Since the candidate forums began, some city commission and mayor candidates have spoken of Key West’s homeless as if they are the scourge of the earth and would best be interned or removed from Key West and the Keys altogether. The tone is non-discriminating, severe, devoid of compassion, and frankly, reminds me of the Third Reich.
One city commission candidate, Todd German, told me he was going to take my advice to everyone concerned about Key West’s homeless, and spend some time getting to know them at Higgs Beach and St. Francis-St. Claire soup kitchen out on Flagler Avenue, and then he would let me know what he found out. I have yet to hear anything back from Todd on that score.
One mayor candidate, former Mayor Jimmy Weekley, has consistently said this is a delicate issue, that homeless people have rights. Jimmy sometimes in forums has referred to the Pottinger Case, in which the ACLU, representing Miami’s homeless, filed suit in United States District Court against that city, alleging that Miami was using its police to drive its homeless out of the county by preventing them from sleeping at night and denying them the ability to cook meals and, essentially, stay alive. The Court ruled Miami was in violation of the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition of the Eight Amendment of the United States Constitution. A sizeable judgment was entered against the city, plus the ACLU’s attorney fees. Miami appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded the case to the District Court with instructions that settlement would be a good idea. Thereafter, Miami settled the case much along the lines of the District Court’s original judgment. Since that day, the District Court has maintained jurisdiction over Miami’s homeless issues. It’s as if Miami had ten mother-in-laws come to visit and they never left.
The same United States District Court has jurisdiction over Key West. Jimmy Weekley knows this, because all of this came to a head when he was Mayor in 2004, and the reality of Pottinger was accepted by Jimmy and the then sitting City Commission. I was active in that coming about, as was local attorney Sam Kaufman, Father Steven Braddock, Chairman and CEO of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC), and his right-hand-man Charles Davis, who eventually assumed command of the KOTS program on Stock Island and straightened it out, after the city opened that shelter and it quickly turned into a saloon, brothel and center for disease uncontrol, just as Sam, Charles, Steve and I told the city would happen. We had asked the city not to open the shelter, but the City Commission was determined to make all of Key West’s homeless people sleep up there at night, even though there were perhaps six times more homeless than the shelter could accommodate. Last I heard, the city was paying FKOC around $23,000 a month to run KOTS, which can accommodate about one hundred men and twenty women per night. Trustees from the county jail are used to clean the place up each morning after the residents leave.
I myself slept a few nights at KOTS in late 2004 and early 2005, so I know what it’s like in there. It’s adequate, is the best way to describe it. It solved nothing the city wanted to solve, though. What the city wanted was the homeless out of sight, but they have the same right during the day as anyone else to be in public places. Bedding them down on Stock Island at night did not remove them from public view even at night, because most of them had been bedding down at night anyway in places the public wasn’t likely to see them. For some homeless, KOTS has turned out to be a godsend. They have jobs, need a place to shower and sleep nights. For other homeless, though, it’s just a place to crash after drinking all day and up to KOTS nightly curfew, which I believe is 10 p.m. After that, they can’t get in. They have to leave by about 7:30 a.m. the next morning, carrying all of their belongings with them, to wherever they go during the day.
What am I driving at here? What I’m driving at is that our homeless are part of us. They are part of our so-called One Human Family. Jimmy Weekley recognized this the last time he was Mayor. He stood beside it, despite a great deal of heat coming from various segments of Key West’s mainstream population. I rather imagine that in God’s eyes Jimmy earned a few gold stars during that trial by fire, and he still seems to be earning them in this arena. While a number of other candidates seem to be earning themselves something else. They seem to think it’s politically advantageous to bash “vagrants,” a term we did not hear much back when Key West was coming to terms with the Pottinger case. Vagrant sounds good to Neo Nazis, like nigger, Jew, wop, spic and queer sound good. They don’t want a solution to some of the homeless acting out at Higgs Beach. I already offered that — put a cop on the ground out there from opening to closing. That’s a lot cheaper than taking title to Higgs Beach from Monroe County, and having to maintain it and also keep a cop on the ground out there. Nobody ran with that. Instead, they kept harping about doing something about the “vagrants,” taking back “our” beach, which never has belonged to Key West. It was owned by Clarence S. Higgs, who gave it to Monroe County.
Let me ‘splain this in plain English. If I end up being mayor, I’m going to do everything I can to put a cop on the ground at Higgs Beach from opening to closing, daily. And if the City Commission or the City Manager or the City Police or County Deputies or citizen vigilantes start acting like the City of Miami started acting, I will petition the United District Court right here in Key West to take jurisdiction over Key West. I will not ask for damages and attorney fees the way the ACLU did. I simply will ask the Court to take over and run Key West’s homeless situation indefinitely. This is a much better and safer way to go to court, than have the ACLU or Duck Tours take us there.
