Two Weeks After New Times Story, Ron Book Wants to Close Sex Offender Camp Near Hialeah
For nearly three years, county officials and police in Miami-Dade failed to respond as a tent city of sex offenders grew along train tracks near Hialeah. The squalid camp is just the latest consequence of a 2005 county law that banned sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center, or park, effectively banishing them into homelessness under highway overpasses and the Julia Tuttle Causeway until they were forced into this remote industrial corner. More than 300 offenders are now registered in the area — living without running water, electricity, or plumbing.
Furious local businesses and property owners have repeatedly begged the county to do something, but their grievances fell on deaf ears. That is, until this past Monday.
About two weeks after New Times published an in-depth story about the deplorable conditions in the growing encampment, calling it a “sanitation and security nightmare,” