Homeless Voice; Panhandling, Constitutional Rights, and Ocala

PANHANDLING,

V I S I T U S AT H O M E L E S S V O I C E . O R G

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AND

OCALA

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Publisher

Vendor and client Michael White | Photo by Miranda Schumes

The Homeless Voice is owned by the COSAC Foundation, a multi-faceted non-profit agency that feeds, shelters, and arranges access to social and medical services to every homeless person that enters its shelters. We aim to enable them to return to a self-reliant lifestyle, but for the small percentage of people incapable, we provide a caring and supportive environment for long-term residency.

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Originally made by a team tasked to raise money from the streets for the shelter, the Homeless Voice was born from the knowledge that freedom of press was a way to raise awareness. We started as a flyer, then a 4-page newsprint, then finally becoming the voice of the homeless with the Homeless Voice newspaper and website in 1999.

In this newspaper we hope to present the problems that the homeless population faces day-to-day, the problems these people personally face, and the ways that laws can help and hinder them.

Visit us at to read past issues, see online-only content, and a full map of where you can find this paper.

Many of our vendors are clients of our shelters, brought to different major cities to vend this paper in return for a donation. Based out of Lake City — where our Veterans Inn shelter and Motel 8 is located — or Davie, they are always brought out in groups of four to help each other stay motivated and keep each other company. They’re given plenty of food and water for the day and don bright shirts to distinguish them as our vendors.

Depending on their specific job in vending this newspaper, all vendors take in about 75% of donations that day, with the remaining 25% put back into the paper.

We distribute in all major cities throughout Florida, including Tallahassee, Lake City, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, Daytona, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and now Gainesville.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 22 Issue 3, July 2021

Sean Cononie

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Fraieli

Executive Editor Mark Targett

Contributers Dori Zinn

COSAC Foundation PO Box 292-577 Davie, FL 33329 954-924-3571 Cover photo illustration by Andrew Fraieli

Check out our previous issues and other stories at Homelessvoice.org

Looking for fun and friendly newspaper vendors interested in becoming their own boss.

Contact Ginny: 386-758-8080

Have a journalistic or photography background, and looking for freelancing?

Email us at

andrew@homelessvoice.org The Homeless Voice | Vol. 22 Issue 3, July 2021 3

Mental illness complicates a person’s life; if severe, it can lead people to homelessness, and once there, the systems of police and health care might do nothing or even make it worse Story and Photo Illustrations

By Andrew Fraieli ental illness and homelessness are closely intertwined. This is not because all unhoused people are mentally ill, nor because most people who are mentally ill are homeless — this is because of the delicate balancing act of living life with a mental illness, and the little systemic support for bettering the lives of those with severe mental illness, and keeping them off the streets.

A cycle of victimization and incarceration can await those who are severely mentally ill and fall into homelessness as they are often arrested and don’t receive the help they need. This can be partially caused by the police’s lack of training for mental health emergencies, but also the lack of systemic support for those with drug addictions or past criminal records — all perpetuating the cycle.

But these people are not lazy, or necessarily addicts, or any other stereotypes attached to those who are in these situations — they can be average people.

About 20% of Americans have a mental illness, and 5.2% of American adults have a serious mental illness — with the difference being stark. “Serious mental illnesses disrupt people’s ability to carry out essential aspects of daily life, such as self care and household management,” says the National Coalition for Homelessness (NCH).

They continue that mental illness can also hinder the creation of stable relationships, or cause them to “misinterpret others’ guidance and react irrationally.”

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Mental illness in general is having any “mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder” from mild to severe, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, but not seriously interfering with major life activities. Serious mental illness, though, “often results in pushing away caregivers, family, and friends who may be the force keeping that person from becoming homeless,” the NCH continues. “As a result of these factors and the stresses of living with a mental disorder, people with mental illnesses are much more likely to become homeless than the general population.”

The rate of mental illness within the homeless population differs according to the study. The 2015 Housing and Urban Development survey found there to be 564,708 people suffering from homelessness on a single night, with 104,083, or about 24%, being identified as severely mentally ill.

In a 2016 paper by the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that fights for better treatment for severely mental ill people, they elaborate that the number is probably understated due to the difficulty and limitations of the HUD survey, giving the lower “continued assumption that [only] 30% of the homeless have a serious mental illness.”

Nonetheless, the population of people with

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mental illness is large, and the population of people experiencing homelessness who are affected by a severe mental illness is as well.

Lisa Dailey, the acting Executive Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, told the Homeless Voice, “It’s kind of a vicious circle. You may be more likely to become homeless because of a mental illness, and if that does happen, the homelessness makes the symptoms and the experience of the mental illness much much worse.” It can be much more difficult to bring that person back to a “base-level of functioning” she says.

There are government systems designed to support those with severe mental illnesses, but they are far from ideal, she continues.

