WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

Two Lakeland Homeless Camps Are Worlds of Their Own

Camp David is the Maryland presidential retreat. The Chinese Jungle is the nickname for the huge skyscrapers and sign mazes of upscale Hong Kong.

Lakeland has its own Camp David and Chinese Jungle, and they bear no resemblance to their faraway counterparts.

Both Lakeland sites with the fancy monickers are dirt-poor camps for the homeless.

Lakeland's considerable homeless population that doesn't sleep in one of the downtown shelters is hidden in plain sight, sleeping on the sidewalks near the shelters, camped or huddled on the edge of highways in woods or brush near roads and convenience stores.

They see you - but chances are you don't see them.

Most of the people who live and sleep outside do so because they want nothing to do with shelters. A smaller group doesn't stay inside because the few weeks they are allowed in the shelters is up.

"I won't stay in a shelter," said Bobby Gene Hibbs, 65, better known as "Tennessee."

Late on a recent chilly night, Hibbs napped on a flattened cardboard box on a vacant lot alongside U.S. 98 North, beer in hand, just 25 feet from the busy highway. The closer to a bustling street, the less chance of getting beaten and robbed of his change, he said.

Hibbs said the shelters are just as dangerous, and the same guys who were homeless last year are now in charge, bossing people around.

"You gotta act like you're in prison," Hibbs said. And that's something he's entirely familiar with after serving seven years of a 25-year sentence in Tennessee for the armed robbery of a grocery store.

Nobody offers a firm number of just how many homeless people sleep in fields near the streets or camp in the woods. Last year, the Homeless Coalition of Polk County counted 749 homeless people countywide, but did not break that number down into geographical areas. This year's count remains to be tabulated.

"The count is insufficient" and the number of homeless people not in shelters is hard to gauge because people move around from camp to camp, said Mark Spiker, the director of the coalition.

Lakeland police, working with the coalition, recently did a survey of the camps they could find.

They documented 20 homeless camps all around the city. The Chinese Jungle camp is the biggest, with 10 tents scattered far and wide. Many of the tents were vacant when police arrived.

"The camps are all over the place," said LPD spokesman Jack Gillen. "If you see a wooded area, chances are somebody is sleeping in there."

Camp David is the heavy woods near a shopping center on U.S. 92 east of town. Nobody camped there had a clue how the camp got its name, but it certainly wasn't for David Eisenhower, grandson of President Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower.

The huge, wooded and brushy Chinese Jungle is in the area below the Memorial Boulevard bridge over Kathleen Road. Some say the camp is so named because some bamboolike plants grow there.

"That's not it," said Jessie, who lives in the Chinese Jungle in a rather ornate tent.

"Many, many years ago they took some Chinese dude out here and hung him and that's how the name Chinese Jungle came about," Jessie said. He seemed sure of that.

Lakeland Police Chief Roger Boatner, who has an excellent memory of city history, has a third premise. He said the name comes from the Chinaberry trees in the area. They're known for their distinctive clusters of lilac-colored flowers.

The one staple of most every homeless camp, vacant or full, is piles of empty cans or quart bottles of their beverage of choice, Natural Ice beer.

It's hands-down the most popular brew of the homeless for two reasons: It's cheap and it has a high alcohol content.

The Ledger asked several people whether they were homeless because they drank or vice versa. Most said being homeless drove them to drinking.

And most said they panhandle for money for alcohol. Sometimes the line, "I need money for a beer" works best, because people appreciate honesty.

A couple who struggled to sleep under a downtown business awning during a frosty midnight recently was not typical. Mike, 37, and his girlfriend, Lea, 28, had no interest in getting wasted. Both said they are desperately looking for work.

Lea is four months pregnant.

People could trust most of the homeless people in and around Lakeland. But it wouldn't be wise to trust your wallet with a man who identified himself as Jody Dennis, 39, from Lake Gibson, who frequents Camp David and has been homeless for three months. He said cocaine cost him custody of his children and ruined his life.

To make money, Dennis said he dresses well, acts polite and carries an empty gas can, telling people he's out of gas and cash. "Could you spare a dollar or two?" he asks.

"When you dress nice and don't seem like you're out here begging for money every day, people will help you," he said.

Early one night, he quit the out-of-gas hustle when a deputy appeared to be getting wise.

Drug use often lands people on the street, but it doesn't usually continue on a grand scale once people are rock-bottom homeless. With some exceptions, they rarely have enough money for drugs.

But on a recent rainy night, amid a slew of blankets next to an abandoned building a stone's throw from the Salvation Army, several people passed around a crack pipe.

At Camp David, a man named Michael Kelly, 48, a former carnival worker, said he sometimes stands on the median or shoulder of U.S. 92 to "fly a sign" soliciting money for food. His staple is McDonald's $1 double cheeseburgers.

Kelly has been in Lakeland for three years and shuns shelters. He has a well-hidden bed roll and some clothes at Camp David and rides his bike from there to day labor businesses downtown to work $8 per-hour jobs. Sometimes he gets work, sometimes it doesn't work out. But he always manages to feed the Camp David cats, even if it's from a Dumpster.

Like many homeless people, Kelly has lost hope and virtually given up. "To get a place, there's first month's rent, last month, a security deposit, an electric deposit. I'll never get that much," Kelly said. "So, if I ever get 20 bucks, and that isn't too often, I get some food and something to drink. You lose your self respect. I never knew this side of life."

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