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February 9, 2010 |
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| December 26, 2006 |
By: Jordana Mishory |
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he 40 residents of a homeless camp in Liberty City are relying on plywood and plastic tarps to keep the elements out.
But to remain on the vacant city-owned lot where their shacks are located, the residents are counting on a 1998 federal court settlement to shelter them from Miami city officials.
Camp residents and their lawyers say city officials want to make their shantytown disappear before tourists and the media descend on the city for the Super Bowl football championship in early February.
The Miami City Commission is considering an emergency ordinance to make an end run around the settlement. It likely will touch off a new constitutional showdown over political protests and the rights of homeless people. Pro bono lawyers for the tent city residents are planning legal action to stop the city from closing the camp.
City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, who represents the area where Umoja Village is located, said the camp must be shut down.
She visited the one-acre site for the first time last week and said it was “great to see they put their heart and soul into trying to create a space. But I cannot as a public servant and elected official condone anyone setting up shop as a shantytown.” She said city leaders are not motivated by the upcoming Super Bowl, and added that she and the city are working to find homes for the residents either in shelters or more permanent locations.
The residents’ legal argument rests on the landmark Pottinger settlement that governs the city’s treatment of homeless people. The settlement is named after the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against Miami that was litigated for a decade.
Under the settlement, approved by U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno, the city cannot take action against a homeless person engaging in “life-sustaining conduct,” such as eating, drinking, setting fires to cook food or building temporary shelters for protection unless there is an available shelter bed and the person refuses to go there.
In late October, several community groups launched the tent city, called Umoja Village. Umoja means unity in Swahili. It’s a combination residential camp and political protest that shantytown organizers say dramatizes the indifference and corruption that have left thousands of Miamians without an affordable place to live.
It’s located on a city-owned lot at Northwest 62nd Street and 17th Avenue, where a low-income apartment building once stood.
The main organizer, Max Rameau of the Center for Pan-African Development, said Umoja Village shows how people in the community can take control of unused public land for their housing needs. He said a recent Miami Herald series, House of Lies, demonstrated that Miami-Dade leaders have failed to address the housing needs of low-income and moderate-income residents. It documented millions of dollars of waste and corruption in the county’s affordable housing program.
Police initially threatened to close the tent city down and arrest shantytown residents. But police and city leaders backed off when organizers brandished the Pottinger settlement.
Can’t sleep in vacant lots
On Dec. 14, the Miami City Commission voted 3-2 to pass an emergency ordinance offered by Spence-Jones that would enable the city to close Umoja Village down. That was one vote shy of winning emergency passage, so the ordinance goes to second reading in mid-January.
The ordinance would add city-owned vacant lots to the list of locations in the settlement where the homeless cannot sleep. That list currently includes City Hall, police and fire stations, and hospitals.
The ordinance also would require a group of more than 50 people to obtain a police permit to assemble. Currently, permits only are required if the assembly would interrupt the flow of traffic or if it is a protest.
Attorneys representing the shantytown residents are preparing to go to court to challenge any city action. But a legal fight could take months or years, while the city could close the encampment in the meantime.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Richard Rosenbaum, who is one of the camp’s attorneys, said the Pottinger agreement is the governing law. “Miami’s got some of the greatest laws around and these people should win any type of litigation that has to be initiated,” Rosenbaum said.
Rosenbaum said the legal team would file a motion for injunctive relief so that the shantytown could continue while the case is litigated.
Rameau said any effort by the city to move Umoja Village residents into temporary beds would be just a ploy to close the camp down. Under Pottinger, homeless people who refuse to accept a shelter bed can be arrested.
The other four city commissioners, Mayor Manny Diaz, city manager Pedro Hernandez, and their representatives did not return calls for comment.
Clean and well-organized
Umoja Village currently houses about 40 people, mostly black, in makeshift-duplex shacks just large enough to place a mattress on the ground. The camp is clean and well-organized, with a neat kitchen, a stocked pantry, a closet full of donated clothes, an improvised shower and a portable toilet. The camp relies heavily on donations.
The residents say living in Umoja Village is safer and more comfortable than living on the street or under bridges, and that the shacks offer far more privacy than living in a homeless shelter.
Rameau said camp organizers already have had to turn away 30 people and are considering opening another site, although they haven’t settled on a location.