“There are a lot of people who qualify as being disabled due to severe mental illness,” says Dailey. “But in order to qualify for those programs, there’s a sort of required impoverishment that goes with it, where you can lose access to your benefits if you end up with too high of an income.”

The system’s design keeps people from increasing their quality of life too much, not allowing them to find better work as they’ll reach a middle-ground where they earn too much to qualify for government help, but not enough to actually afford medication. And, Dailey continues, “being at that poverty level makes you very much at risk of being unhoused at any time.”

When they do become homeless, the more immediate response to these individuals is generally attention from law enforcement for any number of reasons, like simply being disruptive in public, or self-treatment with illicit substances. But, says Dailey, police generally aren’t trained to handle what is really a medical issue.

She elaborates that they usually see the law enforcement response as “thinking of the client that they’re serving, the person who made the call because they’re finding something to be a nuisance or somebody is being disruptive to the general public flow of things.” This is rather than assessing whether this person needs help, and how to get it to them.

“There’s not much a law enforcement person can offer in that situation.”

The Miami Police department, as an example, does have specific policies for handling the homeless and mentally ill people, according to the Miami Police’s departmental orders — a policy and procedural guidelines document for officers — though they mostly revolve around Florida’s Baker Act. The Baker Act allows any medical professional or police officer to have someone involuntarily admitted for mental health care for up to 72 hours if they are at severe risk of hurting themselves or others and have already refused treatment.

In terms of training to handle mentally ill people, the department has a specific Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), a part of the patrol section consisting of officers “that have attended training sessions conducted by Eleventh Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project,” who are meant to assist other officers with interacting with the mentally ill.

The policy document continues that “[a]ll sworn agency personnel are provided entry-level training in Crisis Intervention during the Basic Law Enforcement course at the police academy,” and have an annual refresher.

A CIT officer is not always the one to respond to a situation with a mentally ill person though, so patrols are expected to summon a CIT officer when the situation occurs, but any officer is allowed to involuntarily bring 6

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in someone under the Baker Act, regardless of mental health training.

With disorders that give you a skewed view of reality, it is hard to defend from being victimized too, and this victimization can then lead to a cycle of arrest, imprisonment, and the streets once again.

In 2014, 21 studies were reviewed together to examine the relationships between police contact, severe mental illness, and victimization among those experiencing homelessness. Six of those studies found the “lifetime rate of victimization in the population ranged from 74% to 87%,” and 15 of those studies “found that mentally ill homeless individuals had a lifetime risk for arrest ranging between 63% and 90%.”

The Treatment Advocacy Center uses New Orleans as an example of this disproportional arrest rate of the homeless, citing a situation where “the municipal court began routinely holding sessions in the homeless shelter because so many of the city’s 34,000 outstanding arrest warrants were for people who were homeless or mentally ill.”

A separate 2013 study analyzed the relationship between mental illness and homelessness within a group

of 3,673 “recently booked arrestees” in Arizona. The study found the relationship between homelessness and mental illness “to be entirely mediated by alcohol use, drug use, and violent victimization,” stating that this suggests a “strong direct effect between mental health problems and victimization is present.”

This victimization shows a possibility of how mental health issues could also become prominent after someone has become unhoused as trauma, depression, and anxiety are all “common results of victimization,” according to the study. With the assumption of “violent victimization” being rather traumatic for the arrestees, it says, “using drugs and alcohol might be a fundamental coping mechanism for responding to this trauma.”

A “self-medication” that is often the precursor to arrest, or situations that would cause arrest.

“We don’t really have a great system of diverting people with a mental illness who’ve been picked up on a drug offense back into the mental health treatment system,” elaborates Dailey. “They just process that as a

criminal justice issue, and maybe the person might end up in mental health court which is also not always easy for a person with a severe mental illness to navigate.”

The study also proposes a possible solution to this victimization as well as for homelessness stemming from it: pay more attention.

“The association between mental health problems and homelessness can potentially be interrupted if more attention is paid to the issues stemming from poor mental health, specifically substance abuse and victimization,” it says. “By treating these two risk factors for persons with mental illness, we may in fact also be treating homelessness.”

If police were to better screen people for mental illness, and send them to services that could help them rather than arrest them, it could stop the direct route from mental illness to homelessness. Some police department’s policies dictate they do this, such as Miami, but may also have a history of harassment towards the homeless — such as the Pottinger Agreement, a landmark homeless-protection law, being abolished even as the ACLU said the homeless were still suffering, and Miami police officers destroying property on homeless encampment raids.

Dailey explains that because someone who has a severe mental illness may not even be fully aware of their situation, their declining of help doesn’t mean it must be the end of helping. There could be outreach on a “non-reactive basis,” helping in general rather than only when problems arise.

Dailey goes on to say that, while it is not seen as the most popular option, she also sees involuntary treatment as “underutilized.”

