Helpful or ‘inhumane?’ One Florida city’s app lets people report ‘homeless concerns’

FORT LAUDERDALE — Alongside pothole repair requests and complaints about flooded streets, Fort Lauderdale residents can now report homelessness in their communities through the city app FixIt FTL, which is typically used for nonemergency events.

The city is using the new app function in response to a state law that will soon prohibit unauthorized camping on public property, according to Chris Cooper, acting assistant city manager. The legislation, House Bill 1365, prohibits municipalities from allowing people to sleep or camp in public places, such as parks or the beach.

At an Aug. 20 City Commission conference, Cooper said the app was the best way for the city to track homelessness and be transparent about the issue in the wake of the new state law while allowing city employees to respond to requests. Residents can use the app or the web-based portal to report a “homeless concern,” including the precise location and even a photo.

“It gives us an opportunity to respond, especially if somebody is on public property, whether it is a sidewalk, city park, a right of way or something of that nature,” Cooper told the Miami Herald. “We need to be able to identify that individual so that we can primarily and hopefully provide them with the services and assistance, if they’re willing to take that.”

Cooper said part of the new law also requires that the city respond to concerns about public camping as it receives them. The city added “homeless concern” as an option to the app a few months ago.

But some homeless advocates say that’s far from the best solution in dealing with Fort Lauderdale’s homelessness crisis. Opting to report homelessness through the app is an “inhumane way” to deal with “a very challenging human problem,” said Ken McKenzie, president of HOPE South Florida, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness.

“If you’re experiencing homelessness, you didn’t suddenly stop becoming a citizen or a neighbor,” McKenzie said. “You’re living in a tough spot (and) you need some help. And I don’t know if treating the reporting of it the same way we report a nuisance in our neighborhood or someone who didn’t mow their lawn or pick up their garbage is the right approach.”

As of Sept. 10, there have been 13 reports of homelessness through the app, with 10 of them closed. Under the closed complaints, city employees left comments indicating they had either visited the area and found nothing, or had offered services that were refused.

Some of the complaints are lengthy. One person wrote five paragraphs detailing their concerns about homeless people at Stranahan Park, saying that a man had recently chased after their toy poodle. “The way the homeless are behaving has crossed a line,” part of their complaint read.

Others have included photos of people experiencing homelessness, including a picture of a person sleeping on a bench outside of a steakhouse on Las Olas. All of the complaints are publicly visible and available in a map view.

McKenzie said those features raise privacy concerns. “I think it’s a very undignified way to address the challenge that people are facing,” he said. “It’s got a map, it’s got a pin, and there’s an exact location. ... It’s certainly revealing a vulnerable part of our population. It’s very clear on the map as to where they are, if you want to go and cause some challenges for them.”

Cooper, the assistant city manager, told the Herald the purpose of the location functionality and the photo option on the app is to allow the city to see where someone is in order to provide assistance.

“We really need that specificity so that we’re able to respond in accordance with what the state law says,” he said.

Cooper said the “homeless concern” reports go through the city’s Neighbor Support Division and are then routed to the city’s homeless outreach team.

Fort Lauderdale is not alone when it comes to tracking homelessness through app reports. Los Angeles and Salt Lake City both allow residents to report incidents of homelessness through their city apps and have passed similar laws surrounding public camping. Earlier this year, residents and business owners sued Salt Lake City, alleging it was not enforcing local and state anti-camping ordinances; a judge later threw out the lawsuit.

Florida cities like Fort Lauderdale could soon find themselves in a similar position. Starting Jan. 1, HB 1365 will allow people to file lawsuits against local governments if they fail to remove homeless people from public spaces.

“House Bill 1365 is going to really change the world for what we do,” McKenzie said. “... As of January the first, it starts putting opportunities for some pretty expensive financial settlements to take place if we don’t address this challenge.”

Handling the public camping law

In 2023, Fort Lauderdale had 780 homeless residents, up substantially from 2022′s count of 415, according to the city’s online dashboard. The city has a goal of reducing homelessness by 250 people this year.

Fort Lauderdale officials have been in discussions about the new state law since at least April, expressing concerns about arresting people experiencing homelessness. Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said in a Sun Sentinel column that he will not put homeless residents in jail and emphasized that homelessness isn’t a crime.

At the Aug. 20 meeting, Cooper said the city will not “arrest its way” out of the problem. “This is the last scenario that we’re looking to engage in,” he told the Herald. “We do have steps built in prior to that with the goal and intent of handling it just like any homeless concern that we encounter.”

The city is expected to vote on its own local public camping ordinance at a Wednesday commission meeting. A draft of the legislation states that a person can be cited for violating the ordinance if they don’t comply with an officer’s request to leave the area. Under the proposed ordinance, if the officer determines a homeless resident is in need of assistance, they should offer the person an opportunity to be taken to a hospital or public shelter.

Cooper said the city is working to add an option to report public camping through the FixIt FTL app in compliance with HB 1365, emphasizing that the law is not specific to homeless individuals.

The city has a community court for homeless residents who commit low-level misdemeanor crimes and municipal ordinance violations, with the hopes of providing them with shelter and medical services. Cooper said the city has also reassigned two administrative positions to the city’s Neighbor Support Division to help assist with tracking the homeless concerns submitted to the city and recently increased the number of officers with the police department’s homeless outreach team from four to six.

McKenzie said he encounters many misconceptions about homeless residents, including that most have mental health disorders, which in his experience isn’t true. Many of the clients that HOPE South Florida serves are families who live in their cars.

“They’re employed. They’re not impoverished, living on the street with no means,” he said. “It’s just they don’t earn enough to choose between meals or housing, and so they choose meals for their family, and they predominantly live in a car. Our role is to work with them to get them into the continuum of care (and) start giving them the skills they need to move up the economic ladder.”

One solution McKenzie has proposed is getting churches to agree to let people park their vehicles and sleep overnight in the parking lot. That plan would ideally involve giving people a free meal in the evenings and the mornings and allowing them access to bathroom facilities and showers.

“This gets them a meal, and more importantly, it’s a safe place for a family to spend the night,” he said.

McKenzie said that while the new state law presents obvious challenges, it’s also an opportunity for problem solving.

“There’s a lot of changes in this law,” he said, but “it does give creativity to the community to come up with a solution.”

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