A low-income apartment building used to sit on the site. Christine Bermudez Sola, a spokeswoman for Miami’s Department of Community Development, said the city wants to build mixed-use affordable housing units on this and other nearby sites in Liberty City.
“The city is moving forward to ensure the development of the empty parcels of land that exist throughout the Liberty City area,” Sola wrote in an e-mail. She said that the department held a workshop last week to find contractors to build such projects. Proposals are due Jan. 19 and work is to begin next summer.
Rameau said the city is trying to fast-track these projects, in part to justify the removal of the homeless encampment.
Umoja Village could turn into a black eye for the city as Super Bowl nears. It could add to the growing perception of trouble in paradise. Last month, Time magazine reported that “the city’s old dysfunctions have been joined by acute new economic pressures … regular Miamians are taking stock of their new city. … They’re leaving town.”
There were an estimated 5,000 homeless people in Miami-Dade County as of June, said Sam Gil, a spokesman for Camillus House, a housing group for the homeless. About 2,200 of these people were sleeping on the streets, he said, and the rest were in shelters.
Glendina Roseborough, who first volunteered at Umoja Village when it opened, moved in two weeks ago after an increase in her rent made it impossible for her to stay in her home. “There’s always something to eat, clothes and clean water,” she said about her new home. “I’m not sure where else I would have gone.”
But Rameau fears that the city may raid and close the encampment any day. Each time a member of the city government comes to visit the village, he asks when the raid is scheduled. He hasn’t gotten an answer.
Asked to comment on Rameau’s concerns, Miami city attorney Jorge Fernandez said, “I don’t know that there is [a raid planned]. Not to say that there isn’t.” Spence-Jones said there would be no raid.
Safety is a concern
Pottinger v. City of Miami was a class action suit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1988, on behalf of 5,000 homeless people. The suit claimed that the police subjected the homeless to unlawful search and seizure, particularly at the time of major events like football games and papal visits.
The case was litigated over 10 years. The two sides eventually entered mediation. The resulting settlement allowed homeless people, or those lacking a “fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence,” to engage in the act of being homeless. In addition, the city had to adopt a policy to “protect the constitutional rights of homeless persons, to prevent arrests and harassment of these persons and the destruction of their property.”
The settlement established certain types of city-owned sites where homeless people cannot stay. The emergency ordinance would make vacant lots one more place where homeless people couldn’t stay.
Spence-Jones said her proposed ordinance was motivated by Rameau’s talk of expanding to other vacant lots.
“A permit would make sure that the area is suitable to demonstrate on, that you have the necessary facilities to accommodate what you’re trying to accomplish,” Spence-Jones said. She noted that the city is liable for any accidents that occur on city-owned lots, like the one where Umoja Village is located.
First Amendment issues, she said, don’t concern her as much as the safety issues. She also expressed concern that if organized shantytowns take over other vacant lots in Liberty City, there won’t be anywhere to build affordable housing. She said her office is working to addressing the housing problems in her district by bringing in as many developers as possible.
No unilateral changes
Plantation attorney Bernadette Armand, who also is representing Umoja Village, said her legal team may file a pre-emptive lawsuit in federal court to stop the city from changing the Pottinger settlement. “The [city] has already done a first reading of the law, so [our lawsuit] wouldn’t be completely speculative,” Armand said.
Another option would be to move to reopen the Pottinger case. Armand is confident that a judge would agree that the city cannot unilaterally change the list of exempt sites where homeless people cannot sleep.
ACLU attorney Benjamin Waxman, who spearheaded the Pottinger case in the 1990s and also is representing the shantytown, said that the city cannot legally alter any part of the agreement on its own.
“Each of the provisions was aggressively negotiated by both sides and approved by a federal district court judge,” Waxman said. “This emergency ordinance attempts to unilaterally change one of the provisions of the settlement.”
Asked about the possibility of legal action, Miami city attorney Fernandez said the city would “have a vigorous response in court. I have no intent in discussing the legislative scheme or legal rationale for any ordinance that passed or may be passed or that may or may not affect anyone at anytime.”
Umoja resident Glenda Roseborough expressed guarded optimism about defeating the city’s move to close the camp. “You have to take chances when you have nowhere else to go,” she said. “We don’t want it to happen, but if it does, we’ll find a way to get it back.”
Jordana Mishory can be reached at jmishory@alm.com or at (954) 468-2616. Law Editor Harris Meyer contributed to this story.
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