Orlando: Please Do Not Feed The Homeless

At Lake Eola park, there is much beauty to behold: robust palms, beds of cheery begonias, a cascading lake fountain, clusters of friendly egrets and swans, an amphitheater named in honor of Walt Disney.

Then there are the signs.

DO NOT LIE OR OTHERWISE BE IN A HORIZONTAL POSITION ON A PARK BENCH ... DO NOT SLEEP OR REMAIN IN ANY BUSHES, SHRUBS OR FOLIAGE ... per city code sec. 18A.09 (a) and (o).

Visit the park's restrooms, and you'll find this sign on the wall above the hand dryers:

BATHING AND/OR SHAVING IN RESTROOM IS PROHIBITED ... per city code 18A.09 (p) ... LAUNDERING CLOTHES IN LAKE EOLA PARK IS NOT PERMITTED.

Since joggers and dog walkers tend not to snooze in flower beds, and because employees at the glittering office towers around Lake Eola don't scrub laundry in park sinks, it's clear, says Monique Vargas, at whom the notices are targeted.

"They're talking to us, to the homeless," says Vargas, 28, who says she has lived on the streets, in parks or under overpasses, since age 16. "It's a way of saying, 'Your kind isn't wanted in our city.'"

Orlando, population 200,000, works hard to conjure the image of a true-life Pleasantville. But its spotless sidewalks and twinkling skyline belie a real city with real maladies — most notably, a surging homeless population that authorities are struggling to control.

After a law that banned panhandling was struck down by the courts, the city tried to discourage aggressive beggars by obliging them to carry ID cards, and later by confining them to 3-by-15-foot "panhandling zones" painted in blue on sidewalks downtown.

Despite these laws, the number of people living on the streets of the metro area swelled, from roughly 5,000 in 1999 to an estimated 8,500 today, dwarfing the city's shelter capacity for 2,000 people.

So in July, the city commission tried a "supply-side" approach: It passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups of people in Orlando's downtown parks.

Those who wished to feed more than 25 hungry individuals at parks within a 2-mile radius of City Hall could do so, but only if they obtained a "Large Group Feeding Permit" from the parks department — and no one would be granted more than two feeding permits a year.

For the first time anyone in Orlando could remember, not only would panhandlers find themselves in the crosshairs of the law, but so would those trying to help them.

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A week before Orlando's ordinance took effect, Las Vegas criminalized giving food to even a single transient in any city park.

In August, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit challenging the Las Vegas ban, saying it violated constitutional protections of free speech, right to assembly and right to practice one's religion. A federal court in Nevada has prohibited the city from enforcing the ordinance until a final ruling is issued.

Advocates for the homeless feared it wouldn't be long before other cities passed similar laws.

Already, the cities of Dallas, Fort Myers, Fla., Gainesville, Fla., Wilmington, N.C., and Atlanta have laws restricting or outright prohibiting the feeding of the homeless. In Fairfax County, Va., homemade meals and meals made in church kitchens may not be distributed to the homeless unless first approved by the county.

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[sgillas]

lavampire: I would like to see your posts after your employer goes out of business and your city has 4x unemployment rate. You loose your house, and your family has all passed away. How high would you horse be then?

[sgillas]

It's amazing what conservative resurgence can do. We go from the second lady (Tipper Gore) driving around Wash DC herself (SS in tow), helping the homeless, to laws making it illegal to do anything. I'm glad the pendulum is swinging back, it just takes a little longer on the local level sometimes...

[susanhelit]

Lavavampire, with all due respect, that is absolute nonsense. If a government does not prevent it's citizens from starving, what good is it?

Doesn't change the fact there are right and wrong ways to do it, but to say it's the family that decides if their troubled family member lives or dies is just wrong.

