Lost at sea, or worse - Key West

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There is a really different kind of homeless man in Key West right now. He has debilitating Raynaud’s disease, which causes a person to feel cold and want to live in a warm climate. This fellow took to traveling after his “normal” life stopped working well. On foot he mostly traveled. He told of trekking into San Diego, California with a small backpack and finding himself downtown surrounded by a S.W.A.T. team and snipers – they thought he had a bomb in his backpack. Nope, just a few belongings. He took to my lady Kari and me, and, when he can, he looks out for her when I am not with her. I saw him yesterday and hailed him and we talked a while. He was on a bicycle he had made out of old discarded bicycles. He checked out my old one-speed bicycle, like a pro, declared it reasonably fit. He touched the light-weight parker he was wearing, said he was cold one day, needed something to wear over his shirt, and he found the parker on the ground. He said that happens to him wherever he is. He needs something. It is there without him having to look for it. I asked if he’d ever heard of a woman who was called The Peace Pilgrim? He said, no. I said I read a book about her once. She was a traveler like he is. An older woman. She only carried a toothbrush and a comb and had only the clothes on her back. Whatever else she needed just showed up when she needed it. If she was cold, a blanket showed up, for example. I said I sometimes have thought of taking off and giving that way of living a try. I’ve talked with Kari about doing it. I’m quite fed up with Key West and Florida Keys politics. Neither Kari nor I like Key West. I don’t see her being interested in living that way, so maybe I will never give that a try. Maybe it’s just a romantic notion of mine, which, upon my trying it, would make me wish I’d never heard of The Peace Pilgrim. She challenged lots of mainstream’s ways and sacred cows, and maybe in that way she was not so peaceful. But she was gentle soul, and wise. She got people’s attention when she spoke. Kari arrived from having gone into a store to use the bathroom. We told our homeless friend that Jane Doe, who, after smoking spice had a seizure and was ambulanced to the hospital and then she flat-lined and later was released and had another seizure, has made arrangements, she told us at the soup kitchen earlier yesterday afternoon, to leave the Florida Keys using a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to her daughter’s home on the mainland, and she is going to give up the drugs. Our friend said he had heard that news and it had been a wake up call for Jane and either you answer a wake up call, or you don’t. Our friend is really different. I suppose his disease had something to do with that - I mean, what does a person do, who no longer can live where there is cold weather? Head for somewhere it’s warm. Just makes sense. Ask any homeless person in Key West if they’d like be homeless anywhere it’s cold? It’s rough enough being homeless in Key West even when it’s not cold here.

Well, I bet our peace pilgrim friend could care less how the voters will come down on the whether or not the city should buy the Peary Court apartments referendum, or on anything, for that matter, which people in this city think is important for this city to do. But it has fallen on me, and now on Kari, to be involved in this city’s affairs, often in ways not appreciated by city government leaders and employees, the general population, homeless people, and some of my readers.

In today’s Key West Citizen might be the dumbest, or the most disingenuous, editorial ever for that newspaper. My interjected thoughts in bold italics.

EDITORIAL BOARD: PAUL A. CLARIN/PUBLISHER KAY HARRIS/ EDITOR ROBERT CINTRON JR. KEN DOMANSKI TODD GERMAN JENNIFER HULSE W. ANN REYNOLDS

What are we missing?

