Better than a park bench?

“We really won’t know if sleeping on the sidewalk is against the law until we get the ruling from the Supreme Court,” Commissioner John Herbst said. “When they hand down the Grants Pass ruling, then we’ll know whether the state law is legitimate or not. We’re waiting for the Supreme Court. But even after that we have to have a place to put them. And Fort Lauderdale can’t be the only place.”

Herbst, the district commissioner for Fort Lauderdale’s northern section, fields complaints all the time about homelessness and its impact on residents and business owners.

Herbst likes the idea of opening the stockade to house the homeless as long as it doesn’t impact the surrounding neighborhoods.

“We can’t bury our heads in the sand and say, ‘No, we can’t consider it,’” he said. “Personally, I think it’s better than sleeping on a park bench. In fact, right now I’m sitting in front of the stockade and looking at the barbed wire. But I’d prefer to be in a safe environment with barbed wire than being out there on the street.”

Doing nothing is not an option, he said.

Herbst recently traveled to San Francisco, and says he saw firsthand what the homeless crisis has done to that city.

“As I walked down the street, I saw people defecating on the street,” he said. “They had tents up. There were piles of trash everywhere. It has taken one of the greatest cities in the country and made it uninhabitable. People are fleeing San Francisco.”

‘It’s getting worse and worse’

An estimated 8,263 people are living on the streets of Broward County, according to a yearlong study that ended in September 2023. Nearly half of them are based in Fort Lauderdale

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