Florida's Governor is reinforcing his interest in bills banning homeless people from sleeping in public areas, while offering some guidelines into what he wants to see from the final bill to survive "judicial scrutiny."
Among those asks: a component that allows the state to help with "mental health" for the unhoused in these local facilities to be included in current bills in the House (HB 1365) and Senate (SB 1630) that would ban sleeping rough and require localities to set up homeless camps with social services.
"You got to have sheltering ability and then if they want to set up some of these sites, it can't just be some site that is like Sodom and Gomorrah where they're using drugs and doing all this stuff. It needs to be a situation where help is available," Ron DeSantis said.
The Governor, who has suggested institutionalization should be brought back, said Thursday that mental health help for the unhoused is "important," though he doesn't "think it would be something that most communities would need."
He then suggested that Florida's problem with homelessness has gotten worse during his time in office due to in-migration.
"I think there would probably be a handful where we would want to make sure that this thing doesn't go sideways because I can tell you, I mean, you guys probably know you have people that have moved to Florida in large numbers. We've always attracted people, but particularly over the last three or four years," DeSantis said.
Invoking the homeless problem he has discussed repeatedly in California, DeSantis warned that something similar could happen in this state without legislative remedy.
"There's a danger that this could be something that could explode in one of our cities in Florida," he said.
Luckily, strike-all amendments to both House and Senate bills make explicit the call for "behavioral health services, which must include substance abuse and mental health treatment resources." So it seems the Governor is on track with bill sponsors Sen. Jon Martin and Rep. Sam Garrison.
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