Is there anyone currently living in the Keys who hasn’t heard about our affordable housing issue? Anyone? Anyone? A quick rundown of the issue for those not paying attention: The Keys needs affordable housing, which is defined as housing that your average worker can afford. Not to buy, but to rent. And not subsidized by the government in which the government pays for a portion of the rent, either. Where’d you come up with that bull shit: “And not to be subsidized by the government?” In Key West, the Key West Housing Authority housing is the ONLY real affordable rental housing, and there is not nearly enough of it. Strictly apartments or housing that an individual or a family can afford on the wages that are paid to working-class individuals, whether they are law enforcement, bartenders, fishing guides, cooks, teachers, firemen, hairdressers, etc. Er, what about street and sanitation workers, maids, deck hands, hotel, motel and guesthouse housekeepers, yard maintenance workers, dock workers, automobile and boat mechanics, retail store, grocery, convenience and drug store workers and cashiers, restaurant dishwashers, busers and cleanup crews, deck hands, city meter readers, utility company secretarial staff, city and county government rank and file workers, secretaries generally, etc., etc. - the working stiffs, often working 2 or even 3 jobs, without whom, Key West and the Florida Keys would come to a grinding halt and be uninhabitable? None of whom can afford to live at PEARY COURT, in Key West, now, or ever, regardless of how the referendum is decided by the voters. The affordable housing issue is not new, and it’s not just a Keys issue. It’s rampant in many parts of the country, and the world for that matter, in areas that the 1 percent desire to live on a full- or part-time basis and need services that the other 99 percent work hard to offer. Irrelevant to this discussion. While Key Largo has the ability to bring in workers from Homestead or Florida City, the Middle and Lower Keys are too remote. The cities of Marathon and Key West have a near-crisis issue on their hands, and areas that used to have affordable options for those who wished to commute, such as Big Pine, Cudjoe Key, Summerland, etc. are full. There are many houses on the market, but those needing affordable rental options can’t afford them. The City of Key West is trying to preserve affordable housing for workers by looking to purchase Peary Court and its 157 units by borrowing against the development and emptying land development funds to come up with the required $55 million. Whether or not voters agree will be decided in a few weeks, but the city at least recognizes there is an issue, even if there might be other ways to remedy it. Do you people on the Citizen Editorial Board honestly think $2,400 a month, plus utilities, is affordable worker rental housing? If so, you need brain transplants. Regardless of where you live in the Keys, you live in Monroe County, and despite well-publicized accounts of the lack of affordable housing for workers, which is also leading to a lack of workers, the county seems oblivious to the issue. In front of the commission today is a proposal from a local company wanting to build 200 units of affordable housing — not public housing, not government subsidized housing — but housing that workers can afford to live in. And they are willing to build it on land they own, with their own money, with no government tax incentives or other enticements. Er, what do the benevolent developers say the monthly rents will be? And the monthly utilities? Why did you not include that information in this editorial, so your readers could decide for themselves if these 200 units will be affordable? Well? Why didn’t you include that information? Anyone familiar with the housing shortage would think this would be a terrific way to put a dent in this tremendous need the entire Keys is facing. All the county has to do is rezone the property. A no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, the developers are facing an uphill battle. They’ve already had objections from the Navy and they are working to overcome some of the county issues and requirements in order to make the development more palatable. As always, the neighbors aren’t happy, but no one is when undeveloped land is developed in what they’ve come to see as their own private backyard park. Hmmm, but on the other hand, the county government and the Navy seem okay with a WalMart shopping center going in on Rockland Key across US 1 from the Naval Air Station, knowing WalMart will create a serious traffic problem on US 1, and will make it harder, if not impossible, for some local retail outlets to survive, and will gobble up workers from the local workforce, but will not provide affordable housing for them. So on one hand, Key West is willing to throw $55 million at 157 units just to preserve them for workers, not to create new ones - Who says Key West is willing to do that? I heard yesterday that City Commissioner Sam Kaufman’s town hall meeting last week on the Peary Court purchase was packed with people who don’t want the city to buy Peary Court. You effite upper crust snobs need to get rid of your wistful Republican Party crystal ball thinking and propaganda, and start thinking like poor working stiffs think, if you are going to be a voice for Key West - last and Monroe County has the ability to spend $0 and gain 200 units by simply overcoming the objections of those who stand to lose their free ocean view. What are we missing? Anyone? Anyone? —The Citizen

Since you asked … What you are missing, on purpose, is the county and the city governments in the Florida Keys let developers run wild here, to the point most affordable rental housing was gobbled up by developers and torn down and the debris carted to landfills somewhere, and new, much more expensive housing was built on the same land.

What else you also are missing in Key West, on purpose, also hidden in glaring plain view, is the city owns 33 acres of undeveloped land on Truman Waterfront,

and instead of squeezing as much affordable housing authority rental housing into that land as possible, which the Navy would allow, that land now is going to be a $58 million public park, which will generate no revenues, and will require costly annual maintenance, and will attract homeless people, perhaps in droves. All the while, right next door is beautiful Fort Zachary State Park, which charges a modest daily fee and costs the city and its taxpayers nothing.

I got into sort of a philosophical discussion somewhat in that ball park yesterday, after receiving an email replying to the Mike Tolbert and his witches part of the day before yesterday’s Mad, mad Key West going mad, mad, madder – Key West homeless shelter manager sex cult leader’s juvenile witches burned at the stake … Key West buy Peary Court apartments boondoggle PAC founder Jimmy Weekley keel-hauled in calm shark-infested waters … Key West’s North Roosevelt Blvd international dead skunk in the middle of the road convention post at goodmorningkeywest.com.

Paul Revere wrote:

Subject: As a concerned friend

I guess I am anyway. I try to be.

I’d rather you not post this, but do admire you and can easily put up with most of your faults and not judge. I have my own you see.

