New Smyrna Beach not truly committed to ending homelessness
Brenno Carillo with the Daytona Beach News-Journal says that homelessness in New Smyrna Beach has become a growing issue. The city’s solution is to partner “with Daytona Beach’s First Step Shelter to offer temporary housing and rehabilitation services to willing homeless people.”
If you are on the sex offender registry, they will not help you; therefore, New Smyrna Beach is not serious about ending homelessness.
The residency restriction for New Smyrna Beach is 2500 feet, forcing some people on the registry who desire to live there into homelessness.
According to the Sex Offender Registration and Monitoring Triennial Review — 2021, page 25:
- Volusia County has a 7.4% transient rate for the entire county. (These figures were for September 2021 and are most likely higher now.)
- This 7.4% homeless rate for the entire county is higher than over half of the other counties in Florida.
- This translates to 72 homeless people in the county, some of which are living in New Smyrna Beach.
- Currently, New Smyrna Beach has approximately 75 homeless people.
New Smyrna Beach, Daytona Beach, and Deland (all of which are in Volusia County) have residency restrictions of 2500 feet. The unincorporated parts of Volusia County have residency restrictions of 1000 feet.
New Smyrna Beach, along with other municipalities in Florida, are trying to banish registrants from their towns and cities through 2500-foot residency restrictions.
If the New Smyrna Beach Commissioners really want to bring down the homeless numbers, they will roll back their 2500-foot residency restrictions to the state’s 1000-foot residency restrictions. (The battle with the state’s 1000-foot residency restrictions will come later.)
FAC is mailing a map to New Smyrna Beach’s officials that will show the banishment zones.
Note: This past June, Volusia County considered expanding the state’s 1000-foot residency restriction to 1500 feet in the unincorporated parts of the county. Fortunately, the county leaders decided to follow evidence-based practices and leave the restriction at 1000 feet.
For those people who would like to point out to the New Smyrna Commissioners that rolling back their residency restrictions would greatly help their homeless situation, the commissioners can be reached using the following contact information:
Phone:
386-410-2630
Email:
- Mayor Fred Cleveland — mayor@cityofnsb.com
- Zone 1 Commissioner Valli Perrine –– vperrine@cityofnsb.com
- Zone 2 Commissioner Lisa Martin –– lmartin@cityofnsb.com
- Zone 3 Commissioner Jason McGuirk — jmcguirk@cityofnsb.com
- Vice Mayor & Zone 4 Commissioner Randy Hartman — rhartman@cityofnsb.com
I truly believe we shouldn’t go this route. They can make mini-parks to ban registered residents from area that wouldn’t fall under the 1,000 foot radius that are potentially
desirable in the future. They can later say a new bus stop will be a new barrier, etc. We should go no residency completely route. Because I believe they will again seek more burdens later on. But yes more homes will become more accessible to register citizens if rolled back to the state mandated 1,000. At what point do we sue under banishment lawsuit? If they are systematically eliminating more and more land to live in each year that has to fall on banishment lawsuit when their intent is to drive future people out of the area to live in. When i signed my plea deal it said 1,000 feet now it seems like it’s a personal race between each county to increase that distance to 2500 feet. When approximately the over majority of the town is off limits to live in surely that is banishment. When they on an open mic declare they will do everything thing we can to prevent and trap the people currently here in to stay where there at or expulsion from the community if they move, that surely is banishment. When law makers continually pile more restrictions upon more ordinances none other than they want to feel safe Surely that is a ex post facto argument. I say no restrictions you see what happens when they get an inch they then won’t stop till whole world is off limits.
Yes, abolishing RR would be everyone’s choice, but that will take a lot of money for legal fees, something we do not have right now. We could use one millionaire/billionaire to come along on the registry who would file such a lawsuit.
Volusia County would rather have homelessness out of sight out of mind. The county built the shelter on across the street from the Branch County Jail. It’s halfway between Daytona and Deland. That street is a two lane highway (17/92) serviced by county bus. That stops operating at 6pm. The shelter is not located anywhere near the social services that the homeless need. As for us registrants the county would love to have people permanently reside somewhere else.