Local entrepreneurs have a message for Fort Lauderdale, Florida: The city’s homeless crisis is bad for business — and getting worse.

The complaints take on a new urgency in light of a new state law that bans homeless people from sleeping in public. The new law, which goes into effect in October, also paves the way for critics to file lawsuits against local governments starting next year if they fail to enforce the ban.

Bernie Bedor, a business owner in northern Fort Lauderdale, says he has sent email after email to City Hall, begging Fort Lauderdale officials to do something about the city’s ongoing homeless problem.

“We take investors down to the beach and they see homeless people in tents,” Bedor told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “No one wants to invest in a mini-California. There’s a tent city next to the new police station they’re building. You have people going to the bathroom on the sidewalk. It’s like a free for all. And it’s very bad for business.”

Bedor shared several photos with the Sun Sentinel of homeless people sleeping or relieving themselves outside the stores at Imperial Square, a strip center several blocks north of Commercial Boulevard on Federal Highway. Other photos show people sleeping in tents on the beach just north of Sunrise Boulevard.

Bedor says he sent the same photos to city officials.

Charlie King, a local real estate agent, sent the newspaper photos of a nude homeless man peering into a window of a home in Victoria Park, then sitting on the front stoop. In one photo, King’s “For Sale” sign hangs out front.

“It’s embarrassing to have this going on in the city,” said King, who has been complaining for years about Fort Lauderdale’s homeless problem. “It hurts business. It makes people not want to live in Fort Lauderdale.”

King also sent photos of a nude woman wearing only a towel sitting on a bench. Another shows a man crouching down to defecate on the sidewalk in broad daylight.

“I saw a homeless couple having sex at the bus stop at Federal Highway and Commercial Boulevard,” King said. “No one wants to see this in the middle of our town.”

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