In his entry he makes mention of the high rents there which can attribute to part of the problem. He quoted $1,000 per month as an average price. We average $2,100 and up plus utilities for rents on East Egg. And we pay some of the highest utility bills in the nation. And the taxes here are among the highest as well. We pay close to $40K here for a building on 100' x 50' lot and have nothing to show for it.
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| 2BR apartment in a Condo for $2,300 next to 'Shits Creek' in Port Washington |
In his entry, and I am going to refer to him as "CS" instead of typing ConchScooter all the time, he mentioned about the shelters setup in Key West for the homeless. A lot like in NYC. And these are in serious trouble and might close down.
Why does a person become homeless? Many reasons and none of them is that they want to be. It is documented that some have serious problems like drinking, drugs and or mental issues where they cannot hold down a job. As such no job, no money for rent, no place to stay.
Others can become homeless very easily in these economic times. The loss if a job with no jobs around on the horizon can quickly put someone on the streets. Something we are facing ourselves. Thankfully we have some money put away and there is or was unemployment (at this writing I don't know if I am getting extended benefits of not) to help stave off the need to find a cardboard box to live in. At least for now.
Some go out on the limb and try to setup a business, invest all of their savings only to lose the shirts on their backs trying to make a go of it. They find as soon as they lock the doors on their dream they can face the cold hard streets with no place to go.
Like in one news article I read about the homeless in Key West, one person lost everything in Wilma and is now homeless. I am certain that he was not alone.
In his entry CS posted photos from inside one of the shelters. Not a pretty site to be sure. Just rows of army cots all crammed together. And this was just one of the shelters.
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| Inside a shelter, Photo from Key West Diary |
I found a photo from the NY Times of the entrance of one of the shelters(2). I looks like a combination of jail and junk yard. I am not impressed at all.
I did some more research on the homeless in Key West, and yes it does to appear to be a large community. According to the NY Times the feds gave Key West $813,000 to hire four more police officers to patrol (read remove) the homeless from the streets. This is in part for a quality of life issue for the residents and since tourism is the primary source of income, to keep the homeless out of the site of tourists and to help prevent panhandling and crimes.
We have our own homeless here on Long Island as well. In my town the police cram down on them to keep them out. This way the property values don't drop. But we still have a few around that you can see. They live in cars and will park in the local supermarkets or some obscure town parking lot. There is a section that is famous as a small box town and the police go in from time to time to remove them.
But you do have to look hard around my area to find a homeless person.
In places like Hempstead, Glen Cove, Wyndanch, Westbury, Central Islip and what have you it really is not hard to find someone that is homeless. There are 11 shelters here on Long Island but not really accessible for most people. Mass transit here is horrible and if you do not have a car, then you are up the creek.
But we do have a lot of soup kitchens and food outreach programs around. And all of them handle more people than they have resources for. Again it is not a good sign of the times. My own church has a food pantry and they are hurting for food in the worst way.
We would not have such a homeless problem in this country if Washington was able to help create jobs and keep them from going overseas. During the Bush administration more American jobs left for places like India than flies headed for honey. The Obama administration has done nothing to bring any of these back to put Americans to work. Everywhere I look there are no jobs. Romney down right scares the crap out of me and I am certain he would send the country into a death spiral. We need good leadership to stimulate the creation of jobs and to bring those that left back to the United States.
Then there would be a marked decrease in the homeless rates.
But my research did not stop with the homeless of Key West. What I found really put a damper on my ideas.
Looking at the posting from the website "Virtual Tourist" puts Key West into a whole new light for me. There are numerous posts on how bad things are and how much corruption exists in the commercial sector. And this is not from one poster but from several.(3)
OK there are a few things posted to yawn about. Like for instance there is a mention about the Gay community there. Hey no one is getting hurt and we have our own Gay areas here as well, like Fire Island is notorious for being a homosexual area. But from a good deal of what I read is make me wonder do I really want to move or visit there?
Using Google Earth I did notice that there is no parking to be found so that brings about problems. And if there are places the rip you off to park your car makes you want to use a bicycle.
In the article mentions about the private towing firms that snatch your car and rob you blind. Not much different than what we have here. My car broke down one evening, overheated to be exact, and I pulled into a bank parking lot to let it cool down. And this was after hours so there was no banking business going on at all. The bank was closed.. So instead of standing there with my thumb planted I went for a cold drink. Next thing you know my car was on the back of a flat bed headed out of town.
In the same lot was an elderly man facing the same situation only the driver wanted $150 cash to drop the car. Needless to say the man did not have the cash and the truck driver pushed the guy out of the away and drove off with his car.