“The suggestion may be that they are trying to honor an individual’s civil liberties, but in my view that’s kind of dressing up a lack of capacity in the system,” she says. “If there was more capacity, people would be more willing to use involuntary care to give someone treatment that may allow them to stabilize and make better use of programs that are available.”

The 2013 study in Arizona continued that, “if the criminal justice system is more proactive in screening arrestees for mental health problems, and subsequently directing them to appropriate services, the path from mental illness to homelessness can potentially be interrupted.”

They say “early risk factors” for severe mental illness could be seen and handled in this way by a criminal justice system without “ensnar[ing] [them] in the complicated cycle of repeated homelessness and criminal justice involvement.”

When asked about any possible solutions that already exist for these severely mentally ill people living on the street, Dailey mentions Housing First. She is quick to say though that the “person needs to be stabilized first to succeed in that situation.”

Some programs skip treatment, going directly to giving them housing, she says, which can lead to those people abandoning it or refusing to take it “because their illness is untreated and they have delusions or issues that might make them not want to take advantage of that program. If you could focus the effort on making an initial intervention actually robust enough to succeed, that would be better than sort of half treating people over and over and over again.”

Speaking on popular society’s viewpoint on the constant arrests and cyclical systems, Dailey says, “We acknowledge that this is a thing, but we don’t build infrastructure to address it that way. And I think that would be something we could do, it’s just a question of whether or not there’s willpower to do it.”

LGBT youth enjoy an outing with their new friends from Sherlock’s Homes Foundation | Photo courtesy of Jacob Reide Jennings

Local Nonprofit for LGBT Homeless Youth Goes National

Sherlock’s Homes Foundation expands from Boca Raton, Florida to Colorado, now helping LGBT homeless youth cross-country.

By Christiana Lilly for South Florida Gay News

C

OVID-19 has been an emotionally trying time for everyone.

For Jacob Reide Jennings, the founder and president of Sherlock’s Homes Foundation, he spent it changing the lives of LGBT youth.

“I was living with teenage strangers who were homeless during COVID,” he said of how his last year has been.

But it all began on Thanksgiving 2019, just a few months before the world crashed under the grip of the virus. Jennings’ marriage was over, he was laid off from his job, and he was about to lose his condo. He had hit rock bottom, but he knew he could persevere because he had been in low times before.

“I thought, you know what, if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do something that matters,” he said of the time he spent on the couch watching self-help guru Tony Robbins. “He said, ‘The universe doesn’t push you; it pulls you in the direction you’re supposed to go.’ That really started to ring my ears.”

After meditating, Jennings thought of the time he spent homeless in his teens — living out of a car and

sleeping on friends’ couches. It hit him that his next chapter in life was going to help homeless LGBT youth.

“The next day I went out and I rented a house,” he said.

“The day I moved in, there were already kids waiting in line. There was such a need, especially for trans kids.”

He filed for 501c3 status for Sherlock’s Homes Foundation — named for his 7-year-old Jack Russell chihuahua mix — in March 2020 and has housed nine homeless LGBT youth over the last year. The charity

“

When I was 17, my parents kicked me out for being gay,”

has since expanded to locations in Florida, Georgia and Colorado and more properties are scheduled to open this summer. Jennings’ goal is to be in all 50 states by 2025.

But Sherlock’s Homes doesn’t just give young adults a roof over their heads; they stay on scholarships based on their performances, such as opening a bank account, applying for jobs, reading books, and learning how to manage a budget. Jennings’ goal is to teach them how to be independent so when they move out, they have the tools they need to succeed.

“They have a place to stay as long as they’re improving,” Jennings said.

But since they were unable to leave the house during COVID, the charity got creative. As a real estate investor, Jennings used his savvy to purchase rental properties that are owned by the charity and used to help house other underserved populations. It kept the charity afloat in its first year.

For Jennings, homelessness is a passion project of his because he’s lived it.

“When I was 17, my parents kicked me out for being gay,” he explained. “It didn’t quite match with our religious beliefs and since I was raised to be a pastor, it wasn’t exactly in the plans.”

Living out of his 1993 Ford Escort GT that “smelled like gas” and “used to shake when I used to hit the brakes,” he managed to graduate from high school and go to college at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

He couch-surfed for about two years, occasionally sleeping behind a gas station in his trusty car, before moving into his professor’s home when they started dating.

Jennings noted that while he worked hard to break the stereotypes, he fell into the statistics: LGBT youth are overrepresented in homeless youth, and they are usually solicited for sex within 72 hours of being homeless.

“Those statistics weren’t any different from me,” Jennings said. “But we didn’t know where to ask for help. You were ashamed. You didn’t know what to say.

There’s always a stigma about being homeless.”

Homeless youth often don’t consider themselves to be homeless as their experience is different from the stereotypical homeless adult sleeping on a park bench.

