Florida House passes bill to prevent homeless people from sleeping in public
Friday, the Florida House passed HB 1365 which prohibits counties and municipalities from authorizing or allowing public camping or sleeping on public property without certification of designated public property by DCF.
Many persons on the (sex offender) registry are forced into homelessness and will be affected by this bill if passed into law.
According to the OPPAGA (Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability) 2021 Triennial Report pages 25-26, there were 30,180 persons on the sex offense registry living in Florida communities in September of 2021 with 6.3% having transient addresses only (homeless). Those numbers made for a total of 1,901 homeless people on the sex offense registry in the state of Florida in 2021.
Also in 2021, Florida had a homeless population of 27,640 with the 1,901 homeless people on the sex offense registry making up 6.8% of all homeless people in the state.
At that time Florida had an estimated population of 21,477,737 people with the 30,180 people on the registry making up approximately 0.14% of the total Florida population.
In summary, persons on the sex offense registry made up 6.8% of all homeless people that year in Florida but made up only 0.14% of the total state population, meaning that persons on the sex offense registry were approximately 49 times more likely to be homeless than someone not on the registry.
This is huge! Much of the homeless problem for people on the registry is the residency restrictions which have been demonstrated time and again to serve no purpose. Residency restrictions do not reduce sexual recidivism and might actually increase it, break up families and support structures, and force people (human beings) into homelessness when they could otherwise be housed.
If Florida is serious about reducing the number of homeless people in our state, then our lawmakers need to follow the example of other states and abolish residency restrictions.
Instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness, the Florida legislature criminalizes it. In Volusia County the First Step homeless shelter won’t accept registrants. So, where are they supposed to go. The unsaid answer seems to be into the branch County Jail.
They… don’t want to “address” anything because that would actual involve strategies, solutions and critical thinking skills. That would make them look too sane. No, the Fla lawmakers just want to pander to the insecure and immature voter base through primal hate. They can’t lead without various sub-genres of boogeyman to castigate.
Iv worked with homeless over the past 10 years. One thing I’VE encountered is many homeless are actually ex military people. I wonder what happens when they start throwing military vets in jail for being homeless? That should look great on the 6 o’clock news.
We are barred from living from 2,500 feet in most localities from anywhere they want to be free of us. I image we will be restricted from living in these camps or even if we will be allowed to stay in the camps it will be in a segregated razor wire section and we will be wearing stripe pajamas.
The Supreme Court hears this on April 22nd. This whole case is on status versus conduct. They want to make it so a pure status crime is an arrest-able offense which in Robertson versus California, said, you can’t arrest somebody for being merely addicted to drugs. However since that time Powell vs Texas said you can arrest someone for being drunk in public. If we win (homeless) it will expand what is cover under a status crime under cruel and unusual punishment conditions so it will have a lower bar to meet if we can get a challenge to argue that the registry is cruel and unusual punishment for the status of being arrested for the crime of registry violations. The sex offender registry is purely a status of one’s crime so this ruling could be very beneficial for us and even more important for the unhoused. My take on reading the briefs
Looking at the briefs they mention s.o. quite a bit as far as status https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/city-of-grants-pass-oregon-v-johnson/
Here is a brief to the Supreme Court in 2019 about a prelude case. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-247/117093/20190925163623017_19-247%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf If you search sex offender in the brief it comes up 10 times. Does FAC plan to brief the court about the stigmatization registrants face on top of being homeless? We could even point to the 2,500 foot rule as to why homelessness is especially high for people in South Florida area and Florida as a whole.
As for the homeless veterans, the VA claims to be able to do “wonders:”
https://www.floridavets.org/our-veterans/homeless-veterans/
I “wonder” if the help comes with a carve-out for PFRs like their hiring practices do?