 of them on the streets on any given night but only about 600 shelter beds. Adler worries the new state law will hurt rather than help the situation.
“I think that it’s a really poor idea to solve a very complex problem, homelessness has so many pieces to it, and to just criminalize somebody because they have nowhere to go but a park bench is not the solution,” Adler said.
Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller said the county is investing $43 million in the homelessness problem.
“Everybody agrees that we need to come up with ways of solving the homelessness issue but nobody wants the homeless shelters near them, and that’s our biggest issue, finding places to put them,” Geller said.
Case in point: the city of Fort Lauderdale proposed building micro houses for the homeless on a lot it owns that borders the city of Plantation. That drew stiff opposition from the neighborhood and a swift burial from Plantation Mayor Nick Sortal, who said it would not happen, mainly because of zoning laws.
“The proposal by the city of Fort Lauderdale was a speck of a germ of an idea,” Sortal said.
He pointed out that his city has two police officers dedicated solely to dealing with the unhoused population, trying to help them off the streets.
“I’m very compassionate about it, but our residents gotta feel comfortable when they walk into Target, they gotta be able to walk in and get a coffee without feeling threatened,” Sortal said.
Geller said the county will invest in providing services, such as job training and mental health support to help move the unhoused from the outside to the inside, realizing that some in the homeless population are unreachable because they don’t want to be helped.
“What we need to do is make sure that everybody that wants to be housed can find housing,” Geller said.
