What makes Fort Lauderdale a city that anyone would want to
live in or be a part? This is a city with political leadership that over and
over again proves itself offended by the needs of its most needy. Fort
Lauderdale has a way to deal with those who may be described as “the least of
us”; those with few resources and little political power. There was the shame of Fort Lauderdale’s “Tent
City” that lasted for five years in the 1990’s offering no services and parking
lot like spaces on bare asphalt for the homeless. That blight ended in 1998 by a city imposed shutdown. Broward County had opened a homeless shelter*.
The City Commission remains a morally challenged elected
institution. There was the recent solution to the homelessness problem by
passing an ordinance that would allow the city to confiscate private property
from homeless people. The new ordinance also enables the city to arrest its own
homeless citizens to get them off the streets. No the city will not provide
social or vocational services, a shelter or a nutrition program. The solution
to homelessness in Fort Lauderdale is to drive these impoverished people out.
It does
not end there. The City Commission is engaged in a continuing battle to keep
the Henderson Mental Health Center from building a facility in the City. They
are engaged in the same effort to drive off BARC, the addictions recovery
program operated by Broward County. It would be the same for the Sexual Assault
Recovery Center if it were not being used as leverage to prevent BARC from the
same large property to place their new recovery center. These facilities are
all proposed for properties that are properly zoned and that are not in
residential areas. There is minimal neighborhood opposition for any of these
worthy projects. There is just the heartless City Commission that does not want
to see services for the most needy among us to be served in their city.
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