As battles rage around the country over the growing number of unhoused individuals sleeping on sidewalks and in parks, Florida lawmakers are pondering a hard-nosed approach: Prohibiting cities and counties from allowing public camping, and permitting people and businesses to sue governments that don’t remove encampments.
If House Bill 1365 becomes law, this state would become the latest to pursue such policies which have gained traction in places like Texas and Missouri, pushed in part by a conservative think tank seeking to redefine what it sees as a failed progressive approach to housing and homelessness.
Opponents of camping bans say they criminalize homelessness and ignore the root problem – soaring rents and a shortage of affordable housing.
“We’re going to do a different model, it’s a model that has both carrot and stick,” said Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island, who sponsored the House bill. “We’re also going to have a pretty hard line and say that we’re not going to allow the public space, that we all enjoy, that’s essential for a thriving community, to be lost.”
The bill cleared a House subcommittee with unanimous support Thursday, including yes votes from Central Florida Republican Reps. Carolina Amesty, Rachel Plakon and Taylor Yarkosky. It has two more committee stops before potentially being heard on the House floor.
A similar bill in the Senate, SB 1530, is scheduled for a hearing next week.
Homelessness is on the rise across the nation, with last year’s federal point-in-time count finding a 12% increase. In the Orlando area, homelessness has increased 75% since 2019 amid a steep uptick in rents, and far too few apartments available to lower income residents.
According to a 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability office, homelessness rises about 9% for every $100 increase in median rent. Median rents locally have increased $459 since December 2019, according to data from Rent.com.
As lawmakers were casting votes last week, volunteers in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties were canvassing parks, wooded areas and other locations where the unsheltered gathered to complete this year’s count, which they expect will again find higher numbers of people experiencing homelessness.
Martha Are, the CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, said the proposals before the legislature will create fewer spaces for people to exist, rather than give them a path to ending homelessness.
“It does not reflect a realistic understanding of why there are people unsheltered in our communities,” she said. “It suggests that if we just tell people not to be unsheltered, that they have something else to do or somewhere else to go – and they don’t.”
The predominant strategy toward combatting homelessness in this region and many others is called “housing first,” which moves to place somebody sleeping outside or in a shelter into permanent housing, and then works to address any other needs. Advocates say it’s cheaper for taxpayers to cover housing costs than the costs associated with jail and hospital visits.
But opponents insist there’s a better way. Both bills in the Florida legislature reflect reforms pushed by the Cicero Institute, a Texas-based think tank founded by billionaire Joe Lonsdale.
On its website, it posts model legislation and says states should ban public camping and redirect money spent on “housing-first” models of combatting homelessness toward short-term shelters and policed encampments.
The Florida proposals stop short of fully embracing Cicero’s model: They don’t have a criminal penalty attached and don’t call for an end to housing first programs. Nor do they explicitly force cities and counties to ban camping, although their provisions allowing public lawsuits if encampments aren’t cleared would probably force most municipalities to crack down.
Some states have bought all the way in. A state law in Texas passed in 2021 makes it a misdemeanor to camp on public land. A similar law in Missouri was struck down last month by the state Supreme Court for containing multiple unrelated subjects, according to the Associated Press, but new legislation has been reintroduced in the legislature.
Texas and Missouri have passed such bills, while several other states have also considered such bans.
The Cicero Institute, which hosted Gov. Ron DeSantis at its “Cicero Courage Awards” last year, has hired lobbyists to work on the Florida House bill as well. However, while supportive of the Florida bills, the group didn’t draft them, said Bryan Sunderland, executive director of Cicero Action.
“The current situation with street camping is not safe for unhoused individuals or the community at large,” he said in an email. “Florida lawmakers are demonstrating real compassion by focusing their efforts on moving people from the street to finding the help they need.”
It remains unclear if such a law would be enforceable statewide — although the legal landscape on camping bans and the rights of the homeless is in considerable flux.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced earlier this month that it will take up a lower court ruling from the California-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Johnson vs. Grants Pass, which found that cities cannot restrict public sleeping if shelter beds aren’t available, as doing so would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishments.
Altamonte Springs, which recently approved a camping ban, followed those guidelines in requiring available shelter space, although it’s unclear how its ban will work in practice since the city has no homeless shelters and those elsewhere in Central Florida are in high demand. In Orlando, for instance, shelter beds are full nearly every night.
The Florida bills also allow cities and counties to create designated areas where camping is allowed, if they provide clean restrooms and running water, 24-hour security, behavioral and substance abuse treatment. The area cannot be in a place where it impacts the value and security of residential and commercial properties, the legislation says.
Such camps are extremely expensive and seek to remove the unsheltered from public view, rather than seek to end their homelessness, said Jesse Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center.
“This is a bill about criminalization, not ending homelessness,” he said. “Elected officials are looking for ways to invisiblize homelessness and the camps are a way to do that.”
rygillespie@orlandosentinel.com
