A Homeless ‘Summit’ in the Keys

It’s 5 p.m., and tourists are thronging Mallory Square, awaiting the flame-hued nightly spectacle of sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. Michael Stanier, who is jobless and sleeps in a parking lot, is here too, unsure if he will be eating tonight.

A new local law bans panhandling, so the man with the long ginger beard and scabby feet who calls himself “Gypsie” has outfitted his dog in sunglasses and a sailor hat, parked him in a chair, and posted a sign asking appreciative spectators to leave a “tip.” If he nets $14, Stanier says, he and J.J. will have dinner.

“I don’t get a welfare check and I don’t go to a church for a handout,” said Stanier, 54, who walked more than 300 miles to get here from Daytona Beach, and who moves around with all his belongings piled on a bicycle and small trailer. “All I want to do is live my life out in peace, and I depend on the Lord for what he gives us.”

A flash of the local eccentricity that gives famously laid-back Key West its reputation for live-and-let-live tolerance, or an example of creeping social blight in the southernmost town in the continental United States? The question of what to do about the small army of panhandlers, vagrants and homeless men and women who now live here has been roiling this island city of 28,000 for months, and on Wednesday, Mayor Jimmy Weekley, other civic leaders and some of the homeless held a “summit,” or a collective and cathartic brainstorming session, in a Holiday Inn ballroom to decide what action to take.

“We can no longer turn our backs on the homeless in this city,” Weekley said. “We have to come together as a city to help those less fortunate than we are.”

Her hair wrapped in a red kerchief, Angela Yvette Bland-Delaney, 39, attended the meeting after spending the night outdoors on a piece of cardboard. She pointed to the city’s official motto, “One Human Family,” on a wall, and asked the other participants: “How about one humane family?”

Last month, in an effort to check vagrancy and keep beggars from bothering cruise ship passengers and the other tourists who are Key West’s main source of revenue, city commissioners banned panhandling in much of the historic downtown, an area that includes Mallory Square and bar-studded Duval Street, where writer Ernest Hemingway, a former Key West resident, once slaked his thirst. Anyone caught begging in that area now can be sentenced to 60 days in jail and fined $500.

“We have to send the message that we don’t want these people to come to our city and control our streets,” said Commissioner Tom Oosterhoudt, the measure’s sponsor. “We control our streets.”

However, a colleague on the commission, Carmen Turner, objected that a ban on panhandling “just pushes people from one area of town to another.”

City officials have also offered to pay shelters in Miami-Dade County, about 150 miles to the northeast, to take Key West’s homeless, but so far have had no takers.

A recent survey by the Southernmost Homeless Assistance League, an advocacy group, found 600 people living outdoors in Key West, in abandoned boats and cars, under bridges, in mangrove swamps and on nearby islands. According to league chairman Nelson Read, no Florida city has a greater share of homeless people in its total population.

The reason, Read said, is exactly what draws tourists: a laid-back lifestyle and clement weather 12 months a year. “If you’re without a home, you’re not going to freeze to death here in the winter like you would in New York, Chicago or even San Francisco,” he said.

Though they protest that there is no more generous community in the United States, some Key Westers have grown exasperated by the in-your-face panhandling style of some of the homeless, their use of yards and business premises as alfresco toilets and the negative image they may give visitors.

“I’m tired of picking up excrement outside my office,” said Brian Carman, executive director of the Key West Innkeeper’s Assn. “These dirtbags, bums and panhandlers on Duval Street -- I’d sweep them up and put them in the ocean.”

Sitting on a milk crate on Duval Street and holding a sign reading: “Why lie? I need beer!” Chuck Williams, 40, protested that there is no toilet accessible to the homeless downtown until the Burger King opens at 7 a.m. An Army veteran, Williams scours the pavement for discarded cigarette butts and sleeps on a fire escape.

“They’re trying to push us out,” said the shaggy-headed man in a camouflage jacket. “I just sit here, work my sign, don’t bother anyone.”

Dan Dombrowski, an official with the Boys & Girls Club of the Florida Keys Area, said some of his youngsters have become afraid to use toilets in city parks because they think homeless people may be washing or making drug deals inside. One morning, employees of the Key West YMCA found vagrants camped out in their facility.

“We don’t really have the available services for homeless people,” lawyer Sam Kaufman told the conference. “There is not a bed available in Key West today for a person striving to get his life together.”

The summit, a Key West-style variation on the New England town hall meeting, assembled more than 200 political leaders, business people, social workers, ministers, law enforcement officials and other concerned parties. In the afternoon, participants broke into small groups to devise concrete suggestions.

All attendees then voted on which proposals they liked best.

According to Weekley, his staff will tabulate the returns and study how to implement the four or five most popular ideas.

One of the clear favorites was a proposal to convert a former Army Hawk missile base, out of sight of tourists and residents alike, to a shelter where people in need can sleep, use toilets, take showers and receive mail and telephone calls while they seek a job. Even if they want to work, some of the city’s homeless said at the summit, there is nowhere for them to shower or shave before a job interview.

“I think it’s all excellent,” said Bland-Delaney before returning to the streets. “I’m glad I came, and I’ll have a lot to tell people when I get back.”