Orlando 3rd 'meanest' city for homeless, study finds

Orlando 3rd 'meanest' city for homeless, study finds
Advocacy groups rank Top 10 cities that 'criminalize' homelessness
Kate Santich

Sentinel Staff Writer

July 14, 2009
The City Beautiful? How about "The City Mean"?

Two national advocacy groups for the homeless ranked Orlando as the third "meanest" city in the nation Tuesday, citing a trend toward criminalizing activities that come with living on the streets, such as sleeping in parks or panhandling.

In a report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless, Orlando ranked behind Los Angeles and St. Petersburg on a Top 10 "meanest cities" list, which also included Gainesville (No. 5) and Bradenton (No. 9).

Although a city of Orlando spokeswoman called the label unfair, Tulin Ozdeger, the law center's civil-rights program director, said: "We're definitely seeing a prevalent attitude among many cities in Florida that encourages these ... criminalization measures. We think there needs to be a political shift in attitudes to move toward solutions instead of penalizing people."
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Orlando 3rd meanest city for homeless, study finds

Just a reminder

FL 430 funded beds but 18,910 homeless veterans as of 2006 report

http://www.nchv.org/page.cfm?id=81

One of the biggest factors in Vietnam veterans becoming homeless was the fact that when they came home, there was a timeline to file claims of a year. With PTSD issues increasing since the time many of them came home, it took longer in too many cases for them to understand that what was "wrong" with them was connected to their service. To this day, we're still seeing Vietnam veterans seeking help from the VA for the first time. It's not that they suddenly found themselves needing help. It's because they didn't know what they needed help for or how to get it. I still have them asking what PTSD is. We did a lousy job getting Vietnam veterans help even though they were responsible for all the research and programs the VA and mental health community have right now. Let's not make the same mistake again because we're already seeing homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans needing help to heal. Not healing does lead to homelessness in too many of them.

The other issues on homelessness is the economy and lack of jobs. People in need of mental healthcare are also a factor. For all the reasons we can find for why people end up homeless, there are very few excuses we can come up to justify not helping them.