Seated by the cots and drying laundry of Tent City, a man named Gunney considered the new homeless shelter being built on Sunrise Boulevard.
``Nobody is going to move into that shelter,'' he said. ``It's going to be like the Salvation Army. They're going to have rules. You'll get a curfew. You will find more people homeless on the street than living in that shelter.''
It was a common feeling among the men and women who live at Fort Lauderdale's open shelter, and it indicates how much work lies ahead for county leaders who proclaimed a major victory last week in helping the homeless. The County Commission on Tuesday voted to raise gasoline taxes by 1 cent to fund homeless programs. The money will pay the operating costs of three shelters _ one in Hollywood, the Sunrise shelter and another shelter planned for north Broward County.
Now, the county's leaders must busy themselves with several tasks: preparing to shut down Tent City, choosing a site for a 200-bed shelter in north Broward and leveraging the tax increase into millions of additional dollars from the federal government.
About a block from Tent City, a team of county social workers has set up an office in a converted bus to help the homeless obtain government benefits and find places in treatment programs and shelters. With Fort Lauderdale aiming to close Tent City shortly after the Sunrise shelter opens, the social workers' efforts have taken on more urgency.
``It's very difficult to say what will happen when they take down Tent City,'' said Sandy Brierley, supervisor of the homeless outreach program. ``It's going to be ugly. Where are they going to go? None of us know how this is going to go. There will still be homeless people on the street.''
Tent City's population ranges from about 130 to 400, rising in the winter and falling in the summer, she said. Despite their work, there has been little decline in the numbers, she said.
Many Tent City residents resist the idea of going to a shelter, where they would not be free to use cocaine, drink beer or come and go as they please.
``You've got a lot of people here who can't live in a structured environment,'' said George Wheaton, 45, wearing a scraggly moustache and a backward baseball cap. ``I'm one of them.''
Wheaton said he was an alcoholic who ended up at Tent City after his employer in Pompano Beach went bankrupt. He earns $70 or $80 from day labor, when he decides to do it, and prefers not to waste his money on rent.
Free food, benefit checks and day labor have made it easy for many homeless people to get by without a shelter, Tent City residents said.
``The majority of people right here work in the labor pool every day, they smoke it up, and they come back here,'' said Wesley Rucker, 38, who described himself as a former crack addict. ``They get everything here. They get food. They get medical vans. You'd be surprised how many people get checks here.''
County experts insist that the shelters and new programs will draw in most of the county's homeless. They point to a survey that showed 98 percent of Tent City residents would enter a structured shelter if they had the chance. And they say the hard-core homeless are rare.
``I think your true urban nomad is a small minority of the population,'' said Steve Werthman, coordinator of the county's homeless programs. ``It is a deadly environment on the street. It is dangerous.''
He guessed that only about 10 percent of the homeless population are dedicated to a life on the street.
``There are still going to be homeless people in Broward County,'' he said. ``The situation we're trying to create with the Homeless Assistance Center is that there will be more beds for homeless people.''
Fort Lauderdale runs Tent City, but is being reimbursed by the county for the $350,000 annual cost until the Homeless Assistance Center opens on Sunrise. Within about 60 days of the opening, the city will move to close Tent City, Mayor Jim Naugle said.
With the completion of the Sunrise shelter, the county will turn to the task of building another 200-bed shelter in northern Broward. The county's basic plan has been known for years, and nervous community leaders there have been watching and hoping that the shelter would not end up in their neighborhoods.
A site-selection committee has narrowed the search to two pieces of county-owned land next to Florida's Turnpike. Both sites are in an industrial area, where neighbors such as a bus maintenance facility and the North Broward Detention Center are unlikely to protest the arrival of a homeless shelter.
But Pompano Beach Mayor William Griffin was unhappy.
``I would like to have consideration given to other cities in the area,'' he said. ``It seems Pompano gets everything in the county that's a negative.''
The site selection committee will make its recommendation on June 17, with the full board of the Broward Partnership for the Homeless taking up the question on June 25. The final decision is up to the County Commission, which is free to ignore the recommendations. With an eye toward moving beyond emergency shelters, the county is preparing a grant application for millions of dollars in federal money to set up a system of transitional housing to move homeless people back into society.
The process is competitive, but Broward surged forward in the ranking by adopting the tax, said Jose Cintron, state coordinator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
``They certainly have improved their chances with this action,'' he said. ``This is a very competitive program, and that's one of the reasons Broward has not been funded in the past.''
The model for Broward is Miami-Dade County, which reaped about $25 million in federal grants after passing a restaurant tax to pay for homeless programs.
With the money, the county set up emergency shelters, mental health centers and innovative programs to return homeless people to society. In one program, for example, the county helped families get started in their own apartments by providing security deposits, utility payments, furniture and case management.
Miami-Dade County has not solved its homeless problem. But the number of men and women on the street has declined from a high of about 8,000 to about 4,600, with many more shelter beds in the works, said Hilda Fernandez, executive director of the Dade Trust, which coordinates homeless programs. And authorities have pulled down the shantytowns that had grown under Miami-Dade's highway overpasses.
``In Miami-Dade County, any homeless person can get a bed for a given
night,'' Werthman said. ``That's our goal.''
Copyright Sun-Sentinel Company 1998
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