However I do not see why you let these trolls? take up so much of your psychic energy and give them a voice on your site. This is juvenile trash talk which is incomprehensible to me and drags you down into their mud, muddled, minds. Who besides you cares what they think?

Again, because I refuse to do social media , I may not understand how pervasive it is , but really, who gives a crap about every inconsequential thing someone says when there are people starving and dying as in Syria and so much other stuff to discuss?

Be well and take care.

I replied:

I ass-u-me you mean by trolls, the juvenile witch disciples of Mike Tolbert, who just so happens to run Key West’s homeless shelter and, from all I hear, hits on homeless women to come to his home and to do party sex with him and his wife. Trolls well describes those two damsels, but I give them credit for putting their real names on their words, in public, which is more than I can say for some local government watchdogs and critics, not to mention the fine folks hiding behind a committee at the WorkerHousingKW PAC’s buy Peary Court discussion Facebook groups. Beyond that, the local folks should know, even if they don’t want to know, what it’s like being homeless in Key West, and staying at KOTS, which is something they actually could try to do something about, as opposed to not being able to do anything about overseas, unless they go over there and do what they can, if anything, to make a difference there, and maybe get killed or contract some horrible disease. From my perspective, in the gutter, Key West is rotten to the core. Kari agrees.

Paul Revere wrote:

I understand about educating people about the homeless and that’s a good thing to do. Just think the troll stuff is something you should ignore and not waste your time on.
Do you know which stores are selling spice? Maybe something can be done to shame them? That stuff is evil imo . Not asking you to take that on, but I would like to know.

I replied:

Mike Tolbert mentioned a few stores trafficking spice under the counter, he said he’d been told of those stores by homeless people. No way to shut that down, in my opinion. I’m just airing stuff out. The 2 trolls were, are, extensions of Mike. That’s why they were important for me to engage and let the public see them, thus Mike. Well, that’s one reason. There are many levels in play. I just engage them as they arrive, not expecting it to change anything. If I expected change because of what I do, say, or write, I would be crazy. If change comes, so be it. I told Kari earlier today, this is all about me, what I do. It’s arranged to accelerate my spiritual development, if I handle it in ways that keep the angels reasonably happy. When she was told in her sleep the other night, Sloan is the way, people should think and live like him, I told her that was for me to hear, as well as for her. It told me the angels are okay with how I’m going about things, which, of course, defy mainstream perspectives. Kari wonders ongoing what’s the matter with me? Angels are what’s the matter with me. They have demonstrated in the past just how awful they can make me feel internally, and physically, and I do everything I can to stay in their good graces, not cross them. Not possible to grok that, if you have not experienced it. There was something else about the 2 trolls, especially the one who claimed to have been born with powers. She bought me a chance to converse with someone at different level than the very low dull political vibration. She entertained me, as awful as she was to engage mentally and otherwise. As I wrote to her, her and my discussion was a bit bigger than us; I had readers whose souls wanted them to see what went back and forth between her and me. I’d wager every reader I have fit into that category. There is far more in heaven and on earth than politics offers. Mainstream humanity sees through dark glass dimly, if at all. That young witch is in deep, deep, spiritual doo doo, and thinks she is the cat’s meow, secondary to terrible soul wounding, with demonic infection aggravating her entire being. She’s a proxy for many, many people, who tinker in the spiritual growth arenas away from the religions, which are in their own blind leading the blind dead dilemmas, in the main. This afternoon, I’m going to see someone who actually has secular power in the homeless arena generally in this locale. Maybe that will lead to something happening. Maybe not.

This morning P.S. to Paul Revere:

In a dream last night, I watched a man, for the sport of it, attack a beautiful pine forest and knock down a lot of trees and set the entire forest ablaze, so that he and others he was aligned with had to flee, and me, too, and the water in the stream flowing out of the pine forest tasted like gasoline. That dream was about you. And, I suppose, about this on the bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph the other day:

Happiness in intelligent people is one of the rarest thing I know. I understand Abraham Lincoln shared that folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be. Consider a promise to yourself, just consider…

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but great deeds. To live in faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you. ~Coconuts Bar & Package Store

Used to be, Paul, the owners of Coconuts were flaming born again Christian musicians, who had no problem polluting their community with firewater, which I suppose could be likened to gasoline. They, too, had big problems with what I was publishing. Whether they still own Coconuts, or someone else does, this thing on the Coconut Telegraph belies the domestic terrorists these trolls really are. Right in your own Big Pine Key backyard, not over in Syria, Americans destroying Americans. Same goes on in Key West. And everywhere in the Keys.

Sloan

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com