According to current plans, residents of the new shelter will be required to enter 60-day treatment programs. To appease nearby homeowners who didn't want the shelter in their neighborhood, city officials agreed no walk-in overnight guests would be allowed
Having lived in Fort Lauderdale's infamous homeless tent for more than a year - through rain, cold and sweltering heat with bodies packed in like so many pieces of unwanted meat - Richard Courtney knows how bad life in the tent can be.
But despite his all too intimate knowledge of the squalor that is the tent's trademark, Courtney on Wednesday, August 19, 1998 filed suit to stop the city from tearing it down when a new homeless shelter opens in January.
"I don't want to live on the street and get arrested," he says of his reasons for filing suit. "If the tent is closed, I don't think there will be any protection at all for homeless people."
Courtney is not alone.
Janet Reilly, an attorney at Florida Legal Services in Fort Lauderdale, says she, too, will file suit against the city if it opens the new homeless shelter without providing another safe place for homeless people to go.
"The Homeless Assistance Center is not a magic bullet," she says of the $7.9 million shelter now under construction on Sunrise Boulevard. "Some of the folks who are in Tent City right now won't fit into the structure of the HAC not because they don't want to but because they simply can't."
Unless the city comes up with a place for people to go, it will be in violation of court rulings that have said that cities must provide "safe zones" for people who have no place to live but the street.
"If they're going to close the tent, they have to come up with other appropriate alternatives," she says.
And, she says, the alternative can't be the county jail.
Remembering what life was like before the city erected the plastic canopy across from City Hall five years ago (1993), Courtney says he is convinced that the jail will become home to scores of homeless people unless a judge orders the city to provide another alternative. And, he says, the most viable one is simply to keep the tent open.
During the past two weeks, the tall, thin, well-spoken man has spent countless hours in the Broward County Main Library and the county courthouse researching his case. Pulling documents out of his well-worn backpack, he succinctly outlines his case, pointing to court rulings that shore up his arguments and explains exactly what he wants the city to do.
The key, he says, is a settlement that was reached between the City of Miami and the American Civil Liberties Union. The agreement comes nearly six years after U.S. District Court Judge C. Clyde Atkins ruled that the city had violated the rights of homeless people by arresting them for conducting what he called "life-sustaining activities" and ordered it to stop.
In the 10-page agreement that is to be finalized on September 29,1998 the city agrees to pay homeless people $600,000 for violating their rights. But, more importantly for Courtney's purposes, it spells out exactly what Miami police can do before even approaching, much less arresting, a homeless person.
Before a cop can approach a homeless person, the officer has to first make sure there is a shelter that has a bed available, says Benjamin Waxman, a Miami attorney who handled the case for the ACLU. If no bed is available, the officer can't even approach a homeless person. If a bed is available, the homeless person has to be given an option of going to the shelter before he or she can be arrested.
With 200 beds, Courtney says the shelter on Sunrise Boulevard won't have nearly enough room to serve the estimated 5,000 homeless in the county. It won't even have enough beds to serve residents of the tent, where the population rockets to nearly 400 during the winter months.
Further, the Miami agreement specifies that the shelter can't force a homeless person to undergo any substance abuse or mental health treatment or embrace any religious philosophy.
According to current plans, residents of the new shelter, will be required to enter 60-day treatment programs. To appease nearby homeowners who didn't want the shelter in their neighborhood, city officials agreed no walk-in overnight guests would be allowed.
Because there won't be enough beds and because many will balk at being required to sign up for a treatment program, Courtney says it is clear the shelter will only serve a fraction of the county's homeless.
If the city wants to close the tent, it can, he says. But, he says, does he want a judge to require it to adopt a similar, if not identical agreement to the one Miami officials signed to settle the 9-year-old suit with the ACLU.
"There's not a formal agreement between homeless people, their advocates and the government," Courtney says, "An agreement has never been hammered out and I think an agreement needs to be hammered out."
But city officials, who in recent weeks have posted notices in the tent alerting residents the camp will be closed in December or January, say they are taking steps to find residents of the tent other places to live.
A fair was held several weeks ago to introduce residents to social service agencies that might be able to help them find food, clothing, a job, mental health treatment or a home.
But, as Reilly points out, there just aren't enough places available. If there were, she says, it's unlikely the tent would have existed for five years.
Reilly, who has sued the city over the conditions of the tent and even tried to persuade a judge it should be closed, declined comment on Courtney's suit. But, she says, she agrees with its basic message. The city has not come to grips with its homeless problem.
And there is ample evidence that it probably won't anytime soon.
Fed up with the costs associated with running the tent, Commissioner Tim Smith in January,1998 unsuccessfully attempted to persuade fellow commissioners that it should be closed immediately.
According to the minutes of the meeting, Smith said the tent "had become a draw for those who could have home but preferred to live off the fat of the land."
Waxman bristles when he hears of Smith's comments. "That's absolutely ludicrous. It's bullshit. (his words, not mine) Nobody chooses to live in conditions that are so despicable, so demoralizing, so inhumane."
Such attitudes merely underscore how far cities like Fort Lauderdale have to go to even begin to solve the problem. And, like Courtney and Reilly, Waxman says a new multimillion dollar shelter won't make homelessness go away.
"The city of Fort Lauderdale needs to start looking at why people are becoming homeless and take steps to prevent it from happening to begin with."
But that's well in the future.
For the time being, the solution for Courtney and other homeless men and women who want some control over their destinies is the court system.
"If they want to close the tent all they have to do is put the name Fort Lauderdale in place of Miami in the agreement and that will be it." Courtney says. "If they don't sign the agreement and they close the tent they'll subject themselves to a class-action lawsuit."
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