Finally, a Key West homeless forum with substance
by
an ex-Key West street person
Sloan Bashinsky
Thursday, 9/11, brought a video link to the recent homeless forum from Father Steve Braddock. The link is at the bottom of this article.
Steve heads up Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, which gives down and out people a chance to get their lives back on track and living back inside.
I wondered how many homeless veterans the white Christian guy (G.W. Bush) and the black Christian guy (Barack H. Obama) produced with their wars the homeless man Jesus didn’t sanction?
And how many more veterans of those two wars, who are not yet homeless, will get there sooner or later?
Homeless vets were discussed at the recent homeless forum in Key West.
The forum ran nearly 3 hours, non-stop. I attended and spoke the allowed two minutes during citizen comments at the end.
The forum was excellent, substantive, compelling. As opposed to a number of homeless forums/summits in the past, which were political noise and bleating by people who had no clue what they were dealing with, in my opinion.
I opened the video link Father Braddock provided and watched and listened into his opening remarks to kick off the forum. The video was in good working order through that point. Spot checks of the video through its end indicated the video remained in good working order.
If you did not attend the forum, I hope you will take the time, several sittings will break it up, to watch and listen to the entire forum.
You will get a very different picture from what you read in the Citizen and hear from local officials about homelessness.
You will learn criminalizing homeless people is the most costly, by far, and the least effective, by far, approach.
You will learn what works and what doesn’t work, to try to deal with homelessness.
You will learn the federal law local governments are required to follow in dealing with homeless people.
You will learn feeding homeless people enables them … to live.
You will learn anybody can become homeless.
You will learn, with rare exceptions, homeless people to not choose to become homeless.
You will learn - yikes! - all the many cities in Florida, which have a homeless problem, believe it is because their city alone is such great place to live.
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