Younger homeless people tend to couch surf but don’t always know where they will sleep every night — they’re considered housing insecure.

This was the case for Mason Silva, who Jennings calls his “first kid;” the two met during a community meeting.

Silva had moved out of his parent’s home at 19 as things were tense when he came out as transgender. He was also in an abusive relationship and going through mental lows. Although he didn’t officially move into a Sherlock’s Homes home, Jennings got in touch with Silva’s mom and helped him gain the confidence to find a way to reconcile with his family and stick up for himself. He also met other trans men through Jennings and was able to access resources.

“I told my parents they needed to make the effort to accept me for who I really am. And they did; they really are trying,” Silva said. “[Jennings] was just a really big support system at the time, and he made me feel genuinely not alone … He always pushed me to just do the best I can. He’s still that way with me.”

In a better place, he is joining the Sherlock’s Homes mission by advocating for transgender youth. He’s also excited to join the charity on its upcoming national tour — the charity purchased a school bus converted into a tiny home and they’ll be stopping in cities to discuss nonprofit real estate and how people can work to end homelessness in their communities.

“His ideas and plans are going to change the world in some way,” Silva said of Jennings.

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Yet another Florida city, Ocala, is being sued over anti-homelessness laws, under what the ACLU is calling “unconstitutional” ordinances, continuing a pattern of criminalization, lawsuits, and repeal.

Story and Photo Illustrations

by Andrew Fraieli

T

he first amendment guarantees a right to free speech. That speech might be your opinion, or asking for help — sometimes more specifically, asking for money. This last part is the snag that has kept the lawsuits coming in for many Florida cities over the years, but most recently to the city of Ocala.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida and Southern Legal Counsel of Gainesville filed a joint lawsuit in April against the city for “unconstitutional” panhandling laws. But this is far from the first time a Florida city has been sued for similar claims of unconstitutional ordinances harming the unhoused, and it shows a pattern of passing these laws, being sued, and eventually being forced to repeal.

According to the ACLU, the current lawsuit’s six

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plaintiffs — Roger Luebke, Kimberly Burnham, William Anthony Taylor, Victor Hoyt Cox, Dustin Damico, and Patrick McArdle — who are currently or formerly homeless, are accusing the city’s panhandling ordinances as being “unlawfully vague,” and criminalizing the unhoused for asking for help.

According to lead counsel Chelsea Dunn of Southern Legal Counsel, they’re being “jailed and assessed fines for acts as harmless as asking a stranger for a cigarette.”

Specifically, they say the city is infringing on their First and 14th Amendment rights by arresting people based on the content of their speech — asking for help, when, in other situations, it would be legal — and a lack of due process.

“Ocala’s law is not unique, and it is as unconstitutional

as other similar ordinances that courts have struck down throughout Florida and throughout this country,” said Jacqueline Azis, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida.

These past lawsuits that Azis alludes to have been similarly based around the violation of civil rights — defending panhandling as free speech, as well as accusing cities of cruel and unusual punishment for camping bans and other criminalizing ordinances.

Fort Lauderdale, for example, was sued in 2015 by the city’s local Food Not Bombs chapter for an ordinance that restricted sharing food without a permit, and then only within certain bounds — functionally criminalizing feeding the homeless. The lawsuit argued that the ordinance restricts free expression, as Food Not Bombs

distributes free food to protest the funding of war over solving hunger, not as charity.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit eventually ruled in 2018 that the sharing of food was considered “expressive conduct” and protected by the First Amendment.

The City of Sarasota was also sued in 2015, this time by the ACLU on behalf of several homeless plaintiffs.

Separate city ordinances criminalized sleeping outside, which the ACLU said violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, and panhandling, which violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech. According to the ACLU, within the two years before they sued, the city had already “brought 882 criminal prosecutions against the

Taxpayers pay for the process of enacting the law that will not serve the public interest, and to enforce that law, and ending it when it is challenged in court

homeless” for sleeping outside and in public parks after hours.

It was not until 2017 that an agreement was reached in that lawsuit: if no beds are available in the Sarasota Salvation Army — the only shelter that met the standards set in the lawsuit — the city cannot enforce the ordinances challenged.

Tristia Bauman, an attorney at the National Homelessness Law Center who is not involved in the current Ocala lawsuit, told the Homeless Voice, “The laws generally being challenged are generally the same.”

And, to her point, Fort Lauderdale was sued again in 2015 — by the ACLU and Southern Legal Counsel — this time for homeless encampment raids.

According to the ACLU press release, in May 2015

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Fort Lauderdale city workers came to a homeless encampment with dump trucks and seized and destroyed the belongings of those who weren’t there, or couldn’t pack fast enough. The ACLU and Southern Legal Counsel filed suit the next month saying the raid violated the U.S. constitution’s “protections against unreasonable seizures of personal property, as well as the guarantee of due process.”

