Sunday, March 7, 2010

More police will not solve homelessness

A small hit and a huge miss for The Citizen in its Feb. 28 story on the homeless, "Community seeks solution to vagrancy-related crime." The photograph accompanying the article is powerful, and speaks a thousand words about the ridicule and humiliation heaped upon the homeless. It could have been used to illustrate a sad truth: that even in these dire economic times, a destitute old man lying helpless in the street near a portable toilet as he slowly poisons himself inspires not sympathy, but laughter.

The Citizen missed this point. It chose instead to pair the picture with an ill-fitting headline that perpetuates the notion that all homeless people engage in crime. The article further suggests that homeless people are free at any time to move somewhere warm and comfortable. Therefore, anyone on the street is there by choice, and we need not feel sorry for them.

Believing in lies leads to wrong-headed solutions. We are about to waste $1 million dollars in federal money to hire more police for offenses such as panhandling, public intoxication and trespassing. But the homeless have nowhere to go during the day. More police may move the problem around faster, but ultimately it will accomplish nothing.

I suggest instead that precious grant monies, as well as efforts from community resources, be used for organizations that actually help to solve the homeless problem. The Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS) provides an invaluable service by providing a place for the homeless to stay at night. And the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC) serves the homeless population (and thus the community) in ways too numerous to mention.

For those who really want to help solve the problems related to homelessness, donate your time or money to these causes. More importantly, the next time you see an old man lying in the street, picture yourself helping him up and trading a sandwich for his bottle.

Lawrence Harkenrider

Key West

Let's get cars off Key West's streets

Our city streets are a public right of way owned by all the people. To give preference to one group is to deprive the other of its rights to fair use. Presently half of our roadway is "dead space" taken for the storage of personal private property (parking) in what rightfully should be a lane for slower-moving traffic. This practice has resulted in many years of injury and loss of life. ...

Written in the city's own codes: ... "It shall be unlawful for any person willfully to obstruct any public right-of-way, street, roadway, by impeding, or restraining the passage of either pedestrian or vehicular traffic or by endangering the safe movement of pedestrians or vehicles traveling thereon."

Just as the awareness to the hazards of public smoking, we need to stop putting the perks of the auto owners ahead of the safety of our citizens and visitors. When asked about removing a few spots on Eaton Street to finish the bike path, a city commissioner said: "I don't want to be the one to tell them they can't park there."

I wonder if he would rather be telling the family of the next victim he's sorry, but accommodating cars' storage is more important than their lives.

The new Flagler Avenue, with no lane for bikes, is another example of this expired mind-set. For too long our precious bodies have been squeezed between heavy metal and pressed into danger -- excuse me, your parked car is killing me.

With the fuel crisis and new green movement pushing for alternative means of transportation, we need to take back the public right of way for its original intended service.

Let's get the stored cars out of the way and make room for the new human-powered movement.

Key West should be passionately promoting the use of low-impact human-powered transportation vehicles ... such as walkers, bicycles, skateboards, Rollerblades, human-electric hybrids, etc.

Rick Keith

Key West