Wrong tactics to deal with homeless

By Frank Cerabino

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014 | 2 a.m.

Is sleeping in public a crime?

It can be in Fort Lauderdale, which this month passed a law aimed at dispersing the homeless people living in the city’s downtown area.

The new city ordinance makes it a potential misdemeanor that could land you in jail for up to 60 days for sleeping in downtown public areas while being sheltered. Shelter is defined as “any tent, hut, lean-to, shack, tarpaulin, sleeping bag, bedroll, or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing for the purposes of sleeping.”

So, if you lie down and put anything over your clothing, you’re considered to be camping on public property and subject to arrest.

Making life more miserable for the homeless wasn’t invented by this ordinance. No, it’s been a skill honed for decades by municipalities all over America. In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Center for Problem-Oriented Policing publishes a handy guide for lots of other ways to make the miserable lives of those around us even more miserable.

Tip No. 8: “Deploy water sprinklers.”

“If the chronically homeless have set up camps in relatively small urban parks, setting water sprinklers to go off at various times can make sitting or lying on the grass less comfortable,” the government publication reads.

There are all sorts of other tips, such as “diverting donations from the public,” “restricting public feedings of transients” and “enforcing ‘sidewalk behavior’ ordinances.”

But for petty meanness, it’s hard to beat Tip No. 11: “Removing or altering street furniture,” which encourages the use of benches with “spikes and other devices” to discourage lying down, and exterior buildings designed with “slanted surfaces at the bases of walls, prickly vegetation in planter boxes, and narrow or pointed treatments on tops of fences and ledges.”

Fort Lauderdale’s new homeless law, which is paired with a new ban on panhandling, dovetails with the city’s “Press Play Fort Lauderdale” strategy to make it “the city you never want to leave.”

Homeless people rounded up for sleeping in public can avoid jail if the officer takes them to a hospital or public shelter instead. The city acknowledges the long-term solution is to provide housing for the homeless, but for now, the city has placed only 16 people in what is known as the “housing first” approach.

Meantime, the city is criminalizing homeless activities to clean up its downtown.

“Studies have showed that activities associated with the homeless population often provide our neighbors with a diminished sense of safety and threaten the viability of businesses,” city manager Lee Feldman wrote.

But does rounding up the homeless this way make sense?

The humane and cost-effective solution is to invest in housing and support services for the homeless, said Diana Stanley, the chief executive officer of the Lord’s Place, a Palm Beach County nonprofit agency that provides shelter and help for the homeless.

“It costs about $43,000 to keep a person in jail for a year, but only about $10,000 to $11,000 a year to put a homeless person in permanent supportive housing,” she said. “So where should we be spending our money?”

The lack of resources to deal with those referred to as the SPMI — serious and persistently mentally ill — means they are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than in a supportive environment that treats the underlying problems they face.

They are removed for a while, then they appear on the streets again. And the cycle goes on and on.

“We need to stop coming up with laws against them and figure out a way to help them,” Stanley said.

Four decades ago, The Lord’s Place director, Brother Joe Ranieri, dramatized the misery of homelessness by spending eight days and nights living in a dumpster.

And seven years ago, Stanley started an annual SleepOut event. Last April, that event drew hundreds of people with homes who spent one night sleeping on the lawn of the Meyer Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach.

“It’s the one time of the year when it doesn’t matter if you’re homeless,” Stanley said.

Well, it matters again, especially in Fort Lauderdale.

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post.