While the lawsuit was not resolved in court, the city agreed to settle by paying all legal fees and paying $82,020 to the plaintiffs for damages.

“Taxpayers pay for the process of enacting the law that will not serve the public interest, and to enforce that law, and ending it when it is challenged in court,” says Bauman, referring to these ordinances that continue to be found problematic.

“What’s crazy is the idea that pushing someone from one street corner to the next, or one neighborhood to the next, does anything to address public health and safety, which is usually the purported justification for exacting criminalization strategies or conducting a sweep,” Bauman continued.

This year, in 2021, Fort Lauderdale was sued yet again.

The Florida Justice Institute (FJI), along with lawyers Mara Shlackman and Frantz J. McLawrence, filed suit against Fort Lauderdale for their panhandling ordinances, calling them “an unconstitutional restriction of free speech.”

They bring up similar points as the ACLU and Southern Legal Counsel’s lawsuit against Ocala, pointing out that Fort Lauderdale’s panhandling ordinance functionally restricts content of speech by only restricting asking for money or help. As of publishing, there has yet to be a resolution.

These are all examples of the same laws, criminalizing the homeless in the same ways, repeatedly being challenged across the state.

To Bauman and the National Homelessness Law Center, these laws originate from “wholly ineffective... short-term responses” to public complaints on visible homelessness. She says that rather than address the root causes of homelessness, communities push law enforcement to try and make visible homelessness “invisible, or at least attempt to do so, and that’s why we see all kinds of different forms of punishment.”

In 2018, a coalition of advocacy legal groups — including the ACLU, National Homelessness Law Center, Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Public Defenders Association, and South Florida chapter of the National Lawyers Guild — even warned multiple Florida cities that their panhandling ordinances were illegal.

In the ACLU’s press release on the coalition’s warning, they cite the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, the basis for their combined effort against panhandling laws. The decision led to the legal basis of panhandling being protected as free speech, and, according to the ACLU, since 2015, “100 percent of lawsuits against cities with panhandling bans have been successful.”

“Every Florida city and county that has an ordinance prohibiting individuals from requesting aid from fellow human beings should immediately stop enforcement and initiate repeal,” said Kirsten Anderson, the director of litigation at Southern Legal Counsel, in the press release. “This is not a solution to homelessness.”

And yet, cities continued to create and enforce these ordinances with varying tactics and strategies. Some of these failed strategies, according to Bauman, “...are tried over and over again, under different laws that are modified.”

Orlando did exactly this in 2017.

Before that year, Orlando’s “solicitation” laws restricted panhandling to certain times of days and specific areas on the sidewalk. Then, in 2017, they proactively changed the ordinances so as to keep their panhandling laws, but abide by the understanding of the court’s 2015 decision. Panhandling is legal almost any time and any place now, but still has restrictions such as not being able to solicit from a car at a stop-light.

Orlando made their panhandling ordinance less criminalizing, but that is not the point according to Bauman: “Not the point if we’re policy making to solve the problem of homelessness, but it is the point if communities are trying to use the power of the law to chase visibly poor homeless people from the public view. And that’s why they will be amended not to improve the situation, but to legally respond to those complaints.”

The current Ocala lawsuit is only one example of this pattern in city ordinances attempting to criminalize the homeless population rather than help.

The ACLU and Southern Legal Counsel give a specific example of tactics used by the city in their lawsuit, describing Ocala “police operations targeted at ‘quality of life’ violations, including panhandling.” Named “Operation Street Sweeper and Operation Innovation,” they lasted a year and had plainclothes officers patrolling “Downtown” and “Midtown” Ocala “to observe ordinance violations such as panhandling.”

“At times, the plainclothes officers would hang out in front of restaurants and smoke a cigarette, to see if people would approach them. One such detail resulted in an arrest for a violation of the current panhandling ordinance after the officer was asked for a cigarette,” says the lawsuit. “At least two other individuals have been arrested for a violation of the current panhandling ordinance for asking for a cigarette.”

When asked about this pattern, Bauman says, “I do see the cycle of punitive approach, push-back, renewed or slightly different approach, occurring all across the country.” She says it could be in the form of simply replacing a court challenged ordinance with a reworded one that still restricts “life-sustaining conduct,” or by just changing the nature of the punishment, like from a criminal offence to a civil offense.

“Governments seek, too often, to abuse their power of regulating public space to exclude disfavored groups from public view. It could be homeless people which it often is, but it can be other groups of people too,” continued Bauman. “Historically, really, anti-homeless laws are cut from the same cloth as Jim Crow laws, or the sun-down town laws.”

“You know it’s all about keeping disfavored groups from being able to enjoy public space in the same way that the rest of us do.”

The Ocala Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the ongoing lawsuit.

