It started as a discussion about adding toilets, showers, and sinks at the downtown homeless camp to meet Broward County Health Department requirements.
But it quickly erupted into a full-blown dispute over closing Tent City.
"If we start making bathrooms nicer and making [the homeless camp] a more pleasant place to go, we're making a mistake," Vice Mayor Tim Smith said during a recent City Commission meeting. "enabling Tent City to grow is the wrong answer. Next week there may be 500 people there. Let's cut our losses now, cap it at 200 people and show some leadership."
Smith and Commissioner Carlton Moore, who opposed a new county shelter under construction on West Sunrise Boulevard, voted against spending $33,000 to add a women's bathroom, convert a women's restroom to an all men's facility, replace a security booth and four tent canopies. The money is expected to be repaid by the county or from a federal grant.
"Let's get out of a business we never should be in," Moore said.
He failed to persuade the other three commissioners to shut down the camp across the street from City Hall, 100 N. Andrews Ave., and give Broward County 30 days to provide services to the homeless.
The camp is capable of serving 240 people, but has had 250 to 300 people since the holidays, city officials said.
City Manager George Hanbury urged commissioners to keep Tent City open until the county finishes a 200-bed permanent shelter at 600 W. Sunrise Blvd. That county-operated shelter is scheduled to open by January 1999.
Hanbury and other commissioners said that closing Tent City would send vagrants back to city parks from which they were chased out four years ago (1994).
It is obvious from an article like the one above that the city fathers would just as soon tear Tent City down without any regard for the people that are currently staying there, as long as the commissioners don't have to look at this "eyesore" from their lofty perch from the hallowed windows of City Hall across the street. Return to Home Page