Solutions for the homeless? Here’s why some in South Florida won’t back state plan for camps

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Like other states around the nation, Florida is home to tens of thousands of people who live on the street — a fact of life that has vexed city and county leaders for decades.

Now, state legislators are swooping in with what some are calling a cutting-edge solution to the homeless crisis they say will make streets both safer and cleaner in the Sunshine State.

The new law would force counties and cities in Florida to ban the homeless from sleeping in public places but allow local governments to set up designated camps with running water, toilets, security and access to mental health services.

Critics say the proposed state law stands in stark contrast to current best practices that call for moving homeless people into housing and would result in more arrests of people living on the street.

Advocates argue it’s a revolutionary approach that will solve a problem that so far has defied solution.

Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke in favor of the proposed legislation in early February during a news conference in Miami Beach.

“We cannot allow any city in Florida to become like San Francisco, where homelessness, drugs, and crime have decimated the quality of life, hurt the economy, and eroded freedom,” DeSantis said. “In Florida we will continue to enact policies that promote accountability and community safety, unlike in California where they are promoting dangerous policies that harm their communities and economy.”

The proposal includes: Prohibiting camping on city streets, sidewalks and parks; creating state enforcement tools to ensure local governments comply; increasing funding for homeless shelters, while requiring occupants to abstain from drugs and use workforce services; and increasing funding for substance abuse and mental health treatment.

Residents and business owners would have standing to file civil lawsuits against local governments for allowing illegal sleeping or camping on public property.

The proposal has found support from unlikely backers, including homeless advocate Sean Cononie, an activist who was paid $5 million in 2015 to shut down his Hollywood homeless shelter and leave town for 30 years.

“It helps the homeless much more than just leaving them in the street waiting for affordable housing that is years away,” Cononie said. “This plan is more humane than what I am seeing now on the streets. We can make a system that won’t be challenged in the courts, and at the same time help the homeless and the communities to be free of anyone sleeping in parks.”

‘I think it will work’

Cononie says he’s heard from advocates who argue setting up homeless camps would be an unfortunate return to the past.

“Now people say tents are no good,” Cononie said. “We need affordable housing. Well my God, when are we ever going to get affordable housing? You have to get them off the street. Treat them like humans. Bring in social workers. If it’s done correctly and they give them a nice location to go to and provide services, I think it will work.”

Some government leaders in South Florida aren’t so sure about that.

“You’re creating a tent city by doing this,” Broward Commissioner Steve Geller said. “I’m not sure it’s legal. I’m not aware that this has been done in Florida before.”

Then there’s the question of who pays for it.

“If it’s like most things I know, the state will order us to do something and not give us any money to do it,” Geller said.

Nearly 48% of Broward County’s homeless population currently lives on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, home to the county’s main jail.

Fort Lauderdale’s police and firefighters responded to more than 11,200 calls for service in 2023 related to homelessness. And each year, the city budgets $2 million to tackle the issue.

‘Not champions for the homeless’

If the statewide proposal becomes law, it will be another unfunded mandate that will burden the cities and won’t solve anything, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“The Legislature finally woke up and realized there’s a problem,” Trantalis said. “But they’re not champions for the homeless. They’re simply trying to score headlines to make it seem like they’re doing something. And it’s not going to change the dynamic at all.”

The way to solve the problem is through housing, not encampments, Trantalis said.

“Setting up an encampment to house homeless people is a societal failure,” he said. “In San Diego they put tents in a parking lot and that’s where they relegated the homeless people. That’s not a solution.”

Fort Lauderdale had a homeless camp back in the 1990s and things didn’t go so well.

City officials confined the homeless to a tent city for more than five years after a federal judge ruled that cities must provide places for the homeless to congregate without threat of arrest.

The first encampment was set up in July 1993, just west of Parker Playhouse in Holiday Park. In a space the size of a basketball court, around 100 people crowded into tents every night.

A few months later, the camp was moved to a parking lot on Andrews Avenue across from City Hall.

At one point, an estimated 400 homeless squeezed under the tarps in the wintertime.

Campers broke out with infectious skin diseases. The stench of sweat and overflowing portable toilets filled the air.

The toilets had no doors and the showers no curtains. The homeless slept on moldy mattresses filled with bugs. Many kept their shoes on while they slept to keep them from being stolen.

When Broward County opened its first homeless shelter in February 1999, the camp finally folded.

‘Cesspool of human misery’

In the tent city days, an estimated 6,000 homeless people lived on the streets of Broward County, officials say. Today, there could be more than 8,200.

In January 2023, the official count had 863 individuals living in shelters and 1,624 people living on the street. But in a yearlong study that ended in September 2023, Broward County identified 8,263 people living on the streets.

The days of tent city are not something that should be repeated, said Steve Werthman, who served as the Homeless Initiative Partnership administrator for Broward County at the time.

“It was an eyesore,” Werthman said. “It was a cesspool of human misery. Drug dealers would prey on the occupants, it was not a place meant for human habitation. There’s no way to properly maintain an encampment in a healthy and humane way.”

Tent city closed when the county’s Homeless Assistance Center opened on Sunrise Boulevard. The homeless were encouraged to trade the dangers of street life for a warm bed, curfews and house rules.

County officials say they aren’t interested in going backwards.

Broward officials made it clear they don’t like the idea of setting up homeless camps during a public meeting Wednesday.

“We’re doing things that are more best practices — not putting them into encampments,” Broward Mayor Nan Rich said of the county’s efforts to encourage homeless people to leave behind the street life and enter social service programs.

