City doubles down on argument over new homeless shelter location

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Despite Monroe County Commissioners flatly rejecting their proposals, Key West City officials are doubling down on their effort to force the county to provide space for a new homeless shelter.

City commissioners voted 6-1 at their April 3 meeting to officially give city manager Jim Scholl the go-ahead to use all of the city-owned 2.62-acre parcel on College Road for the construction of a workforce housing development. Commissioners had voted in 2015 to use a portion of that land as a location for a new Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS). But the post-Hurricane Irma need for affordable housing changed the city’s priorities, with all but one of the commissioners now voting to use the parcel only for affordable workforce housing.

Monroe County officials had been hoping Key West would honor its previous vote to relocate KOTS to the College Road land. Monroe County Commissioners have vetoed two of the city’s proposals; one to take over the county-owned Bayshore Manor senior citizen housing building, also on College Road, moving the elderly residents to the new senior housing development being built on Dunlap Drive and using the building as the new KOTS. The second proposal was to keep the shelter where it is now, next to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department headquarters on College Road. Sheriff Rick Ramsey has long pushed the city to move KOTS, saying he wants to use that land to build affordable housing for his employees.

Currently, the county provides land free of cost for KOTS and Key West pays the annual maintenance costs. In the current fiscal year, Key West has budgeted $462,000 for KOTS operations. But another complicating issue against leaving KOTS where it is next to the sheriff’s headquarters is a 2013 lawsuit filed by next-door Sunset Marina homeowners, who sued alleging the city didn’t adhere to its own permitting rules when deciding to install the shelter on College Road. A judge ruled that the city must make a “good faith effort” to find another location.

Key West City Manager Jim Scholl, while not addressing the lawsuit ruling, said the city’s planned affordable workforce housing development might solve Sheriff Ramsey’s housing need, providing apartments for his staff almost across the street from the sheriff’s department. Scholl also held out hope that the county would agree to turn Bayshore Manor over to Key West for use as the new location for KOTS. Despite an earlier outcry from current Bayshore residents, their families and staff against the proposal, Scholl said he believed that once people saw the new Poinciana Gardens facility on Dunlap Drive, they would want to move.

One sticking point on that idea, however, is that while the top floor of Poinciana Gardens has been reserved for any Bayshore Manor residents who want to move, those residents would be required to share a room. While their sleeping areas would have a privacy wall, roommates would share a kitchen and bathroom. Currently, most Bayshore residents have private rooms.

“We’re still working with the county,” Scholl said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to see if there’s a better piece of property than where it [KOTS] is today. It’s going to take a while.”

Scholl will meet on April 12 with regional and state officials to discuss possible funding options for the College Road development, which will be aimed at low and very low income local workers. Under federal guidelines, low income residents would be allowed to make no more than 80 percent of area median income (AMI), a federal housing statistic used to determine applicant eligibility for housing. Eighty percent of the current $70,000 AMI translates into an applicant being able to make no more than $56,000 a year. Very low residents could make no more than 60 percent of AMI, or $42,000 annually.

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