Miami passes controversial anti-encampment law
Miami city commissioners passed a controversial ordinance on Thursday that bans homeless encampments and says police should arrest violators.
The vote comes after weeks of fierce protests from housing rights groups and homeless advocates.
“Our residents [have] become second-class citizens,” said Commissioner Joe Carollo, who sponsored the measure, arguing that Miami residents are unsafe because of people living on the streets. “Some have weaponized the homeless against the rest of us, all the other residents of Miami ... for their ideological reasons. We do not have to provide a five-star hotel service.”
Carollo and other supporters of the ordinance say most homeless people in Miami are living on the streets by choice and have come from other states. They have called homelessness a “problem of attitude” and claimed homeless people don’t want to go to shelters because they can’t use drugs there.
The ordinance, which will take effect in 30 days, passed on second and final reading 4 to 1, with Commissioner Ken Russell the only no vote.
The measure says police should arrest people living on the streets if they’ve been offered and refused a shelter bed. It defines an “encampment” as a tent or any temporary living structure, people using camping stoves, grills or cooking fires and/or the “unauthorized accumulation of personal property,” of up to three cubic feet. Police are told to issue a written warning and give violators two hours to gather their things.
Ahead of the vote, Carollo showed a video in he approached homeless people and asked them if they would go to shelter and where they were from. Many of those he spoke with seemed confused or startled and didn’t give clear answers about whether they wanted a shelter bed.
Ahead of the city commissioners’ meeting, dozens of protesters gathered outside City Hall and poured into the chambers for public comment.
Critics of the ordinance say it criminalizes homelessness and will only make the problem worse, because violators will return to the streets after a stay in jail, becoming more resistant to accepting aid and social services.
“Criminalization, like in the proposed motion, threatens their sense of security,” said Dr. Matthew Marr, a sociology professor at Florida International University during public comment on the measure. “There’s a massive interdisciplinary research literature that shows the effectiveness of permanent, supportive housing using a housing-first approach.”
“Houselessness is a homegrown problem resulting from systemic racial inequality and lack of affordable housing,” he said, citing how most homeless people in Miami often come from low-income and under-served neighborhoods. “Please believe the science, vote no.”
David Peery, an attorney and homeless advocate, recalled that Miami used a hard-line approach toward homelessness in the 1980s.
Peery, who used to be homeless himself, was a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case brought against the city that resulted in a $1million fine for the city and a federal consent decree, known as the Pottinger Agreement, which said homeless people couldn’t be arrested for “life sustaining activities,” like sleeping on the street, urinating in public and using cooking fires. The decree was dissolved by federal Judge Frederico Moreno in 2019, with the city arguing it was no longer necessary bewhich cause they’d developed a safety net to protect homeless people.
“We’ve been here before,” Peery told commissioners. “The anti-encampment is not new...Why do you want to go back to that? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. We’re just going to be paying more money to not solve the problem. If you arrest people, you simply put them right back on the streets: They get released and go right back to where they were before.”
Of the dozens of citizens who came to speak on the homeless ordinance, only a handful supported it.
“We are being attacked every day by the homeless people. Not everybody who is homeless is a criminal but unfortunately we are suffering there,” said Desiree, a downtown resident. “Whoever is in this room who wants to support the homeless, put yourself in our shoes.”
The ordinance also got support from the Flagler Business Improvement District, a nonprofit, and the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, a coalition of homeowners’ associations.
James Torres, the president of the alliance, said many of the homeless people in Downtown were drug users who had come to Miami from other states.
Peery, the attorney and homeless advocate, said he’s “very disappointed” by passage of the ordinance.
“We feel betrayed by expressions of support by the commissioners,” he said after the vote, referencing how commissioners had previously deferred the vote in order to hear from advocates. “Now Miami seeks to return to the days of its civil rights violations, fines and arrests of the homeless. We will speak at the ballot box.”
Also on the agenda Thursday was a resolution proposed by Carollo suggesting that homeless advocates can “adopt-a-homeless.”
The resolution passed 3-2 vote, with Russell and Commissioner Jeffrey Watson opposing. The resolution referenced homeowners in the city that are “willing to assist the local homeless population by welcoming a homeless individual into their home to live with them by providing a bed and daily essentials such as food, electricity and any other necessities as deemed appropriate by the program at no cost to the city.”