I am a college senior at Nova Southeastern University and have lived in Broward County for most of my life. Over the past two years, I have fed the homeless at Tent City on several occasions. It has come to my attention that the City of Fort Lauderdale has recently been trying to stop the Love Thy Neighbor program, which feeds the homeless. Arnold Abbott:City Link
I feel that these city officials are only seeing one side of this issue. Far too often homeless people are stereotyped as criminals and drug addicts. Personally, I see little difference between the drug addicts on the streets and the drug addicts that live in their mansions on the Intracoastal. Although some of these people do fit this stereotype, I know from experience that the majority of them are just ordinary people who are in need of help. With the billions of dollars the U.S. sends in foreign aid to other countries it is hard to believe that we even have this homeless problem right here in our back yard.
As this problem becomes more and more obvious to the general public, it is becoming increasingly difficult for government officials to hide these people in places such as Tent City, which is a secluded location off Broward Boulevard. This "city" has come to resemble the shanty towns of Third World countries. In an area the size of a small parking lot, approximately 400 homeless people reside. The conditions with which these people live are tight and unsanitary. Upon visiting this location, it quickly becomes obvious that there are many people who are in poor health.
Now that Tent City has become an inadequate location to house the growing number of homeless people in Fort Lauderdale, the surplus population of homeless people has been forced to relocate to the beach. Now how does the City of Fort Lauderdale deal with this problem? The logical solution would be to fund organizations that provide shelter for homeless individuals. It would also make more sense to have a city task force on this issue and try to find other possible solutions to this problem. Being that a large portion of homeless people in South Florida have migrated from Northern states, I also feel that it would make sense to lobby the federal government for funds to deal with this issue.
Given the large number of avenues with which the local governments could deal with this issue, one might suspect that something is being done. However, what is being done, I believe, is something that is terrible and immoral. Instead of attacking the issue, the local government is attacking the organization that helps feed these people. Threatening to jail the members of a local nonprofit organization for feeding these people is simply for lack of a better word, stupid. If anything, the city should be funding the organization to better deal with this problem.
On one of my more recent visits to feed the homeless at Tent City, two Fort Lauderdale police officers showed up to object to the feeding of 600 homeless people. The parking lot where the volunteers usually park was closed and the police threatened to arrest anyone who trespassed on that lot. The police did, however, let the feeding take place because there were 600 hungry people, along with a fraternity from Nova Southeastern University and a Jewish Youth Group there to feed them.
I think that the city of Fort Lauderdale is missing the point here. Their philosophy is that if we stop feeding the homeless they will go away. That just might be the case, as inhumane as it sounds. But if we let that happen here in the U.S., how could we as citizens live with ourselves?
Timothy P. Connelly
Nova College Student Government president
Fort Lauderdale