At a time when local governments are cutting back, the city of Key West and Monroe County in partnership are holding steady on their commitment to the poorest of the poor. Jesus would be proud.
It started out called the Safe Zone, a place where people without shelter could spend the night without charge and without fear. Monroe County's then-Sheriff Rick Roth donated a piece of wasteland at the back of the Sheriff's Headquarters and Jail complex on Stock Island. It was an inspired location back in 2004, so close to the Sheriff's office and so far from most of the rest of the respectable population.
So, Saturday afternoon they had an open house for the public to see how things are going at the Shelter in these tough fiscal times. Recently City Commissioner Rossi had some negative things to say about the Shelter, known these days at KOTS. Gina Pecora, Deputy Director of the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition was very polite as she took me round saying he had been misquoted. I hope so. I think KOTS is a tremendous place and should be an example to communities across the country as the Depression takes hold and more respectable people fall off their middle class perches. Every guest checks in, with ID and gets a bedroll, a chance to shower with a place to sleep for the night.
The fact is, and critics are reluctant to admit this, that with rents as high as they are in the Lower Keys an average working Joe can't raise $3,000 for first last and deposit and utilities and a small stash of money to survive the move to a place to live. They may have a job and many of the residents of this place do work, but they are the definition of working poor. 
The separate shower stalls for men and women feature private toilets and a level of cleanliness and order that would shock those like Commissioner Rossi who apparently feel the need to pick on the least among us. This place start out as a collection of tents but now the guests are housed in fiberglass Quonset hut types of buildings. 
Each male guest gets a mattress inside the huts.
Each place has a space for personal belongings at the head of the bed and a hook on the wall. It is extremely well thought out. 
Cleanliness, as the saying goes, is next to Godliness. Trustees from the jail spend 6 hours each day cleaning the place down and that includes the bedding and mattresses.
There are apparently far fewer women who come to spend the night here and they use bunks.
The facility is staffed by paid workers overnight and the place is covered by security cameras so overnight security guards can keep an eye on the place form their central booth. Gina told me lots of organizations come by and volunteer their time to help the guests with AA meetings and so forth a common feature of life at KOTS in the evening. The facility of operated by the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition which has been doing this type work with the poor since 1992. They are led by the dynamic and personable Reverend Steve Braddock, a man who merits a shot at sainthood in my opinion. 
The original operators of the shelter allowed people to stay during the day and that got the goats of the local peanut gallery which vocally opposes the Biblical injunction to take care of the poor. These days the shelter doesn't allow stays during the day and doesn't offer a location from which homeless people can base themselves while they are out in the city by day. 
You'd have thought that letting the idle in spirit to hang out here out of sight might please those who complain loudest about unkempt people littering city parks. Not so. The most common suggestion is to give them a one way bus ticket to the mainland. Like Miami wants Key West's down and outs.
I frequently hear the housed speak with contempt of the houseless as though it is a desirable life to life without a permanent place to live, or without direction or a place in society. I don't think that life at the bottom of the chain is one filled with self respect or an opportunity to get away with anything at all. Riding a bicycle on Sheriff's property doesn't seem that reckless to me. But the Sheriff's HQ is right there and the law is the law. 
This is home for the legions of workers seen trudging up College Road on Stock Island from Key West at the end of the work day. 
Under Florida Law as stated by the Supreme Court local law enforcement can only arrest people for sleeping in public if the local agency offers those people a place to sleep. Thus it is the Shelter serves a very real purpose in Key West. Even if it shares a compound with dead Sheriff's cars.
The shelter is located in the distance between the palm trees seen to the left in the picture below:
And on College Road there is no mention of KOTS, though this is where the bus stops on the way to and from Key West and south Stock Island.
Out here s where they gather, the human left overs and share their stories with the only people that will listen. 
Each other.
The place was guarded by this guy who was yelling for help, his leash was caught around the plant. When his owner finally figured that the dog didn't like to be tied up and let him loose he sat quietly by the doorway into the restaurant. Key West has yet to implement a new state law permitting dogs in outdoor restaurants. Weirdly enough I am not a huge fan of taking my dog with me into restaurants because I really don't need the hassle of looking after her on my evening off. Happily for me Cheyenne is quite content in the car, especially in the cooler days of winter. Having her sit in an air conditioned car while I eat dinner seems absurd. 
We took inside seating, paradoxically, preferring not to sit out in the heat of the evening. Ilona's has a long list of micro brew beers, keeping up with the fashion, and we asked for two beers not hoppy and bitter and we got precisely what we asked for. My wife's Terrapin had a honey after taste she really liked and my Sweaty Betty (sic) from Colorado was several steps above a Coors blandness. They sell wine too.
We were amused to see among all the wines on display a bottle of Bull's Blood from the city of Eger. In September 1995 my wife and I rented a car in the Czech Republic and spent three weeks touring Eastern Europe at a time when western ways had barely started to penetrate the former Iron Curtain. We landed in Eger during the annual wine celebration and we carefully brought home a plastic barrel of wine, that they filled for us, one among many souvenirs from the trip.
Eger Bor (bor is Hungarian for wine. Magyar is a very confusing language) was not on the menu for us on a steaming September evening. September is the quiet month in Key West and we had the Friday night inside dining room to ourselves. 
