The cold weather rolling in Tuesday night means homeless shelters are scrambling to make room for an influx of people looking to stay warm. The front also arrives at the same time that a new state law goes into full effect.
Citizens can now sue their local governments if unhoused people are allowed to camp out on public property. The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust is working overtime to find solutions to the twin threats of lawsuits and cold weather.
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WATCH HEREWe watched outreach teams going person to person. There seems to be a sense of urgency to make sure everyone knows they don’t have to stay out in the cold tonight.
“Sometimes they wait ‘till it gets really, really cold and then they’re like, I want to go into the shelter,” said Maxey Espinosa, a City of Miami outreach worker.
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Inside the Salvation Army shelter in Fort Lauderdale, they have dozens of extra cots ready, and they’re preparing food for the influx that cold weather brings. Similar scenes are happening in Miami-Dade’s shelters, as emergency beds are set up.
“If people want to come in, we’re gonna find a bed for them, we’re gonna find shelter for them, that’s what we do,” said Ron Book, the CEO of the Homeless Trust.
Book said the cold weather is also an opportunity to get unhoused people into long-term housing.
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“Of course, part of what we do is we work aggressively to use that outreach effort in bringing people in, during inclement weather times, to retain them, to keep them here, to keep them connected to services so they’re longer-term off the streets,” Book said. “But let’s be clear, if we don’t create more housing opportunities, we’re going to have a problem, if we don’t create capacity to house people, moving them out of shelter so we’re creating more shelter space, then we’re going to fail.”
As the lawsuit provision of the new state law takes effect, the Homeless Trust needs to find more housing solutions to move people off the streets. Right now, Book says Miami-Dade needs about a thousand more long-term beds to move nearly all of the known homeless population in the county into permanent housing. A couple of projects which are about to open will make a dent in the problem, but Book says much more needs to be done.
In the short term, however, emergency, cold-weather shelters are available in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
