Resort's attempt to ship homeless upstate is foiled

This is high tourist season in Key West, the Florida town celebrated for its connections to Ernest Hemingway and Key lime pie, which explains why the authorities are keen to get rid of the biggest eyesore in the place: its burgeoning homeless population.

Fed up with the sight of down-and-outs sleeping under bridges and urinating on the beach, the town authorities have come up with a novel solution. They are offering to ship the homeless population upstate to Miami and pay shelters and missions there to look after them.

There is only one snag. Miami is not taking up the offer, and in the meantime Key West is being showered in opprobrium by homeless activists who say the plan is tasteless and a dereliction of civic responsibility.

First in the firing line has been Tom Oosterhoudt, a Key West commissioner who has expanded the town's no-panhandling zone and complained recently that the community had become "the Monte Carlo for the homeless".

Earlier this week, he rubbed salt into his own wounds by telling the New York Times: "These people are individuals who don't want to work. They don't want to live in shelters. We don't have normal homeless people here. It's unfortunate that tourists have to see these disgusting people on the streets."

Put like that, it is hardly much inducement for homeless organisations in Miami-Dade county. They have responded with indignation to Key West's offer and essentially told them to solve their own problems. Hilda Fernandez of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust said: "Our system as it is is maxed-out trying to deal with our own homeless situation."

Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington said: "I've worked with homeless people nationwide for 30 years. It is an accepted practice that each community should take care of its own problems and not export them elsewhere ... Practising social Darwinism or running people out of Dodge City is not a way to solve homelessness."

Key West's problems are shared by many tourist cities in the United States with balmy climates and ocean views, as is the desire to clear the homeless off the streets. Santa Monica, in California, has just passed an ordinance banning the distribution of food on the street. San Francisco recently voted to divert welfare money, previously paid out in cash, to social services, the thinking being that this would cut down on drunkenness and drug addiction. But the so-called "Care not Cash" programme simply pushed more people over the financial edge and created greater numbers of homeless people.