Outside of convenience stores and at major intersections, homeless men and women beg for assistance, gripping tightly to cardboard signs and tin cans. Their desperate pleas for help are usually ignored. We scuffle to find a few coins. We frown with pity and lie about not having any cash. We even blatantly ignore them because we are scared, disgusted, annoyed or a combination of the three.
Yet, there are those compassionate few who remember that the homeless are not crusty, smelly, creepy old pests. They remember that the homeless are people: people in need, people who lost their jobs and homes, people who are suffering from illnesses and addictions and people who lost the ability to provide for their families. These Good Samaritans go out of their way to buy food and make warm meals for the invisible population of Fort Lauderdale. People like Arnold Abbott, the 90-year-old founder of nonprofit organization Love Thy Neighbor, who has been making national headlines, provide freshly cooked meals for the hungry in public spaces. Yet, thanks to a new Fort Lauderdale city ordinance, giving back and caring for the underserved is punishable by a $500 fine and even jail time.
Passed last month, the new ordinance makes it illegal to feed the homeless in public outdoor spaces, like parks and beaches. According to the text of the new law, its purpose is to protect the safety and health of the community. The city council’s main concern is supposedly to prevent the spread of possible food-related diseases by limiting homeless access to food. If this is was a pressing public health concern worthy of immediate action, maybe I would believe them. However, there have not been any documented cases linking public food sharing to the spread of disease. There has not been any public outcry or protest that cites feeding homeless people in public parks as an alarming safety issue, nor has anyone specifically requested outlawing feeding the homeless in public. In reality, the new ordinance has no visible effect on our public safety. Rather, it only makes it more difficult to help the homeless as it tightens regulations and puts volunteers and Good Samaritans behind bars.
The ordinance is really an attempt to solve an entirely different problem altogether: the homeless population. According to Broward County Homeless Services, there were 2,810 documented in Broward County, a majority of whom live in Fort Lauderdale’s streets and parks. While Fort Lauderdale does have homeless shelters, there are only enough beds and facilities to house around 70 percent of them, while 829 others are left without any care or assistance. Watching a suffering, starving person beg for money and food certainly makes it difficult to enjoy the city’s urban, subtropical beauty, and the city council is cognizant of that. Ft. Lauderdale is a tourism-driven city, so aesthetics are an important part of its economic growth, and getting the homeless population off the streets is a priority.
The city’s solution to the rising level of homeless people is to drive the homeless out to neighboring towns and cities — a cheap, easy and inhumane solution — and the new ordinance is an attempt to do so, even if it means a few people starve along the way. Instead of investing more money into new, expanded shelters or trying to solve the homeless problem from the source to stop its the growth, the city only makes it more difficult to be homeless and to help the homeless in hopes that they will eventually pack up and leave. Instead of taking responsibility for its own struggling citizens and taking the initiative to help them out, the Fort Lauderdale city council regards the most ostracized people of our community as pests and hopes someone else will clean up their mess. The city forgot that the homeless are not only still people, but citizens as well. As long as they have a valid ID, are over the age of 18, and have not convicted a felony, homeless people can vote in Broward County. They just need to cite where they currently reside, be it a park, street corner or shelter, as their place of residence. As citizens, especially citizens who can vote, the city should be looking after their best interests.
Criminalizing food sharing with homeless people in public spaces is just another way to regard homeless people as an entirely different species. If I, your everyday broke college student, go to a park and attend a picnic with my family, a barbecue with my friends, or an event hosted by an organization, my friends and family probably will not go to jail for sharing food with me in public. The only degree of separation between a homeless young adult and me is the fact that my parents let me live with them. Yet, in the eyes of the city’s law and government, homeless people are much closer to ducks and other animals worthy of park signs instructing pedestrians not to feed them.
Abbott and other activists who have been arrested for rebelling against this unjust ordinance are simply being charged with having humanity. They are simply trying to help people where the city government failed to do so. The city needs to realize that, besides further marginalizing the underserved, punishing individuals who care about improving our community, and attempting to temporarily cover up the massive homelessness issue, their new ordinance serves no just purpose.
