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criticism from two city commissioners and they received an iffy environmental report card after their initial examination. The final report card on the two sites is expected in mid-June. Meanwhile, pressure is growing daily to "do something." During Monday's City Commission meeting, the term "visible home- less" was added to the lexicon. As described, those are the panhandlers, verbal abusers, "comatose" doorway sleepers, fountain bath- ers, baggage-laden strollers and parking lot partiers who live and "sleep rough" in down- town Sarasota. 'HOMELESS CALCULUS' Robert Marbut is a Texas-based consultant specializing in the thorny problem of home- lessness and vagrancy. The problem is thorny because state and federal judges refuse to strip a sub-group of citizens of their consti- tutional rights to use public property. The thorn has been sharpened by the ruling of a federal judge in Miami (upheld on appeal to U.S. District Court in Atlanta) that police cannot jail a person for doing what all peo- ple must do at some point — sleep, urinate and defecate. If there is no public place to do that, but peo- ple still do that, it is not a crime even if it is done in public. This is called "the Pottinger Rule" after a Miami man who was arrested and defended by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union. The Pottinger "problem" goes away if a com- munity builds a shelter that users can enter or leave at any time. Such a facility is called a "come-as-you-are shelter," and Marbut is a strong proponent of shelters. One opened May 12 in Gainesville on the site of the old Gainesville Correctional Institution. Volusia County has hired Marbut to study its prob- lems under a $48,805 contract. On May 18, the Daytona Beach Journal's Eileen Zaffiro-Kean reported that Marbut spent three days "under the radar and lived as a homeless person in the Daytona Beach area." He is scheduled to deliver a report there in August. Cities and counties do not build million-dollar facilities without a public purpose or public pressure. From Gainesville to Daytona Beach to Sarasota, communities are facing the reality that public accommodations must be offered to those willing to accept free shelter in an effort to move the "visible homeless" out of downtown. Homelessness consultant Robert Marbut answers questions during the May 19 City Commission meeting. Photo by Stan Zimmerman Sarasota News Leader May 23, 2014 Page 68