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A Life Adrift Sunday, December 31, 2006 By Kathleen Kernicky Charlotte York, the 85-year-old woman who has lived for years on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, still doesn't have a permanent home. In a Jan. 8 profile, Charlotte described how two young men beat her while she slept outside a vacant motel, a block from City Hall. She talked about longing for a place of her own, or moving to a farm in her native Michigan. Four days after her story was published, three homeless men were beaten a few miles away; one of the men died. Three teenagers were arrested in those beatings, but not Charlotte's case. Weeks later, Broward Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren helped place Charlotte in a private home. But Charlotte, who despises shelters and group homes, didn't stay. Earlier this month, Charlotte was spending her nights behind an office building south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Employees say she had been there about three months. They were trying to help move her when Charlotte took off. "I hadn't seen her in a very long time and now I'm seeing her again. I have a hunch things have deteriorated," says Marti Foreman, CEO at the Cooperative Feeding Program in Fort Lauderdale, where Charlotte often stops to eat or shower. Charlotte's nephew, Deane Kogelschatz, 67, who lives in Alabama, had lost touch with his aunt until last year. He spoke to her around Thanksgiving. Kogelschatz, who calls his aunt by his family nickname, Lodgie, says she moved to Florida in the early 1950's. As a young woman, she took care of him and his three siblings. She was married briefly, but never had children. Kogelschatz doesn't know how Charlotte wound up homeless, but he says he doesn't want her with his family. "That's her choice and I respect that," he says of Charlotte's refusal to stay at shelters. "She's steering her own chorus." 
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