Ms. Gibbs, it's been time to take action twenty-years ago. Downtown is a joke, hidden behind a facade of chi-chi condos concealing broken sidewalks and bums on the make. Danger literally awaits around every corner. What the city needs is less editorializing and studies and more action to solve the problems. MVB suggests starting here with our 4 part "Simple Plan":
- Put a moratorium on any more "studies." Downtown has been studied to death.
- Fix the goddamn sidewalks.
- Sweep the bums off the streets. If there is no budget for more cops on the beat, hire less expensive workers and give them the legal authority to round up the vagrants, put them in the back of a van and drive them over to Camillus House. Photograph them and get their SS numbers, etc, and input their mugs and info into a "bum data bank." If they're caught downtown again, freeze any benefits that they might be getting that allows them to eek out a living. Repeat offenders go to jail where they will learn to live without booze and drugs and will be employed in meaningful pursuits such as working on a chain gang. Make hanging out downtown a pain in the ass and in time, they'll find more hospitable places to crash-- unless, of course, the ACLU gets involved and they put the kabosh on this idea.
- Reduce parking fees. Until Miami finds its rhythm with people who live and work downtown, parking fees must be scaled back to make coming to downtown attractive and affordable.
2 comments:
As you remove the homeless that are there now, more stream in everyday. There needs to be a displaced persons census and an effort to track the growth of their numbers, drug distribution among them needs to be halted if not severely hampered, and homeless people need to be separated into two classes: those that can work and those that cannot. Work can be offered to them for cleaning up the streets, painting over graffiti, etc. Then, one can begin to rehabilitate them and offer hope.
Xavier, as much as we respect you and your blog, we think that's just adding on more layers of bureaucracy. Instead, our mantra to the problem is summed up in the memorable words of Gil Favor, the trail boss on Rawhide. "Head 'em up, move 'em out."
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