The menu offered standard Key West dishes and sandwiches, but we went for the Hungarian side of the page. Beef Stroganoff:
Chicken Paprikash, which had just a hint of peppery bite. 
Outside a jazz trio was performing to the outdoor bar and garden part of the restaurant. 
Appelrouth Lane is the alley that ends opposite the Strand Pharmacy on Duval.
Down the stairs she comes ready to swipe my face with her tongue and whack my legs with her tail. The moon has been a mere sliver of it's former self and as usual a new moon brings a spring tide in it's wake. So much so the canal has been full almost to overflowing in the morning as the Atlantic tides rise as full as they can. That puts my little Dusky 14 footer and it's 25 horsepower motor at dock level just about.
The presence of a great deal of fresh water has brought out the mosquito vector control people in force. Mosquitoes don't breed in salt water happily or we'd all be dead. Controlling the mosquito habitat ("vector") is an endless task and as one might imagine it is a task that pleases just about no one. I wasn't surprised to see the brown mosquito control district helicopter buzzing Summerland Key across the salt ponds. They drop an innocuous cereal-like pellet that messes up the mosquito lifestyle without poisoning the world below.
Mosquito control has been in the news lately with two members of the board up for election this year. It has been described as a scandal that the smallest public agency in the county has the director with the largest salary, around $185,000 a year I believe. At a time when public employees are under attack by the forces of darkness that want us all, private and public workers, to be reduced to poverty, the district is doing a piss poor job of drawing attention to itself and it's dirty laundry. A manager is being prosecuted for allegedly using work phones for private use- a man who reportedly earns better than a hundred thousand a year and stands accused of being an idiot, unwilling to pay for his own phones like the rest of us. And yet while the bosses tussle about buying television air time to advertise their services and how much to pay themselves, the workers keep working. Which is as well for those of us that don't much like mosquitoes.
It's hot and humid still in the Keys, and we are seeing lots of rain that makes fresh water puddles which encourage mosquitoes to breed. There is some talk of dengue fever, and speaking as one who contracted it in Central America years ago it is no particular threat to healthy well nourished people, though the flu-like fever is no fun at all. Still one can't help wondering if the threat of dengue spells more problems for a beleaguered public health system in a country that likes to think it can function without government, or if it is just a tool for government to expand it's powers, as one more anti government conspiracy. Perhaps it's neither and perhaps mosquitoes and dengue and cell phone bills are just one more way to pass through the doldrums of September without going mad from boredom. 
I went by recently to take a few pictures because it seems likely that this place will be torn down sooner or later. The question is: what will come in it's place? Across the street the owner of the hotel has expressed her undying opposition to any reconstruction saying a building site will send her establishment into bankruptcy.
Which attitude would pretty much end all construction everywhere in the city. City Hall is old and worn and Hurricane Wilma in 2005 didn't help.
After the flood waters receded city employees complained of mold problems throughout the building and after some considerable dithering the decision was made by some important people, that the city does in fact need a new city hall. So almost everyone was moved out.
I wandered in and met Miz Alice in Human Resources who was as usual very friendly and cheerful at her desk. She said the Internet Technology department is still in the building but HR is a lonely lot down in the semi-basement, an off white hall with electrical cables snaking across the walls and a rather worn gray carpet underfoot. The entrance smacks of a 1960 era school:
One used to pay parking tickets at the little booth downstairs and on the last occasion I lost my health insurance card I visited Miz Alice in her lair for my replacement. Other than that I have never had much reason to visit city hall. And what exactly a Cemetery Consultant is I have absolutely no clue. Nor shall I presumably in their brave new city hall, wherever that might end up being.
The back of the building is a large parking lot, properly metered and very useful too for any activities one might be involved in on the 600 block of Duval which is a short walk away.
The old building really does need to be replaced. The old louvered windows have been covered inexplicably by cement bricks. A rat's staircase according to one wag who used to work in the building.
The question is what to do next. Replacing city hall and the fire station would supposedly cost 18 million dollars and the city has already spent 750,000 on architect's plans. The other idea is to build a new fire station here and use the rest of the space for a parking garage. All that and converting Glynn Archer School, mentioned in a previous essay would cost an estimated 25 million dollars.
On the Simonton Street side of the building lies Fire Station Number Two.
It is an unprepossessing place and clearly also needs replacement. Whatever plans have been mooted so far the idea remains to keep the Fire Station in place. This is the first line of defense for Duval Street and the core of Old Town. Response times are critical in a part of town consisting of old wood buildings with no off sets.
I myself would take no joy in being a fire fighter working 24 hour shifts and never knowing when Dispatch will roll you out of bed with a horrible tone. Sometimes they bring us food on holidays and they know how to cook.
Walking back around to Angela Street we see the hotel across the way. The idea is that construction noise and dirt would drive customers away when they build something on the lot.
The municipal trash can has another of those cute little notices on it to encourage everyone to use the bins:
Eventually I expect they will start binning the building itself. Whatever comes next, and whatever it is will arouse controversy in our little tea cup of a town, I'm glad I remembered to snag some pictures of the old place.