MIAMI-DADE COUNTY HOMELESS TRUST The new face of Miami’s homeless community — senior citizens

It’s a special Thursday afternoon at Mia Casa, a former assisted living center turned homeless shelter for the elderly during the pandemic.

As a professional salsa singer belts out familiar tunes, two residents join him on the claves and a few septuagenarians show they still have what it takes as they swivel their hips, wowing the other seniors with their fancy steps and dancing with the Mia Casa staff.

Others sit quietly sipping coffee as the staff passes out pastelitos, but the music soon entices even the reluctant to tap their toes or keep beat on the tables with their palms.

“We’ve brought the outside world inside, so they’re not tempted to leave,” said Roxana Solano, the director of Mia Casa. “A sense of community is so important for these seniors.”

As the pandemic began to ripple through MiamiDade County in early 2020, the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, the taxpayer-funded county agency that helps people dealing with homelessness, knew it had a problem.

There were dire predictions that COVID-19 would spread through the homeless population and worries that seniors living on the streets or in homeless facilities would be especially hard hit.

As part of its plan to protect the most vulnerable of the homeless population, the Homeless Trust began quarantining those who tested positive in hotels and motels and isolating seniors from the general homeless population at facilities such as Mia Casa.

In mid-October, there were 63 seniors housed at the 118-bed facility but at times there have been as many as 100. Residents leave as the Homeless Trust finds them more permanent housing arrangements. Since it became a shelter, Mia Casa has served more than 300 seniors.

“So far we have not had one single case of COVID in the 16 months we have been open,” said Solano. Residents must be fully vaccinated for admission.

Just before the pandemic hit, a new operator had taken over Mia Casa and completed renovations to the assisted care facility but had yet to accept any clients.

That made it perfect for housing homeless seniors, many who suffer from underlying medical conditions that make COVID-19 especially dangerous for them. The Homeless Trust quickly signed a contract to rent the North Miami facility, said Ron Book, chairman of the Homeless

Trust.

Some Mia Casa residents came from other homeless shelters; others came directly from the streets.

Virginia “Jeannie” Mayhall, 65, was sleeping in a small tent community near downtown Miami when a worker at the shelter operated by the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa, where she sometimes went for a meal, suggested there might be a better spot for her.

Mayhall had been homeless for about four months at that point. After living in Colorado for 22 years, about a year ago, she decided she wanted a beach in her life.

When she arrived in Miami Beach, Mayhall said she had money. When it ran out, she began sleeping in a tent.

Mia Casa is a godsend, said Mayhall, who previously worked as a bartender and in the service industry. “The staff is wonderful. They make you feel comfortable. There’s A.C. here. It’s a blessing.”

Restoring her personal documents, which were stolen, has been a process, Mayhall said, but the Homeless Trust is helping. “This will give me more stability to move on,” she said.

The Chapman Partnership prepares three meals a day for Mia Casa residents and delivers them to the shelter. Camillus House sends nurses, and the staff provides laundry and housekeeping services.

Mayhall is the face of a trend that was becoming apparent even before the pandemic hit: There is a growing crisis of senior homelessness in MiamiDade County.

Those over 60 now account for 1 in 4 of the county’s homeless population, said Book. “PreCOVID, we were already seeing an overload with senior homelessness,” he said.

There were 183 seniors living on the streets and 425 seniors — about 78 percent of them male — housed in shelters when the Homeless Trust took its biannual census in August.

South Florida has long been an expensive place to live, and the mounting cost of living and a severe shortage of affordable housing have left an increasing number of seniors without a roof over their heads.

“People on fixed incomes have run into needs and demands they cannot meet,” said Book. That has led to seniors becoming “situationally homeless,” he said. But without intervention, that situational homelessness can turn into chronic homelessness.

Financial difficulties during the pandemic exacerbated the housing problem for the elderly. As in other age brackets, mental health and substance abuse problems also afflict some homeless seniors.

About 90 percent of Mia Casa’s residents are men, said Solano. A number of them became homeless after making bad decisions or after their release from prison, she said.

That was the case for José Manuel Duran, 67, who was caught up in a reverse sting operation decades ago and has been living at Mia Casa for around four months.

After serving a 25-year term in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana, he had nowhere to go and spent five months on the streets in Miami, sleeping in doorways and wherever he could get out of the rain. Sometimes he only ate one meal a day.

He was more than willing to go to Mia Casa. He saw it as a path toward more permanent housing. The staff is also helping him restore his ID and documentation, which had been lost during his time in the streets.