Letters to the EditorPalm Beach Post
February 1. 2016
Moving homeless is not a solution
The recent ordinance passed by the Lake Worth City Commission declaring all public places to be “parks” feels like they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The commission says this is to stop crime, but I think the real reason for this draconian ordinance is because the merchants think that scruffy-looking homeless people, congregating in the middle of downtown, is bad for business. And who can blame them?
I had occasion to chat with several homeless persons in the Cultural Plaza one day and learned a lot about how and why they came to this. Some were there admittedly by choice, others by tragic circumstances. One young man moved to Florida with his mother for her job, but she died and he had no resources. A young woman said she had completed her rehab and had nowhere to go.
I don’t know if their stories were true or not. I just know one remark has stayed with me ever since. A young man in his 20s said, “Where do you go when nobody wants you?” Exactly. Where do you go when nobody wants to look at you? The Lake Worth solution is “out of sight, out of mind.”
If we want to fight crime, let’s use real crime-stopping methods like cameras and police patrols. Moving drug dealers out of public places doesn’t stop drug dealers. It only moves the drug sales to our back alleys and elsewhere.
If we want to move the homeless away from our business district, let’s do some creative thinking. Whatever we do, we need to be authentic about our motives.
Lisa Stewart
Lake Worth
9 comments:
How bout you come up with a solution??? This is not about the homeless people its about the rampant heroin epidemic. I got accosted last night at 9 p.m. at one of the local banks by a junkie who got aggressive wanting money. Now I will only bank during banking hours because I'm afraid I'll get mugged. He was hanging out at you guessed it, the library. PBSO cannot be at all places at all times hence the cameras. Yet the cameras didn't help me last night did they.
Everywhere in America parks have opening and closing hours - Central Park 1:00 a.m.-6:00 a.m. for example. Asking that ours close from midnight to 6 a.m. is not a big deal people. Or do you want to be the people that have to clean up after the folks who have moved into the Cultural Plaza with hammocks and chairs 24/7? That is what our city employees, downtown businesses and PBSO are now doing because you haven't come up with a solution either. You aren't feeling the results because you can choose to go home to your cozy home and forget whats going on downtown. People who live and/or work downtown cannot. They deal with this day in and day out. The business owners livelihood depends on people wanting to come downtown to eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores and frequent The Playhouse or a local service provider. Do you realize they will all be gone if we collectively don't do something about it. Some of us are old enough to remember Lake Worth in the 1970 and 1980's. It was a ghost town. That is where we are headed if we don't get a handle on it. I applaud the commission for approving this ordinance as it will help the welfare and safety of all our citizens and our visitors. Midnite to 6 a.m. is not unreasonable and will help PBSO ensure we all are safe here including the homeless.
I mentioned a solution--get a deputy stationed at the Cultural Plaza and Bryant Park. No more excuses that the sheriff can't be there. We have a serious problem and it is up to our commissioners to demand it from the city manager.
Thanks.
That's a great solution lady, "get a deputy stationed at the Cultural Plaza and Bryant Park". Then the anti police losers will compain that 'we live in a police state, whaaa, the druggies have rights, whaaa!'
Well, you don't like much of anything, do you? Tell you what, man... just have your friends on the commission come up with solutions. That is why they are elected...not to get us into a civil rights federal lawsuit.
I agree we need more boots on the ground and would love to see a sub-station at the Plaza.
Unfortunately the budget does not accommodate the expense that would incur.
3 cops to cover a 24 day at $38 per hour (pay and benefits) is just under $1000 a day, or about $350,000 per year. And that is for one location. The trick is finding the $ in the budget - and who should pay for it?
Then what happens when the Plaza is all quiet and then there is a bank holdup on Dixie... That cop in the Plaza is going to get pulled off Plaza duty to respond to the holdup or to set a perimeter...
Maybe we should charge the sober homes an impact fee of $50,000, that would fund the additional need these bad operators cause in our community. Unfortunately, there are no county, city, state or federal rules available to us because these addicts and their 'sober homes' are protected by federal law by ADA and HUD as a protected class which is total bullshit.
Setting hours in the plaza has nothing to do with the homeless. I don't know who that woman was talking to but I'd her to join me and you Lynn, any night and go down there and canvas the drugged out creatures hanging out in the plaza. They are freaking drug attic's… And the guy who accosted the poster above at the bank was a drug seeker and we all should be afraid of them because they have superhuman strength when they're on some drugs and they can be very dangerous.
I'm in favor for closing the park from midnight to 6 AM as well. It is a very reasonable item to support.
As far as the whole homeless issue goes, we need to ask the county and state for land and money to build a County facility where these people can go besides the Lewis Center with its 140-150 beds.
The City of Lake Worth does not have the money and is built out, we don't have the land necessary for a facility...unless of course you were suggesting that we convert Bryant Park into a homeless camp. Is that what you're doing Lynn?
Get off the fence, quit beating about the bush and call a spade a spade. The majority of these druggies and junkies are NOT FROM FLORIDA! In a perfect world, the sober homes would require a return ticket home for all their residents, that way when they relapse we can throw their happy ass on airplane or a bus and send them away, back to where they can from.
The current business model does not work, and presents a destructive living environment that can do real damage creating great obstacles in recovery for even the highly motivated individual.
"Unfortunately the budget does not accommodate the expense that would incur."
We pay PBSO over one million dollars per month to patrol five square miles.I think that they had better put their men wherever and whenever we damn well tell them to.
This crap about PBSO "we have to see it to believe it" needs to stop.
Enough. Triolo,Maxwell and Amoroso have done NOTHING to improve this city. All we get from the trio is excuses and finger pointing.Enough.
And BTW ,do we still pay a lobbyist 5,000 per month to "sit at the table" for us in Tallahassee?Lake Worth is the most selectively broke city in Florida!
And lastly- Can we taxpayers please have back the 50,000 Maxwell, Triolo and Amoroso stole from us for "educational purposes"?
You should recall that only 3 commissioners took up the invitation by the Lake Worth Business Alliance to walk the town in the late evening with the business leaders on the front line dealing with the druggie thieves hanging at the Plaza and at Bryant Park.
Yep, only Mayor Triolo, Comm Maxwell and Comm Amoroso took up that challenge, along with Capt Baer and City Manager Bornstein.
The only losers are Comm McVoy and Maier who totally disrespected the Alliance when they choose to ignore 2 email invites and being called out at 2 commission meetings for their dis-service to the business community. A business alliance consisting of anchor businesses in LW... Place's like Callaro's, Paradiso's, McMow's, Paws on the Avenue, Hoffman's Chicolates, TooJays, Coastline Realty, etc. Really? I can't wait for the next election cycle when McViy and Maier get in my cross hairs.
The losers in this city are all those who go before the commission speaking at the podium and are nasty and rude,constantly playing politics.
Not knowing the circumstance of this e-mail, I do know who was rude to Maier and McVoy. This is all just nasty politics. This city is about all who live and work here, not just the downtown businesses that believe LW owes them a living.
You come after them--people will be waiting for you.
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