[lavampire]

I once more wish to address this issue -- the responsibility of feeding adults and young adults is not of the government or of the religious institutions, whatever religion they may represent. The responsibility belongs to the immediate family members of those individuals, such as parents, siblings, cousins, uncles, etcetera. Moreover, homelessness is often a personal choice and an rejection of community involvement or of involvement in society. The only humans that merit a handout are desolate children and the mentally retarded or extremely physically impaired, if they have no immediate family members to care for them. So those of generosity of mind and spirit, you must rememeber that by feeding a human who could otherwise fend for himself/herself, you are only sponsoring their indifference, alientation, apathy and indolence. If you let them fend for themselves, they will develop character, dignity, self-reliance, and shame. Virtues that have been long forgotten here in America.

[smb221]

New laws are not going to get rid of the homeless.

[ruvain1]

This is a perfect example of the failure of both our governmentand religious institutions of working together to asist in this area. How discraseful for America to hav esuch a problem exist due toA. Mismanagement of our government
through waste, and the war in Iraq. B.Thanks to such entities as the ACLU, who champion for a seperation of church and state, there can be No interaction or liasion with faith based groups that could intervien.c.With all the amount of Churches and or Synagouges in Orlando, if every one of them adoped a homeless family or person,by proxy, there would NOT be any homeless problem to begin with!

[michaure]

Maybe now these homeless loser will get their *** together get a job and get off the streets.

[lavampire]

a great difference abounds between pigeons, squirrels, birds and other defensless creatures and humans. Humans can operate machinery (if they are physically and mentally capable), they can reason, they can adapt, they can think and propose solutions, they can design, help erect, construct, and produce. Birds and and critters cannot. We must not feed the homeless because we are only sustaining their indifference toward self-dignity, their shamelessness, their apathy, their vices (such as drugs or alcohol), their laziness, their lack of entrepreneurial spirit, and their pragmatism. Humans afterall are animals, and if you feed them, they then adapt to the opportunity. If you do not feed them, and if you prevent all access to free food -- food that they cannot produce or purchase -- then they die. O forgive, Jesus said, "you clothed me, when I was naked, you fed me, when I was hungry, and you welcomed me into your home, when I was homeless." Obviously, Jesus never lived in a market economy and he never lived under the laws of nature and economics. I guess he would have advocated safety nets, but safety nets have costs, and I much rather feed the soldiers that are risking their lives and giving their time and talents, then the homeless men and woman who should have exited the gene pool a long time ago. Moreover, whatever happened to the idea of the family. Why must their be homlessness? Cannot relatives care for their own blood?

[Free Citizen]

And lastly, not everyone is fortunate enough to be as generous as some folks. To be able to sponsor a homeless family until the children graduates from college. That is a moving story and I am sure that fortunate child in turn will help other homeless. But the reality is that such philanthropists do not even constitute 1% of the general populace. Perhaps, 1 in a thousand is more likely. As hbjon2000 says, more tax funds may need to be allocated to solve this problem. Already America is spending too much money waging an unnecessary war. I do not know why politics is such a taboo subject. Like it or not, government policies DO affect our lives. If something is not right with the government, I do not think it is wise to just discount it and say nothing. It is precisely bad goverment policies that prevent many internal problems from being solved.

Good night everyone. Nice sharing ideas with you folks.

[Free Citizen]

HawkSprings, no offense intended but I do believe you may have judged the homeless too hashly and you may have made unfair generalization. Assuming the public agree with what you say, and well intentioned organizations stop feeding the hungry, the homeless will not starve to death IF you are right. Since they are intelligent enough to cheat the system logically, they would also know how to get food. But they would have to work for it instead of a free handout. Do you truly believe this is the situation? Yes, there are a few cheats out there but, I still believe they are a minority among the homeless rather than the norm. And jasperlily, those people you described are outright frauds. We are not talking about those.

cbslogin12 is right. Of course public parks are not meant to be a sanctuary for the homeless. But can we ask SusanHelit, what viable alternative places are there for the homeless? As the article mentioned, those places that were designated by the authorities are unsafe. The homeless get killed in those areas. Therefore, it would seem that criticisms directed at the authorities are not unwarranted. Clearly, they are not offering a solution to the problem.