Homeless’ preference for the streets stymies city’s efforts
The Palm Beach Post
Saturday, July 22, 2006

By ANDREW MARRA

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – No one would say Santos Rodriguez has it good. But for a man on the streets, things could be worse.

A fixture in downtown West Palm Beach, Rodriguez sleeps outdoors on cardboard boxes. If he gets to a church in time, there’s a bag lunch and a shower waiting for him each morning.

On Clematis Street, he can panhandle the lunch and dinner crowds. Or he can cool off in the city library. Before sundown, sometimes there will be another handout meal. Or if not, there’s the dollar-menu at the nearby McDonald’s.

“I eat good,” he says. “So I’m lucky.”

Rodriguez, 44, is one of the dozens of vagrants and drifters who each year find something like a comfort zone amid Clematis Street’s high-end restaurants and shops - so much so that some of them choose the sidewalks over shelter beds.

In the past two months, one vagrant has been killed off Clematis and another has been accused of kidnapping three club-goers at gunpoint. Amid renewed concerns about downtown safety, city officials are adding extra security and proposing a stricter anti-panhandling ordinance. They say they will take anyone who wants help to a homeless shelter.

But they also are confronting a stubborn reality: Many of the homeless prefer the streets.

Nowhere is this truer than in downtown West Palm Beach, where the proximity of free meals, monied crowds and public space create a livable environment for vagrants who have chosen freedom over structure or simply fell through Palm Beach County’s thin network of services for the homeless.

“A lot of them don’t want help,” said Guillermo Perez, West Palm Beach’s assistant police chief. “They like the lifestyle they’re in. There’s a lot here. There’s food. They feel safe. So it’s difficult.”

Homelessness is nothing new on Clematis Street. But the city’s latest difficulties with the issue come amid its efforts to draw shoppers and families back to its struggling entertainment district.

Stores, patrons affected

Vagrants bathe in the fountains outside the downtown library, alongside children from summer camps. They harangue couples sipping sodas or mojitos at outdoor tables. They sleep on library benches and commandeer the chairs outside Starbucks.

Police say the complaints they receive about the homeless are mostly from businesses and customers annoyed by their requests for money or bathroom access.

But some who have had run-ins with vagrants, many of whom are mentally troubled, say they have feared for their safety.

Marilyn Swiger, 19, used to live downtown but moved to Lake Worth about two years ago after a vagrant attacked her on her way home from CityPlace.

She was walking along Evernia Street at about 8 p.m. when the man jumped off his bike and tackled her, she recalled. He scratched at her legs so hard he drew blood.

She managed to escape by kicking him in the face. Then she ran all the way home and called police, who took a description of the man but never nabbed him.

“I was hysterical,” she said. “I thought that I was going to die.”

Phoebe Reckseit, co-owner of Pizza Girls on Clematis, said she didn’t expect she would have to call police when a vagrant came in earlier this month to ask what he could buy with a dollar.

But when she told him there was nothing available at that price, he began cursing and threatening so loudly that she worried he would become violent. After she called 911, he disappeared and did not return.

More services needed

Few vagrants are homeless by choice, of course. Some say they have been in temporary shelter programs but were unable to find a steady job and living arrangements afterward. Officials say others may not know where to go. And still others, including many with mental or substance-abuse problems, prefer living on the streets.

Palm Beach County long has been criticized for its patchwork system of services for the homeless, a network of nonprofits that often cater only to niche groups - homeless military veterans, homeless families or homeless alcoholics, for instance.

Last year, the county commission paid a private company to open the county’s first assessment center for the homeless, a catchall location where anyone who wants a bed can show up and receive temporary shelter while a counselor works to find a longer-term program.

But the assessment center, located near St. Mary’s Medical Center off 45th Street in West Palm Beach, has only 18 emergency beds dedicated to the general public and is always at capacity. Advocates for the homeless say several dozen more beds are needed in places such as Delray Beach and Belle Glade.

For a role model, many have looked south to Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where penny taxes and large private donations have allowed advocates to build large assessment centers with hundreds of beds and a wide range of outreach services.

“I just don’t think (the current system) is enough for the county,” said Gerard Desmarais, executive director of the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County. “We need a real emergency center like in Broward and Miami. If Miami can do it, why can’t we do it?”

Some efforts backfire

But the largest shelter in the world would do nothing for people like Gloria Harris.

Harris, 56, has been living downtown for two months and says she would never go into a shelter. She says the ones she has been in are strict, dirty and crowded.

Harris admits her street routine is dreary and dull. She and her boyfriend sleep in a nook at the Meyer Amphitheatre, use donated bus tickets to ride to whatever church is giving out the latest free meal, then spend the rest of the day panhandling on Clematis and reading library books.

But Harris says she prefers it to the alternative of a shelter bed.

“You’ve got your freedom out here,” she said. “And you can get up and go whenever you want to go.”

Many of the downtown homeless are drifters who spend a few weeks or months in town and are never seen again. Others have lived downtown for several months or years.

Duane Vanduyl, 40, was one such regular. He had been arrested several times and had a longtime crack addiction. But no one expected him to do what he is now accused of: pulling a gun on three Fourth of July revelers leaving E.R. Bradley’s Saloon early on July 5, then forcing them into their own van to perform sexual acts.

Irving Jackson, 44, was another regular. He was struggling with his own drug problems when he was found unconscious in an alley along Clematis Street in May. He became a homicide victim when he died a week later, on May 22. Police believe he was struck during a fight, but they have not made any arrests.

Police say while vagrants’ involvement in violence is rare, many are mentally troubled and essentially unpredictable. City officials say their preference for street life is inadvertently encouraged by the well-intentioned church groups that provide meals, showers, bus tickets and clothing downtown.

“It’s almost a mixed message,” West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel said. “We’d rather they (the homeless) not be here, but the charity is here.”

Every Wednesday night, preachers from a group called Arts and Compassion come to the courtyard in front of the downtown library with food, drinks and a Christian message of renewal.

By the time they arrived last Wednesday, more than 40 people were waiting. The preachers led the group in prayer, then passed out chicken salad sandwiches, chips and chocolate doughnuts.

Marvin Smith, who heads the group, said his aim is to direct those who want help into drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. But he admits since he started giving out food a year ago the audience has only increased.

“We hate to see the crowds growing,” he said, as a dozen men stood around him eating and Gospel music blared.

But then he added: “They were here before we were.”