“It’s unbelievable to think the municipalities are going to raise their hands and say, ‘We welcome this,’” Rich said. “We’ll be dealing with the ramifications of this in the future.”

Hard no from Palm Beach County

Encampments will be a hard pass in Palm Beach County as well, officials there say.

Palm Beach County has an estimated 1,855 homeless people. Only 855 people are in one of the county’s five shelters, leaving 1,000 on the streets.

Today more than 700 homeless people in Palm Beach County are on a shelter waiting list for shelter.

“Our preference is for individuals to be in shelters, but we don’t have enough shelter capacity,” said James Green, director of the Palm Beach County Community services Department.

Like Broward, Palm Beach County once had a tent city.

An estimated 150 people turned John Prince Park in Lake Worth Beach into an encampment, leaving piles of stinky trash and frustrating neighbors. The camp closed when a temporary homeless shelter opened in 2021.

Some local homeless advocates say they are horrified by the proposed legislation.

“Homeless people, like anyone else, should have freedom of movement,” said Laura Hansen, CEO of the Coalition to End Homelessness. “When I think of camps and putting people in camps I cannot think of a single case where that has been positive for anyone. History looks back on such events with horror and we cannot understand how people could even conceive of putting people in camps. The concept of restricting movement and putting people in camps is only possible when you consider a group less (than) human.”

‘It would bankrupt us’

Fort Lauderdale Commissioner John Herbst has a different take.

“What I think this creates is an opportunity for creative problem solving,” Herbst said. “Other cities around the country are looking at tiny homes or creating housing out of shipping containers. We have got to come up with out-of-the-box solutions if we are going to address the crisis we have in Broward County.”

But if the concept is going to work, it’s going to require taxpayer dollars from all levels of government, Herbst said.

“The city can’t do it on its own,” Herbst said. “It would bankrupt us. For new construction, we’re looking at $300,000 per unit to build an apartment. When you add land, it goes up to $500,000 per unit. We can’t afford to spend $500,000 to house every homeless person in Broward County.”

Herbst doesn’t see a tent city working in Fort Lauderdale because of the scarcity of available land.

“It may not work in Fort Lauderdale,” Herbst said. “But maybe it works in Plantation or Pompano Beach or Hollywood. It’s an option that’s available to us. And the more options we have available to us the more we’re equipped to address the homeless crisis that we’re really struggling with right now.”

Tent city on the beach?

Don’t expect homeless camps to pop up in Pompano Beach, says Mayor Rex Hardin.

“Setting up a tent in a city park is not acceptable,” he said. “If there is a need for housing — and there is a need for housing — we need to figure out how to solve it. But tents are not an acceptable solution.”

Deerfield Beach isn’t keen on the idea either, said Mayor Bill Ganz.

“I think people who are homeless are better served being able to get on their feet and get a stable place to live as opposed to be congregated in a camp outside,” Ganz said.

Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy says he doubts cities will be lining up to offer land for a homeless camp.

“I imagine that no city wishes to have encampments along their streets or sidewalks or beaches,” Levy said. “In Hollywood, we have a longtime ordinance that prohibits outdoor lodging, so the proposed bill does not prohibit anything we don’t already prohibit.”

In Hollywood, people who lodge outdoors and refuse to go to shelter can face arrest, though they’ll likely be out of jail within hours, Levy said. That’s why Hollywood police officers make great efforts to connect the homeless with service providers that can help them with rehabilitation services and housing, Levy added.

The proposed legislation has a high-profile supporter in lobbyist Ron Book, longtime chairman of the board of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust.

In the early 1990s, Miami-Dade had more than 8,000 homeless people on its streets. That number is now down to fewer than 1,000 based on the Homeless Trust’s latest count in August.

A place to stay

Book says he doesn’t believe in tent cities but thinks the legislation is a good start because it will give the homeless a place to stay while experts work on finding them housing.

“In 32 years there has not been anyone in the state Senate or the House or a governor willing to address homelessness, period,” Book said. “We need better solutions than we have today. If you attempt to arrest your way out of homelessness, all you’re doing is throwing away public dollars and creating a shell game, moving people around a game board. That is not the way to end homelessness. The answer to ending homelessness is housing.”

Los Angeles is currently home to 70,000 unsheltered people, Book noted.

“L.A. is building housing for the homeless at a cost of $840,000 per unit,” he said. “We don’t have the time or money to do what they’re doing in LA.”

Fort Lauderdale has launched a series of headline-grabbing crackdowns over the years to combat its homeless problem.

In 2014, the city restricted the feeding of homeless people in public, then cited the late Arnold Abbott, an elderly preacher who’d been feeding homeless people at the beach for decades. Abbott’s attorney challenged the city ordinances on constitutional grounds. Fort Lauderdale stopped enforcement efforts partly due to the scathing publicity.

Then in 2017, Fort Lauderdale filed a complaint with the state health department after a rat was spotted running through a homeless encampment at Stranahan Park downtown.

When the state declared the park unsanitary, city officials insisted it had to be closed right away. The homeless eventually returned, setting up another makeshift tent city in front of the Broward Main Library in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

The encampment was dismantled in November 2018. But in recent years, other homeless mini-camps have sprung up in and around downtown.

Fort Lauderdale resident Charlie King, a vocal critic of the city’s homeless crisis, praised state leaders for coming up with a way to combat the problem.

“The state is going to give us a nice road map that will help us exit this problem,” King said. “It’s a public safety hazard having people running through the streets panhandling. It makes parks and even sidewalks unusable for families and tourists with people lying there. Thank God the state is stepping in and saying citizens deserve a minimum amount of public order.”