Without reservations or an accepted referral, homeless people seeking assistance at the Homeless Assistance Center are told to seek it elsewhere.
"We don't want people to live on the street anymore in Fort Lauderdale. You have to accept our help in our city. Or you have to live somewhere else. You can't live off the fat of the land."
- Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner
Tim Smith
Zabidee Nieves didn't expect to be homeless again this week.
Having heard that less than 10 women were staying at the county's newly opened Homeless Assistance Center, she left her week-old home at a Christian-based shelter to take advantage of all the services the $9.4 million center off Sunrise Boulevard is supposed to offer.
But when she went to the center she was told there was no room at the inn.
It wasn't that she had gotten bad information. There were less than 10 women staying in the women's dormitory that was designed to sleep 60.
"But they said they wouldn't take me. They said they had gone through the list and taken all the people they were going to take," Nieves said.
And then, reciting what other homeless people say has become the mantra of so-called homeless assistance workers, Nieves was told: Call 524-BEDS.
She did and, like others, found out that the last bed had been snapped up hours ago.
So there Nieves stood as the sun was setting over Fort Lauderdale beach, wondering where she was going to spend the night.
And she was not alone.
Gregory Hoyt, who has lived in the woods around Fort Lauderdale since losing his job as a day laborer at a construction firm six months ago, says he would love to move into the homeless center.
"I'd like to find another job," he says. With no phone, no mailing address and now, since Tent City is closed, no place to shower and shave, it's all but impossible to find work. The center would put all those job-hunting tools at his fingertips.
But he says, he doesn't know how to go about applying for admission to the center. And, others say, county workers, whose job it is to help the homeless, aren't saying.
"All they told me was call 524-BEDS," one says with disgust. "524-BEDS. 524-BEDS. What is that?"
Actually, 524-BEDS has nothing to do with the Homeless Assistance Center. It is a phone line the Broward Coalition for the Homeless set up in October in hopes of better coordinating human services agency efforts by matching people who need places to sleep with those who have beds available.
There are seven agencies, from the Salvation Army to Women In Distress to Covenant House, that participate. On a typical day, all the beds coalition officials know about are gone by 10 a.m.
So far, the opening of the center hasn't changed that. The HAC is not participating in the 524-BEDS hotline. So far it has focused exclusively on providing housing to those who were living in Tent City before it closed two weeks ago after a six-year run.
And those who weren't living in the tent before it closed or who didn't sign up to move into the HAC when they were living in the tent are unlikely to get into the center anytime soon.
In fact, officials at the HAC say they don't even know how a person would go about reserving a spot for himself in the tax-funded center.
"I don't know what's the best way to get in the HAC," says Ezra Krieg, the center's resource development director. "Maybe going to the police department and saying, "Can you help me?" or going to another social service agency and saying, "I'm interested in going to the HAC and there are probably some other options, as well."
But one option that is not available is just walking up to the center's doors and asking for a room. According to an agreement county officials made to satisfy neighborhood residents, no walk-ins are allowed. All residents must be referred from other agencies, including the police, who can give homeless people sleeping on park benches or on the beach this option: Go to the HAC, or go to jail.
The confusion that surrounds the opening of the center merely underscores a problem tough-talking politicians, like Smith, would like to ignore.
"There just aren't enough beds available," says Laura Carey, executive director of the Broward Homeless Coalition.
According to a recent survey by her agency, there are 5,000 homeless men and women in Broward County and at most, including the 200 new beds at the HAC, 801 beds available to house them. Many of those beds are open exclusively to certain types of people, such as women or teens or alcoholics or drug addicts or the elderly or veterans. Further, many are reserved for those in multi-step programs and aren't available to those who need a place to sleep now.
Even talking about the lack of beds or the need for emergency housing for the homeless is dicey, Carey says. Two weeks ago, her coalition of some 200 social service agencies voted to urge cities and the county to provide locations for walk-in facilities where homeless people can go to get fed and housed. After the vote, she says, her phone rang off the hook.
"Half of the people said, 'You assholes' and the other half said, 'Good work,'" she says. But having taken the heat for taking a stand in support of homeless people, Carey says she doesn't expect anything to happen.
"The whole problem with helping the poor is NIMBY," she says. "Nobody wants anything remotely involved with helping the poor next to them."
So what are the chances any city leader will lead the charge for a walk-in facility for the homeless?
"You want to open a walk-in facility for people who don't want to be rehabilitated? Come on," she says predicting the reaction such a proposal would get.
In the midst of all this is Arnold Abbott, who is committed to continuing to feed the homeless despite Fort Lauderdale's orders to stop.
Last week, about 150 homeless men and women, including Nieves and Hoyt, gathered at the beach on Wednesday night where Abbott and members of his group served up hot meals of turkey, spaghetti, and rice. Abbott arrived at the beach, anxious for a confrontation with police.
"I want to be arrested," says Abbott, who for nearly seven years has served meals on the beach and at Tent City on Wednesday evenings. "I think it's the only way to bring things to a head."
City officials say they don't want to arrest or even charge Abbott with violating city laws that prohibit feeding people on public property on a regular basis. But if he continues past the March 1 deadline they gave him to cease and desist, they say, action will be taken.
Assistant City Manager Bud Bentley says Abbott needs to move his feeding program to a permanent, indoor location. There are places in the city where city zoning laws allow such services to exist, he insists.
However, Carey says, while Bentley may claim there are places in the city where Abbott could legally set up shop, other social service agencies have discovered otherwise. Officials at the Cooperative Feeding Program have spent eight years trying to find a permanent location for its feeding program and each site has been rejected by city staff, says Marti Forman, executive director of the agency.
Abbott says he also has his doubts the city would ever allow him to establish a site to feed the homeless.
"They just want the homeless to go away," he says. "The homeless are not going to go away."
If city officials wonder why, John Huxtable, a 55-year-old Vietnam vet who has lived on the street on and off for more than 10 years, has a quick answer for them.
"There is a steady stream of homeless coming here for the weather. If you can do something about that, then you're a better person than I."
Meanwhile, those who continue to live on the street, are matter-of-fact about their plight.
Nieves, for instance, predicted that if she didn't get shelter soon, her week-long sobriety would end.
"I've been clean for a week," she said. "But out on the street, I'll start using again. Then I'll prostitute so I can get money."
Further, Hoyt is willing to accept responsibility for his predicament.
"If I had saved money when I was working I wouldn't be in this bind," he says.
But still, both say, the HAC would be a godsend to them.
They're just wondering when, if ever, will they be allowed in.