Calling the local police was a waste of time. They didn't do a thing. All they did was point to some obscure sign that you had to really search for warning you not to park. The officer did admit the sign was illegal in the way it was posted but there was nothing the police could do about it.
In order to get my car back I had to cough up $250 in cash plus an additional $50 as a tip for the driver. Talk about extortion.
And if I went there the next day I would have to pay another $250 on top of that. Calling the NCPD was also a waste. I wonder how much commission is being handed out.
When I got my car back I noticed that someone broke into my trunk and took over $1,000 in hand tools that I keep in there. But there is nothing that can be done for the signs all say 'at your own risk' which gives the towing firms a free license to ransack your car.
So at the end of the day, a stuck thermostat cost me $1,300 and that is before I could even replace the defective part of the engine.
So looking at the posts about the towing, give me a break.
What bothers me is that someone posted that had their car towed by the Key West Police and the PD denied it until after the weekend thereby increasing the storage fees. Now how much is true and how much is fiction I cannot say.
Reading one of the other blogs I subscribe to, "Monroe County Sheriff's Office - Florida Keys" (4) is keeping me abreast of major crimes. So far from what I have read it seems pretty quiet. Nothing too outlandish. A few burglaries, a few thefts, domestics, and some other items. Nothing that would stop me from coming down. All in all not too bad.
Here on Long Island there is much greater crime going on. In fact Newsday reported on how several members of the gang MS-13 have been indited. Some are even facing the death penalty. And these are kids with some as young as 19. I know that there are areas here on Long Island where you simply do not stop your car in the daytime and forget about going near there at night.
Brentwood is a good example. Don't stop there in the daytime and avoid at night. Wyndanch has always been that way and so has many areas of Hempstead. I went to Freeport not too long ago and it went down hill so bad we could not get out of there fast enough.
So as far as crime the Monroe County Sheriff's Office is not posting anything that raises an eyebrow. Is the information true or not? I don't know but would gather it is.
In the Virtual Tourist webpage it was mentioned about the amount of bars that are in Key West. More than normal. Using 411.com I entered "bar" as the search criteria and came up with 55 different bars. Trying liquor stores I came up with 18 of them. Now none of this counts regular restaurants that serve liquor, delis or food stores which most likely sell some form of alcohol like we have around here.
Is there some truth to the saying, 'Key West is a drinking town with a tourist problem'?
Just for the heck of it I wanted to do a comparison between Key West and a town/city here on Long Island.
Going to City-Data.Com (5) I found that the population in 2010 was 24,649. I then looked at Bayshore (6) with a population of 26,337 in 2010 and ran the same query as before. This time only 13 bars came up. But only after I had to go through the list which originally had over 400 and that was because 411.com pulled bars from other towns like Islip. And again with the liquor stores only 10 were found after I had to eliminate places like Hauppauge, Islip, Babylon.
Just for the heck of it I decided to run the very same query on the City of Glen Cove with a population of 26,964 in 2010 (7) to compare city vs. city. Glen Cove comes up with 11 liquor stores and only 4 bars after I had to eliminate places like Manhasset, Great Neck, Williston Park.
Now to push the envelope a bit, I wanted to see what the stats where for Hempstead, and area you don't want to be found walking alone in at night. Hempstead has a population of 53,891 in 2010 (8) which dwarfs that of Key West. Back to 411.com. Amazingly only 14 bars came up and 4 liquor stores after removing towns like Garden City, West Hempstead, etc.
OK I can say that Key West is a drinking town. But that does not mean I have to partake in it. I am certain that there is some form of reserve in place to prevent too many people from getting too sloshed.
(1) "Key West Diary", Homeless in Key West, by ConchScooter, http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2012/09/homeless-in-key-west.html
(2) "At Key West Beach, Wondering Who's a Vagrant", NY Times, March 30, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/us/31keywest.html
(3) "Key West Warnings Or Dangers", Virtual Tourist, http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/Florida/Key_West-763140/Warnings_or_Dangers-Key_West-TG-C-1.html
(4) "Monroe County Sheriff's Office - Florida Keys", http://floridakeyssheriff.blogspot.com/
(5) "Key West, Florida Profile, City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/city/Key-West-Florida.html
(6) "Bayshore, New York Profile, City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/city/Bay-Shore-New-York.html
(7) "Glen Cove, New York Profile, City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/city/Glen-Cove-New-York.html
(8) "Hempstead, New York Profile, City-Data.com, http://www.city-data.com/city/Hempstead-New-York.html
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