EVERY FLORIDA CITY AND COUNTY THAT HAS AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING INDIVIDUALS FROM REQUESTING AID FROM FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY STOP ENFORCEMENT AND INITIATE REPEAL

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How to Stretch Your Panhandling Money Eating is essential, but there are many places that give food away for free. Instead, here are more efficient and clever ways to spend your cash.

BUS PASSES If you don’t have a car, public transport is the next best option for many reasons. Florida is not really meant for pedestrians, and walking miles and miles in the hot sun is not ideal if you don’t have easy access to food, water, and shelter.

If it fits in your budget, and you know you’ll need to get to and from multiple places, an unlimited pass could be worth the cost. In Broward County, for example, one-way bus fares are $2, but an unlimited, 7-day pass is $20. If going to and from one place is $4, doing that once a day, for a week, already comes out to $28.

That $20 can instead bring you to and from work, job interviews, shelters, the library, anywhere, as many times as you want, and it’s an air conditioned break from the outdoors.

NEW SHOES

By Dori Zinn

L

iving on the streets doesn’t necessarily equate to being penniless. Housing is expensive, and depending on the location, difficult to find at all. Many of those who are experiencing homelessness may have money on hand, but simply don’t have enough money to afford housing.

But there is a lot of potential use for whatever money is on hand, and more efficient ways of spending it than one of the most common: food.

If it’s necessary, then it’s necessary, but there are many food banks and food donation centers that readily and reliably give food away to those who need it. So, instead of putting money into food, here are some alternatives to stretch that money more efficiently and cover more potential needs.

GYM MEMBERSHIP A gym membership offers a shower, bathroom, and free water — you can brush your teeth, fill up your water bottle, even store possessions in the lockers depending on the gym. A membership usually grants all-day access

as well, letting you use the facilities whenever you need. If you’ve spent the day outside, you can use your evenings to wash up, even if you were just there that morning.

Some gyms are open 24-hours, which would allow access to your belongings at all times. But if you’re not tied to one area, gyms with many different locations could be a better aspect to look for so you’re never too far from one.

CHEAP PHONE A little cash towards a prepaid phone can give immediate access to a lot of useful resources like maps, job applications, social services, and maybe even an online bank. Refurbished ones can start as low as $10, depending on what’s available in your area, and there are many cheap phone plan options as well.

Keep in mind that many charities offer free cell phones and you might be able to get one without paying for it.

Check with local organizations to see if this is something they offer.

Clothes and shoes are other necessities, like food, that can usually be easily acquired through donation centers or shelters. What can be difficult to find are decent shoes that fit though, and thrift stores can fill that gap for cheap.

If a bus pass is outside the realm of possibility, buying shoes might be the next best option. With the walking required without the bus, and Florida’s constant rainfall, decent shoes will help tremendously. Weather is so unpredictable, even with a 15-minute sunshower, your socks could be wet for hours.

LAUNDRY Doing laundry may not be as high a priority as food, water, and transportation, but it is good for keeping clothes presentable, and if you’re going to do it at a laundromat, it can provide a reprieve from the elements — so maybe go on a particularly rainy or hot day.

In terms of saving money, avoid buying detergent at the laundromat. They tend to sell products that have a short lifespan, but the same price as regular stores.

Instead head to the dollar store, they sell smaller containers — like 64-oz bottles and smaller, unlike big box retailers — for $1. These are easy to carry around and have a longer lifespan than what you’d get at the laundromat.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 22 Issue 3, July 2021 11

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis | Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia

DeSantis Vetoes Funding Meant for LGBT Homeless Youth Shelter and Pulse Nightclub Survivors Within the first week of Pride month, Gov. DeSantis vetoed every LGBT bill put on his desk despite $9.5 billion budget reserve

By Andrew Fraieli

O

n Wednesday, days before the 5th anniversary of the deadliest act of violence against LGBT people in the United States, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed every bill on his desk directly helping queer Floridans, including survivors of that massacre.

This $150,000 was cut despite the signed budget leaving $9.5 billion in reserves. It would have provided counseling to survivors of the shooting that took place at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in June of 2016.

Also taken from the budget was $750,000 already approved by the Florida Legislature to help the Orlando-based Zebra Coalition renovate a motel to house LGBT homeless youth.

Wednesday’s veto comes only a day after another move targeting LGBT Floridians where DeSantis signed into law a ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s or girls’ sports in highschool and college.

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“

Let’s be clear about what this is: Governor DeSantis has declared war on Florida’s LGBTQ community,”

“Let’s be clear about what this is: Governor DeSantis has declared war on Florida’s LGBTQ community,” said Brandon Wolf, a Pulse survivor now working for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ civil rights organization.

“Before the 2019 Remembrance Ceremony, Governor DeSantis stood on hallowed ground, steps from where I escaped the building in 2016, and promised me that he would always support those of us impacted by the Pulse nightclub shooting. Today, almost two years later to date, he vetoed mental health services for us. I will never forget.”

