Magnet for homeless now repels them

Lakeland abruptly turns on those who found refuge on its streets.

By MEG LAUGHLIN, Times Staff Writer
Published October 16, 2007

"No matter how hard we try, it's not hard enough," says Robert Daniels, 43. He wonders: "If you don't want me here, then where do you want me?" The city of Lakeland's answer is now: Just move along.
	[Edmund D. Fountain | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Edmund D. Fountain | Times] A sign warns the homeless population of Lakeland to stay off of the sidewalks of Kentucky Avenue. The signs are recent installations. [Edmund D. Fountain | Times] "We helped build this country," says James "Ali-Cat" Thomas, 56, who is homeless. "All of a sudden we have no place to sleep. That's not right."

LAKELAND - A few dazed stragglers stand under the new signs that warn Lakeland's homeless to stay away from their favorite spot.

But most of the 70 to 80 homeless who once camped on this block of Kentucky Avenue are gone, driven out unexpectedly two weeks ago.

The strip on Kentucky had become well-known in the state, even nationally, as a "great place for a handout." It's between the Salvation Army and Talbot House and a block from a third shelter. Labor pools are right there. Church vans brought food. Friendly police patrolled the block, making the homeless feel safe at night.

This stretch of downtown Lakeland had earned such a wide reputation as a comfortable place for the homeless that last winter more than 200 people arrived there from across the country - including dozens from St. Petersburg, where police had razed a tent city.

But a few weeks ago, only 18 days after a story in the St. Petersburg Times trumpeted the city's homeless-friendly attitude, the paradise came to an end.

Salvation Army janitor Anthony Leatherwood heard trucks arrive about 11 a.m. Sept. 28 and ran out to see what was going on. Right behind him was Edward Lee, the chief of the Salvation Army.

"We were shocked," Lee said.

About a dozen police officers were ordering street residents to stay away from their belongings while a shovel on a city truck scooped them up. Blankets, clothes, mattresses and papers fell into a dump truck in a tangle.

Leatherwood tried to comfort a woman named Lydia who cried out for her dead baby's outfit - a "onesie" she had saved for five years. Lee worried over a man begging for his birth certificate and another for family photos.

"What will we do for clothes?" one woman asked over and over.

Eight black-and-white signs were hammered into the dirt: "No Trespassing, Loitering, Drinking, Camping."

'We're not heartless'

Lakeland police Capt. Harry Katt, whose team of neighborhood officers "cleaned up the block," said he was relieved. Things had to change. Too many homeless from too many places, and more expected.

"We're not heartless," he said, "but we can't take on Florida's homeless problem, much less the nation's, because we reached a saturation point."

Verbal warnings of "don't leave stuff on the sidewalk" had gone out for months, Katt said. He concedes that the block's residents weren't told the night before that a raid would take place the next day.

"Still," he asks, "wouldn't you keep really important stuff in a purse or wallet or in your pocket?"

In the late afternoon, Lakeland police Chief Roger Boatner questioned the wording on the move-it-along signs and ordered bags over them, which allowed people arriving "home" from day labor to sit on the sidewalk and try to make sense of what happened.

Boatner: "I was surprised myself. I didn't know it was going to happen."

The neighborhood police teams sometimes act autonomously, Boatner said. He had talked with shelter heads, community leaders and neighborhood police about "stopping people from selling drugs to the homeless, getting some into rehab and moving them off the street." They had talked about problems like "sex in public, drinking and gambling." But Boatner said he didn't know the area was about to be "cleaned up" until Katt told him, afterward.

"I don't know if it solved anything. I can't say that anyone left the 800 block of Kentucky for a home," Boatner said. "But it did unblock the sidewalk."

Where many of the homeless went is a mystery.

Police Officer Todd Edwards, who knows most of the people who lived on the strip, checked the bamboo jungle a few miles away and can't find them. Neither can Lee of the Salvation Army, who goes into the woods and crevices of Lakeland to feed the homeless.

Where are they now?

Jimmy Smuda, pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Tarpon Springs, brought the church's youth group to feed the homeless last week, as he does every two weeks, and had the same problem.

"We looked and looked for them without any luck," he said.

Afraid that their 125 meals would spoil, he and the teenagers took them to Talbot House for a late-night snack.

"We were thankful to find some of the people we knew there, inside," Smuda said.

Tony Fusaro, development director of Talbot House, said that was the plan. "We hoped cleaning up the block would get some people in here into programs," he said, "and it did."

As for the others, Lee says he heard "some headed for St. Pete."

Bring them on, says Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities in Pinellas County. A new government-sanctioned tent city will be up and running before winter in St. Petersburg, which will accommodate more than 250 people with tents, showers, toilets and meals.

Murphy said the first responsibility in the new tent city will be "to our own people," but, if Lakeland's homeless show up, he said, "we'll try to accommodate them."

On the other hand, he said, St. Petersburg doesn't want to become a magnet for the nation's homeless. "We're sympathetic with Lakeland."

Meg Laughlin can be reached at mlaughlin@sptimes.com or 727 893-8068.

[Last modified October 16, 2007, 00:03:49]