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Subject: Siting the Homeless in Miami; Judge Orders City to Create 2 Arrest-Free 'Safe
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 04:44:31 EST
Message-ID: <34.1992Nov19.044432@AmeriCast.com>

Siting the Homeless in Miami; Judge Orders City to Create 2
Arrest-Free 'Safe Zones' as Living Space<By William
Booth=Washington Post Staff Writer=

MIAMI, Nov. 18 - Martin Sanchez has what many people in Florida
crave: a house on the water.

Unfortunately, his house is a shack in a public park in the mid-
dle of downtown, and it is at the center of legal and political
furor on what to do about the homeless in America.

In a ruling described by advocates for the homeless as unpre-
cedented, U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins told Miami police
Monday to stop rousting homeless people such as Sanchez and or-
dered the city to create two "safe zones" in which the homeless
could sleep, bathe and eat in public without being arrested or
hassled by police.

The court order essentially forces Miami to set aside city pro-
perty, such as Bicentennial Park on Biscayne Bay where Sanchez
lives, as a kind of urban campground for the homeless.

Maria Foscarinis, director of the National Law Center on Home-
lessness and Poverty in Washington, D.C., said advocates would
use the ruling to press for better treatment of the homeless in
other cities, which use ordinances against panhandling, loiter-
ing, vagrancy and sleeping to keep the homeless off public pro-
perty.

Cases challenging such enforcement are pending in more than a
dozen cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Ve-
gas and Atlanta.

Atkins ordered Miami to set aside "safe zones" where the homeless
can pursue "innocent, harmless and inoffensive acts" and "essen-
tial life-sustaining activities," such as sleeping, eating, bath-
ing, lying down or sitting, without being arrested.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, who brought the
class-action suit on behalf of Dade County's estimated 5,000
homeless, said they envisioned forcing the city to create safe
zones as large as 20 acres with bathrooms, drinking water,
showers and perhaps tents.

For Sanchez, an elderly, unemployed farm worker originally from
Mexico, this means that the city may be forbidden to tear down
his bayfront shack. He has been living there, in view of the Port
of Miami with its gleaming white cruise ships, for almost three
months.

Atkins's ruling brought immediate condemnation from some Miami
officials, who said the city is likely to appeal.

"Those safe zones make no sense," Mayor Xavier Suarez said. "I
can't imagine the homeless, the homeless advocates or the local
government going for it."

Suarez said the zones, if created, would be temporary. Some down-
town business leaders also criticized the zone plan but said the
order might force the city to deal with the problem.

In downtown Miami, more than 300 homeless people live in Bi-
cenntenial Park and the notorious "mud flats" beneath Interstate
395, both of which are within walking distance of organizations
that serve the homeless. Blacks, whites and Hispanics seem to
segregate into different "villages," and many make money washing
car windows or watching parking meters for tourists.

Andrew Cherry, professor of social work at Barry University here,
said 85 percent of the homeless are Florida residents, not "home-
less sunbirds" seeking warmer climes.  About 40 percent are home-
less families.

A great majority of Miami's homeless work at day labor for which
they take home $15 to $18 dollars daily in cash, Cherry said.
About 1,200 shelter beds are available in the Miami-Dade County
area, and they usually are full most nights.

Creation of safe zones, Foscarinis said, "is a novel remedy but
not an untroublesome remedy."

The Rev. Paul Johnson, executive director of Camillus House,
which cares and feeds hundreds of homeless, including Sanchez,
expressed concern that safe zones could become "homeless ghet-
tos."

"By creating these zones, is he saying to the police that they
should herd all of the city's homeless into these areas?" Johnson
asked.

Benjamin Waxman, one of three attorneys who filed the suit, said
the zones "are not the answer to this problem. The ruling just
recognizes that there is a bare minimum that needs to be done to
recognize those constitutional rights of the homeless. Should the
city do more? Absolutely." Advocates for the homeless said crea-
tion of two giant camps in the middle of the city, filled with
thousands of homeless men, women and children, would embarrass
officials into dealing with the problem of homelessness.<02:26
11-19C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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