Without the $150,000 of state funding, Orlando’s LGBTQ Community Center — the main entity that supports Pulse survivors and victim’s families — says they now have to search for funding for the next fiscal year now.

“We now must pivot to find funding to continue serving Orlando’s LGBTQ community at the same level as we had planned for the upcoming fiscal year,” said the organization’s executive director, George A. Wallace, in a press release. “Yesterday marked the first day of Pride Month and Governor DeSantis has once again proved that he is one of the most homophobic and transphobic governors in the United States.”

The governor’s office has rejected the criticism of their budgetary decisions though, saying that the general budget’s spending for community mental health services has increased by $212 million.

“Governor DeSantis has been a champion on mental health since day one — and he absolutely supports each and every Floridian who has experienced such horrific trauma, which has a lifelong impact on survivors,” Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’s spokeswoman, had said to the Orlando Sentinel.

But this general direction of funding doesn’t change the Zebra Coalition’s circumstances, having to afford a $1.4 million motel renovation without the state’s $750,000 funding.

“It got past lawmakers, that’s the exciting thing, it didn’t die. It got all the way past lawmakers and then all of a sudden it was vetoed with the stroke of a pen,” Heather Wilkie, the executive director of the Zebra Coalition, told the Homeless Voice.

Wilkie explains they applied for funding at the beginning of the year to assist in the renovations.

She said news of the veto was very upsetting as they need to expand, “because there’s such a need for these youths to have a place to go.”

According to the Trevor Project, a non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention among the LGBT community, 29% of all LGBT youth experienced homelessness. Wilkie has seen their own numbers go up as the pandemic has gone on, saying there’s always a waitlist of several youths at any point in time.

But, the completed motel would hold about 35 youths, and would triple their capacity.

The funding for the Zebra Coalition’s project was also included in a transparency report by Florida TaxWatch, called the “Budget Turkey Watch Report.” According to their website, the report “identifies appropriations that circumvent transparency and accountability standards in public budgeting.” Their $750,000 of funding lies in the category of bills which “would not have received funding without being added at the very last minute.”

Comparing the full watch report, 32 bills were included that ended up vetoed by the governor.

Without the funding, Wilkie says, the Zebra Coalition will need to fully rely on the community for now — though they intend on reapplying for the $750,000 as soon as they can, in September. “I can’t imagine raising that much money, but we can try. At the same time, I will say I’m not giving up, it’s put a fire under us to say, ‘Hey, we need this.’”

Six Dramatic Tactics to Curb Homelessness Many people have tried to “solve” homelessness over time, but none have succeeded. Here are some of those ideas, from shipping people off to an island, to literal corporal punishment.

By Andrew Fraieli

P

eople have had…unique…ideas on how to “solve” homelessness for a while: put them on an island, put them in a forest, whip them until they bleed.

But most honest attempts are relatively modern, as is our current relationship with homelessness.

Homelessness cannot be “solved” by any one solution as it is a societal problem, an outlook on the poor, on those who need assistance in our society.

That does not mean some ideas won’t help in the meantime, nor that all odd ideas are from bad intentions — even if the idea is literally to ship the unhoused off to an island. Here are 6 ideas meant to help and house the unhoused and poor, or in other cases, meant to minimize their existence in the most brute-force way.

1. Outlawing Them

2. Public Land

3. Wait, Forests Again?

When was the actual solution to homelessness simply to outlaw it? Was it in 1500s England where they legally whipped, flogged, branded and possibly executed anyone of able body that had no land, master or income? Or Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2017 when the police raided a homeless encampment near Stranahan Park and destroyed their belongings for no greater reason than they were sleeping outside?

Maybe it was the Vagrancy Act of 1866 that “forced into employment, for a term of up to three months, any person who appeared to be unemployed or homeless,” a law directly aimed at freed black slaves, but remained on the books until 1905. That is, until it was changed to making “vagrancy a misdemeanor punishable by a bond payment and good conduct for one year.”

Or, possibly, when San Francisco outlawed sitting and laying on public sidewalks in 2010, which according to Ballotpedia, had 54.3% people vote yes.

The question is meaningless because homelessness has been continually criminalized for hundreds of years — for different reasons, and differing extents, but always against these people that are in a situation they probably did not choose, and yet, arrested for anyways.

America has always been a land of refuge, and the large swatches of land across the country that became owned by the public have always been so too. So, in 1992, someone had the idea that if those who had no home were staying on public land anyways — usually longer than the 14-day maximum — why not carve out an area for them and see how it works?

On United States Forest Service Land about 130 miles south of Portland, Oregon, in Umpqua National Forest, a campsite was created called Blodgett. According to the New York Times, “It permanently housed up to 25 non-residential long-term campers with six campsites, two chemical toilets, job counseling, and food and gas access.” Unfortunately, it was a pilot project, and the campground closed after a year of servicing around 100 people.

