Courtney was a man with a big heart and big dreams. 

Too many people in this world are overwhelmed, engrossed, and focused solely on how they can make their lives better.  Especially for someone who knows what it is like to be homeless, this transition to not being homeless can be a lot to take on.  So, imagine the kind of person who gets through that situation and then turns around and dedicates his life to helping the others who are still out there on the streets.  Now you see what made Courtney so special to those around him, TaskForce, and his community. 

Fortunately for the Broward County community he became the soul and one of the founding members of the TaskForce Fore Ending Homelessness.  After helping found the organization in 1999 he became the CEO and President of the TaskForce Fore Ending Homelessness, Inc. a non-profit agency in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Prior to the start of TaskForce though, Courtney insisted (read as sued) the City of Fort Lauderdale to do something about helping people who were homeless.  But even that wasn’t enough for him because he volunteered to be the first civilian partner with a Fort Lauderdale Police Officer on the newly funded Homeless Outreach Team for the city. In an era when criminalizing homelessness was a regular occurrence, he realized that working with a law enforcement officer could be an advantage to helping people who are homeless.  And he was damn sure going to make it work.   

As he continued to learn about the homeless response system and ways that he could improve moving people through it, he was asked to sit on many boards throughout the State of Florida, including the Board of Directors of the Florida Coalition for the Homeless.  He also received several awards including the EPIC Award from the Mental Health Association of Broward County in 2003, the Building Bridges Award from the Broward Coalition for the Homeless in 2002 and the Advocate of the Year Award from the Florida Coalition for the Homeless in 2000. 

He taught numerous “Homeless 101” classes to local and statewide law enforcement agencies and social service providers.  He was integral in the establishment of the Crisis Intervention Team model and the Homeless Outreach Team model for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. 

Courtney was published (May 2004) in Preventing Suicide: The National Journal, Unnoticed Statistics: Homeless Suicides and presented his paper at the 37th Annual Conference of the American Association of Suicidology.  Since 1999 a multitude of newspaper articles have been written regarding Courtney and his work on homelessness.  Many can be found in the archives of the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and the Palm Beach Post. He was so admired by the community and loved by the homeless response system that Broward County declared August 24th each year Courtney Day in his memory. 

And even after all those accomplishments and accolades he remained dedicated not to improving his own status or showing how great he was, but instead to those that were still on the streets.  As a legend whose name is synonymous with street outreach in Broward County, his only mission continued to be getting one more person off the streets and helping them find their way home.