A Fort Lauderdale commissioner’s proposal to cut funding for homeless services after the city lost a long-running related lawsuit has sparked backlash from homeless advocates.
During a Dec. 19 commission meeting, District 2 Commissioner Steve Glassman lamented the almost $640,000 that the city has to pay in legal fees to Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs, a nonprofit group that provides food to people living without shelter in the city.
The organization successfully sued the city in federal court over an ordinance that, in part, criminalized the feeding of the homeless in public parks.
After approving payment of the fees, the commissioner said, the city should take that money out of next year’s budget for homeless services.
“We should say to Food Not Bombs, ‘Here's these legal fees, but we're going to deduct that from the money that we will spend in a year on [homeless] services…That's the way I feel about this,” he told other commissioners.
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis blasted Glassman’s argument as misguided.
“Well, you're penalizing the homeless people,” he told Glassman, who responded by insinuating the money spent on legal fees could have gone towards helping more homeless people.
Jeff Weinberger, founder of October 22nd Alliance to End Homelessness
The money, however, to pay the legal fees comes from a separate fund.
Fort Lauderdale City Manager Greg Chavarria said the city budgets for liability-related costs every year. The city receives a yearly report that considers pending litigation, claims history and other information to calculate an amount. When claims are paid, they are paid from this account.
That means the money to pay the Food Not Bombs lawyers isn’t coming out of the city’s earmarked budget for helping homeless people.
Andrea Costello, director of the Florida Institutional Legal Services Project, which was involved in the lawsuit, said Glassman is seeking to punish the homeless after losing a legal battle.
“The city all along has punished homeless people and their advocates. To turn around and say that the funds they are required to pay because they lost in a legal court case…should somehow be taken from the homeless community is just further evidence of the city penalizing people because they are homeless,” she said.
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The city is set to spend about $14 million out of their $1 billion budget on homeless services next year. More than $12 million of that money comes from federal grants and about $2 million comes from the city’s general fund.
The city is one of only a handful of Broward County’s 31 municipalities that sets aside resources for homeless people. Broward has about 2,000 homeless people and most are in Fort Lauderdale. The county has also set aside a record $20 million for homelessness services.
Glassman was elected to the commission in 2018, four years after passage of the controversial ordinance at the heart of the lawsuit. The ordinance regulated when “social service” events could be held in parks. This included handing out food to the homeless in Stranahan Park. It also forced organizations to apply for a zoning permit with fees as high as $6,000.
The ordinance has since been repealed. The Sun Sentinel reported in 2014 that city police cited the late Arnold Abbott, an elderly preacher who’d been feeding hungry people at the beach for years.
The legal fees only compounded as the case dragged on for years after appeals from the city.
Commissioner John Herbst said that while the money is not being taken out of the city's homelessness budget, it could technically be subtracted from the amount during next year's budget hearings.
He didn’t support Glassman’s proposal though.
“We fought it longer than we should have,” he said. “Actions have consequences… I don't want to penalize the providers.”
Food Not Bombs attorneys won the case in 2021 after a federal judge found that the city’s rule “violates First Amendment Rights to expressive conduct.”
The attorneys for the non-profit said they racked up more than $1.5 million in legal fees. Fort Lauderdale offered $334,000 and a federal judge set the amount at $638,196. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta In October affirmed the attorney fees for the non-profit.
Jeff Weinberger, founder of October 22nd Alliance to End Homelessness and a Broward County resident, called Glassman’s comments “a hideous display from a city already so steeped in hatred for homeless folk, while its doors seem wide open for what seems like endless luxury condo developments.”
Ultimately the commission voted 5-0 to pay the legal fees.
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