(Published Dec. 21, 2006)

The city of Orlando and everyone in it – present company excluded, of course – gets a Cheap Shot for being so consistently and persistently mean to the homeless. (You citizens get the nod because you let your public officials get away it.) From our notorious blue-box panhandling zones to laws against where you can and can't lie down, it seems Orlando officials spend an awful lot of public time figuring out how to keep the less fortunate from cluttering up the place. If only they were half as creative in solving the problem.

The city council may have finally topped itself in 2006, however. In the summer, that esteemed body crafted a law against feeding homeless people in downtown parks. They did a sloppy job of it; Orlando Food Not Bombs [a S.T.O.P. partner] has found so many loopholes and arguments that the city may never be able to close them all. Still, the idea that the destitute can't get a weekly meal in a convenient public place reeks of insensitivity. But the city wasn't done yet. In November it went on the offensive and sent cops and city workers to bodily remove people camping out under a downtown overpass. If the people weren't there at the time to cart off their worldly belongings, tough shit; the city threw their stuff in a truck and dumped it all. Nice.

From the Weekly's Dec. 21 Happytown section:

On Nov. 17, the city ran a camp of homeless people from under the State Road 408 interchange near Sylvia Lane. If the homeless people weren't there to cart off their stuff, the city gathered it up [and] dumped it.

Now this: At 8 a.m. Dec. 18, city officials and police pulled up to a nearby park* – the only one where the city allows the homeless to be fed on a regular basis – that nearly four dozen homeless people called home for the last month, ordered everyone out and locked the gates. Feedings would now have to be approved by the city clerk's office. If the homeless didn't get all their stuff away from the park by week's end, it would be trashed.

Homeless advocates estimate that this city has 7,000 homeless people, but only 2,000 sheltered beds for them. And many of those are at the Coalition for the Homeless, which a lot of homeless people consider too dangerous. They'd rather live on the street.

So what of the Sylvia Lane homeless? They've scattered. Some will go into the woods. Some will wander downtown. Others will try to find other overpasses to live under.

And a Merry Christmas to you too, Mayor Buddy Dyer.

*S.T.O.P.'s position is that Sylvia Lane, the City's designated homeless feeding site, is not a park, despite recent claims by city and police spokespersons. Sylvia Lane is not listed as a park on the City's Families, Parks and Recreation parks directory webpage, nor was this converted parking lot described as a "park" by anyone connected with the City during the first 5 months or so it was designated as the feeding site. Our contention is that calling Sylvia Lane a "park" makes it sound a lot nicer than it really is. (Go here to see pictures of Sylvia Lane.)