After the Roosevelt Boulevard townhall meeting last Tuesday came a regular city commission meeting. Dr. Robert Marbut led off with a lengthy presentation of his view of Key West’s homeless situation, which was followed by questions and comments from the mayor and city commissioners. Citizens were not allowed to comment or ask questions at that time.
Marbut said he conservatively placed the city’s homeless population at 1,422 and growing, more than twice the number of homeless previously reported in local surveys, as reported a few days prior in the Key West Citizen. Marbut said he did not include in that number 1,000 people who had stayed only one night at KOTS, which statistic any other city would have included in its homeless count. After Marbut spoke, I congratulated Gwen Filsoa for making those numbers public.
Marbut said the fair weather is the main reason homeless come to Key West to live. Nothing can be done about that. Marbut said the next reason homeless come to Key West is because Key West offers homeless so many amenities: plenty of food, medical services, booze, etc. He said all that needs to stop around Key West. Offer those services only at the new homeless shelter, which will force homeless to go there. That’s been his working model in other cities, which he said gets most homeless off the street. He said there are three kinds of homeless in Key West. New arrivals, who need to be told up front the difficulty of living in Key West with its high cost of living, the free ride in Key West is over, and they need to turn around and go back where they came from. The fairly new homeless, who can be turned around with the proper help and returned to mainstream. And the unreachable homeless, about twenty-five percent of the total homeless population; the homeless Mayor Cates and the city commissioners most want off the street.
Commissioner Billy Wardlow seemed to be the only one against the new homeless shelter being on Stock Island at the Easter Seals and Mosquito Control buildings. Continue reading →
