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Helping the homeless

The question the videotaped beating of a South Florida homeless man raises is not what the thugs swinging bats were thinking but what Florida communities will do to prevent this savagery. A third teenager was charged with murder last week after a string of assaults in Fort Lauderdale left 45-year-old Norris Gaynor dead and two other homeless people injured. Cities and counties statewide are examining ways to get more people off the street. Leaders must first change the debate that frames homelessness as a nuisance.

The videotape highlights a problem the homeless say is routine and underreported. While the National Coalition for the Homeless reports attacks on the rise, numbering 105 in 2004 and resulting in 25 deaths, anecdotes from the street paint a fuller picture. Many homeless say they sleep in pairs, avoid open parks and steer clear of teens. Some also sleep in the daytime. Many dread the summer because most kids are out of school.

But improving security is a short-term solution and communities have to find ways to get people into stable housing. Every county in the region is exploring ways to serve the increasing numbers of homeless. In Hillsborough, where the number is 11,000 and growing, a task force is laying the groundwork to seriously address the problem. The idea is to leverage local money with outside grants to provide housing subsidies and a range of other programs to get able-bodied people off the street. This model is the same one catching on in communities across the country. Pinellas crafted a similarly ambitious plan for its 4,500 homeless - many, as in Tampa, pushed into public view by the surge of downtown construction.

But development downtown, like the videotape of the attack, only brings to light a problem that too often remains under the radar. In many ways the government and private groups face a bigger challenge, with the homeless moving toward the suburbs and away from social services in the urban core. Temporary fixes like shelters and food assistance will always have their place, but if communities hope to reverse the problem, not merely manage it, they will need to focus more on rent subsidies, job and psychiatric counseling, health care, education and other staples of life. As the homeless population increases, it becomes more complex - veterans, single mothers, many in-between jobs. Communities that reach out to assimilate the homeless back into society will reduce the number of human beings viewed as targets.

[Last modified January 23, 2006, 00:59:12]