The House has passed legislation banning the unhoused from sleeping in public, and the Senate has now positioned the bill for a vote, setting the stage for a Gov. Ron DeSantis priority becoming law.
The measure (HB 1365) would ban counties and municipalities from permitting public sleeping or public camping on public property without explicit permission, creating an unfunded mandate for these localities to round up the homeless and put them somewhere.
Under the legislation, counties would be charged with setting up encampments that ban drugs and alcohol and include rehabilitative social services as a way of enforcing the prohibition against rough sleeping. The camps could only be in one place for 365 consecutive days.
Those conditions, funded by the counties, include clean restrooms, running water, security on premises and bans on drugs and alcohol. They must also be located in places that don't impact the value of nearby properties.
In the Senate hearing, Democrats questioned the bill sponsor, GOP Sen. Jonathan Martin, about the logistics of this proposal, an interrogation that revealed some significant issues the sponsor either didn't contemplate or didn't see worthy of putting into his legislation.
Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo wondered why Martin didn't try the concept out with a local pilot program rather than imposing the conceptual scheme on the entire state at once.
Martin said it would be "unfair" for his home of Lee County to be the sole beneficiary of this "great bill," suggesting that some homeless people would "leave Lee County" rather than get this "help."
Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book wondered if homeless families would be interred with single males, including sex offenders. The sponsor said that was "possible," but noted the bill doesn't stop localities from segregating populations, no matter their criminal history.
"This bill does not address that concern," Martin said of the commingling of sex offenders and families down on their luck, while noting that the issue could be addressed in future years if it crops up.
Book asked if animals would be allowed in the camps, and Martin said his bill left that question wide open as well.
The same vagueness held true for how a homeless person would get a permit for outdoor camping.
If an interred homeless person has a mental health episode in the camp, meanwhile, the sponsor said that person could simply be Baker Acted or Marchman Acted "until they're able to leave."
Martin noted that the Department of Children and Families and other state agencies would offer support in the camps, being "able to do their job much more efficiently" than now, and that law enforcement was already dealing with the homeless problem anyway, so his bill would "save money."
When asked to estimate hard costs of these camps by Democratic Sen. Tina Polsky, though, the sponsor had no idea. He refused to admit that the bill constituted an "unfunded mandate" for cash-strapped local jurisdictions, however, saying there would be "so many savings" once the bill was enacted.
The legislation accords with a stated desire of the Governor to have camps such as those outlined in this bill and the Senate companion (SB 1630), with restrictions on what occupants can do and "help" available, in efforts to include what he has called "judicial scrutiny."
The Governor, who has suggested institutionalization should be brought back, said mental health help for the unhoused is "important," but that he didn't want "Sodom and Gomorrah" style homeless camps. (It's unclear why he invoked the names of those Old Testament cities that were purported pits of iniquity, but that's another matter.)
To that end, the legislation includes "behavioral health services, which must include substance abuse and mental health treatment resources."
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