An old bus sits across the street from Tent City, the spot the area's homeless have called home for years.
Inside the vehicle are not seats, but desks piled high with paperwork, the county's temporary facility where social service workers remind the homeless that the days of Tent City are coming to an end.
They will have to move out, they are told, perhaps to the county's new transitional center. But eventually home will be somewhere - anywhere - else.
"People staying there get no services, there's no accountability. Their lives are on hold, in unacceptable conditions by anyone's standards," said Fred Scarborough, lay pastor and member of the board of directors of the Broward Coalition for the Homeless.
"And alcoholism and mental illness are going untreated."
Web page author's note - I can certainly attest to this statement, not to mention the lax security provided by Navarro security personnel allowing rampant crack smoking in the men's restrooms, without even an iota of interest in arresting the drug abusers!
The homeless living in the makeshift camp just off Broward Boulevard number as many as 400 in the winter. From now until January, when the county's homeless assistance center (HAC) opens, the residents of Tent City will have several options on where to go before the tent folds in February.
All the facilities can help with housing, treatment and job placement.
Most of those living in Tent City will end up at the assistance center. The transitional facility will help residents eventually live and work on their own.
The county's $7.7 million homeless center will be called the
Broward County Assistance Center Number One/Huizenga Family Pavilion.
H. Wayne Huizenga, sports and business mogul, gave $1 million toward construction of the 200-bed shelter on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. He recently pledged another $1 million and helped raise $3 million.
The federal courts ruled in 1993 that cities must provide a place for the homeless to congregate without facing arrest. Tent City was born, but the community never accepted it.
The county promises the new facility will not have the problems of Tent City - crowding, no services for those living there, and filthy conditions. They promise to counsel the homeless into programs that will help them get their lives together, and eventually find work or treatment.
There will be curfews and clean places to sleep and shower.
Some of the residents say the new homeless assistance center is a blessing.
That's the case for Dave Clark, 44, who has been homeless for several years.
He won't sleep at Tent City, preferring downtown junkyards, and bus benches, because he wants to escape the nighttime noise and "nuthouse" of the tent.
But he spends his days at Tent City, a refuge that guarantees him free food when the church groups regularly come by.
"They said they're going to provide job services," he said. "That's the main thing for me. And the new place, they're going to regulate it. Everyone [will have to] shut up at 9 [p.m.] and go to sleep, then go to work. It'll be nicer than this mess. Jail is nicer than this place, and I've been there too."
But not everyone wants the restrictions of the new center, which will have a curfew, job training, living skills classes, substance abuse rehabilitation and mental health treatment.
They don't want roles. They are afraid of losing their freedom.
"It'll be like being in jail," says Wesley Rucker, 39, who lives at the camp with his girlfriend, Little Wolf. Because there weren't any spare cots when the couple moved in about two months ago, they chose a spot on the hot asphalt, near the gutter, which attracts mosquitoes when it rains.
"Nobody here wants to go," Rucker said, "They said you gotta be out at a certain time, in at a certain time. Everybody I talk to, they ain't going."
Agustin "Jr." Torres-Vega has been living at the tent for four months. He found a job at a local store and is saving his money, hoping to find an apartment and become self-sufficient before the tent is folded.
"We want to do what we want," he said.
Steve Werthman, coordinator of the county's homeless program, knows that's the challenge Broward now faces. How to convince the people that they have to find someplace to go.
"There's a high degree of apathy at the tent right now, hopelessness," Werthman said. "That hopelessness gets entrenched in folks."
To tackle that, he said the county has started to bring back former Tent City residents, now living on their own, to talk to the residents and encourage them to find another way to live. Beginning next month (November), there will be additional training for caseworkers with experts from other cities, including Miami.
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