The reasons for which could not immediately be found, but it helped many people in a poor area where decent-paying jobs that could afford rent were scarce.

Sending the unhoused into the forest may not have been kept as a permanent solution in 1992, but in modern times it might. Around January, 2020, a nonprofit in Redding, California pitched the idea to actually build structures on leased Bureau of Land Management land — functionally the same idea as in Umpqua National Forest, but with actual structures rather than campsites.

The nonprofit, Noah’s Community Village, said it would cost about $9 million to build. “Each home would be about 200 to 300 square feet with a bathroom, kitchenette, shower and porch,” according to Redding.com.

“There also would be communal areas with kitchens, a community center, gardens, and medical services and work opportunities.”

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4. Send Them Off to an Island Hawaii has a surprising amount of unhoused people — a rate of 46 out of every 10,000 people, second only to New York. But really, it’s only surprising if the focus is solely on the idyllic tourism image the state portrays.

Ignoring that, it’s not surprising that a place with large amounts of beaches, public areas, and constant warmth has attracted a good amount of people with no home, and not surprising either that the government might not want them around that idyllic tourism.

The solution? Send them off to an island — Sand Island off of Honolulu to be specific. A “navigation center” meant to house people temporarily until they find permanent housing, Hale Mauliola is essentially a small town of shipping containers. Currently there are 78 containers for a capacity of 104 people, with amenities that would embarrass other shelters though like plenty of showers, daily meals, and security, all for $100 per month.

It’s meant to be transitional, staying for only about 6090 days while they help you find a permanent home.

It may be a decent program, but it’s hard to shake the whole idea of sending homeless people off to a literal island. At least it’s voluntary.

5. Hotel Rooms and Rooftops

6. Housing First

In March 2020, the pandemic in full swing, Las Vegas and its thousands of hotel rooms — and thousands of unhoused living on the streets — were abandoned. But when a 500-person homeless shelter temporarily closed due to someone testing positive for coronavirus, the city didn’t choose the hotels as shelter for them, but a parking garage roof.

According to the New York Times, the city used the roof — placing mats on the ground 6 feet apart for some, others sleeping on the concrete — rather than the hotels for temporary shelter so they could be saved for possible hospital overflow. Many cities eventually did rent empty hotels to act as temporary shelter for the unhoused, such as Fort Lauderdale, but scant few rooms were actually made available compared to the population of people needing help The parking garage rooftop was a temporary plan on short notice, but with a history of mistreatment and abuse from the public and the state, it still leaves a weird taste.

A final solution that is popular throughout the country right now, and parts of the world, may be the most insane of them all: simply give them housing.

The tactic is called Housing First and is argued both ways: people on the street have some issues that giving an apartment won’t solve — or may make worse, and that many on the street are purely house-less, and could be back on their feet if they had a warm place to sleep consistently.

They are both right, because again, homelessness is a societal issue, a mentality that those who are poor or need help simply need to try harder; a mentality that by making it more difficult to be poor, people are less likely to be so. Some people need help with drug addiction, or mental health, and while having a home would greatly help, it’s not enough.

For those that simply have no home, or those who are transitionally homeless, it could be all that’s needed. And, generally, it’s cheaper than criminalizing.

How to Receive a Stimulus Check Without Home Address or Bank Account Those experiencing homelessness are eligible to receive stimulus money and tax benefits

By Andrew Fraieli

T

hose experiencing homelessness are still able to receive their stimulus checks.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published a press release on April 15 reiterating details on how Americans without a home address, and without a bank account, may still receive their current and previously unclaimed stimulus checks.

According to the agency, they will issue a check even to those who do not normally file a tax return — anyone who has a social security number and is not a claimed dependent can receive one.

To do so, a “basic 2020 tax return” must be filed with the IRS, and once processed, they will send a check to the address given. They specify that

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anyone experiencing homelessness “may list the address of a friend, relative or trusted service provider, such as a shelter, drop-in day center or transitional housing program, on the return filed with the IRS. People do not need a permanent address or a bank account. They don’t need to have a job.”

If someone is experiencing homelessness but also working, the IRS says they may qualify for an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This is a tax break for low-income workers, but even those earning less than required to file taxes may qualify.

The online EITC assistant tool can judge eligibility.

Help for filing taxes could also be available to those filing a tax return so as to receive a stimulus

check, or if qualified for EITC. The IRS says the nearest location can be found on their website, or by calling 800-906-9887.

They continue that the 2020 tax return can be filed easiest by using IRS Free File, a tool that allows electronic filing of a tax return for free. If no banking information is provided then a check will be issued to the given address instead of any direct deposit.

Previous stimulus checks can still be claimed through the 2020 tax return as well through claiming the Recovery Rebate Credit according to the IRS — this is done within the 2020 tax return.

More information about the credit can be found on IRS.gov.

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