Homeless log date: 5/26/2016
Something came my way the other day, which, along with a written proposal for a new comprehensive rehab homeless shelter I was shown by Arnaud Girard yesterday, he had gotten it from the person making the proposal, caused me to ruminate in writing the history of KOTS, Key West’s homeless shelter, and rehabilitation of homeless people.
My rumination began …
Poetry …
I’m the reason KOTS was built. Don’t believe me, though. Ask City Commissioner Sam Kaufman, Chairman of the Board, and Father Stephen Braddock, President and CEO, of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC), a homeless in-residence rehab shelter program, which managed KOTS for the city, after FKOC and I had first told the city not to build the shelter: it would be a den of booze and other drugs, sex, thieves, fighting, and a giant incubator of highly infectious diseases.
Kaufman, left, Braddock, right
KOTS still is that, although it did improve some when FKOC took it over after the city opened it in the fall of 2004 and then quickly realized it had created a monster and begged Steve Braddock to save the city, which FKOC then very reluctantly did and ran KOTS until the city was sued for having opened it without any building permits, and the plaintiff named FKOC as a defendant, which was idiotic, and FKOC gave KOTS back to the city, and that’s how Southern Assistance League (SHAL) came to run Infectious Disease Central (IDC) - venereal, MRSA, scabies, lice, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, influenza, mosquito-borne This is not armchair talk: I stayed many nights at KOTS starting last summer (2015); I lived it firsthand. It is Infectious Disease Central (IDC). And more.
I wrote above that I’m the reason KOTS was built.
In 2004, city mayor Jimmy Weekley, city manager Julio Avael, assistant city manager John Jones, a good friend of mine, and chief of police Gordon “Buz” Dillon, a good friend of mine, were convinced I would put the city into federal court, if city police did not stop harassing and arresting homeless people for sleeping outside at night. In what had become known as the Pottinger case, brought by the ACLU in the early 1990s, a federal judge had enjoined the City of Miami from using city police to stop homeless people from sleeping, cooking food, bathing and relieving themselves outside, in the city’s effort to try to run homeless people out of the Miami area. The federal judge had ruled Miami was inflicting unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment on its homeless people. The federal judge had assumed full control over Miami’s homeless situation. After an appeal by Miami to the 11th Circuit of Federal Appeals, that’s still how it was, and even today a federal court runs Miami’s homeless situation. Miami has to get that court’s permission to change anything about how it treats homeless people.
That same federal court had, and still has, jurisdiction over Key West. Homeless myself, living in a tent in the wetlands across from Smathers Beach, I was going to file a Pottinger copycat lawsuit against the City of Key West in the federal courthouse on Simonton Street. I had practiced law in Birmingham, Alabama, and before that I had clerked for a federal judge in Birmingham. I knew how bring and try the lawsuit. Sam Kaufman, a lawyer who represented homeless people back then, was my personal lawyer, and was going to help me draw up the lawsuit papers. Relying on the Pottinger precedent, the lawsuit would have been a piece of cake. The city leaders knew that. So, to deal with the many homeless people camping in plain view in different parts of the city, they built KOTS, even though FKOC and I were telling them why they should not build it. Just leave homeless people be, we were telling them. Let homeless people sleep outside at night. Even if they have no home, they are part of Key West’s so-called One Human Family, too.
Dream on.
Dream on also about rehabilitating homeless people who are still using their narcotic of choice, which in Key West tends to be booze, very widespread, and spice, now also very widespread. Compared to those two street drugs, and the kind of narcotics physicians prescribe, such as Xanax, Ocycodone, etc., marijuana is a twinky.
FKOC requires clean urine to enter its rehab shelter program. FKOC gives clients random urine tests after they enter the program. If a client flunks a random urine test, he/she is ejected immediately, made to leave the shelter regardless of time of day or night, regardless of weather. How do I know that? I have been a FKOC client. And I hear it from FKOC clients and staff.
Dream on, if you believe homeless people still using their narcotic of choice can be rehabilitated.
Dream on, if you believe forcing homeless people who are not using narcotics into a shelter such as KOTS, where most of the clients are heavy narcotics users, helps the non-users get off the street. What that does to the non-users is it puts them under even greater stress than being homeless causes them, by their being in close quarters with prone to act out heavy users, for the evening and during the night – night after night, week after week, month after month. Heavy users tend to carry more infectious disease, which adds even more stress for the non-users.
But don’t take my word for it. Treat yourself to staying a week of nights at KOTS. Get there by 7 p.m. and stay through the night. And give County Commissioner David Rice a ring, or send him an email asking him what he thinks about mixing homeless using addicts with non-users in a homeless shelter? He’s a clinical psychologist. He ran the Guidance Care Clinics for many years. They specialize in drug rehab. They have had many homeless clients.
At the highly-touted county-city homeless conference in the Harvey Government Center in Key West a couple of years ago, during citizen comments I said it is a really bad idea to mix homeless people using booze and other drugs with homeless people who are not using; the two groups should be segregated into separate facilities. David Rice then said he agreed with Sloan Bashinsky; you do not mix users with non-users, if rehab is your goal. But if rehab is not your goal …
Rice
At a later homeless summit in the Harvey Government Center, locally hosted by FKOC, local governments were not involved in putting it on, David Rice said, when it comes to homeless matters, he looks to two people in the Florida Keys: Sloan Bashinsky and Father Stephen Braddock. Steve was moderating that meeting, the panelists were real homeless experts, from the mainland. They did not tell the local government officials anything they wanted to hear.
Now you’d have thunk David Rice’s remarks, at least, would have been reported in the local mullet wrappers. Dream on. Only at goodmorningkeywest.com were David’s remarks reported.
Several times during citizen comments at city commission meetings, I told Mayor Craig Cates and the six city commissioners to spend a week of nights at KOTS, so they can know what the city’s homeless shelter really is. They stared back at me like I was daft, or the devil.
Cates
Right after he was elected the first time, in 2009, Craig Cates and his campaign manager both thanked me for getting him elected without a runoff. I had been saying at candidate forums, if you don’t vote for me, then vote for Craig. After thanking me, Craig asked me if I would be on his Mayor’s Homeless Advisory Committee? He hoped I would, because I knew so much about homelessness. I said, sure. When he formed the committee, I never heard from him about it.
Later, Steve Braddock told me he had tried to get on the mayor’s homeless advisory committee, and Craig had not replied to Steve’s overtures. When I published that at goodmorningkeywest.com, Craig denied Steve had ever tried to be on the committee. Steve forwarded me copies of two emails he had sent to Craig, asking to be on the committee. I published the two emails at goodmorningkeywest.com.
Something many people do not give much, if any, thought, which Steve Braddock and I have discussed many times: Jesus had no place to lay down his head at night, he was homeless; and he told his disciples, as they did to the least of people among them, they did also to him.
Sloan Bashinsky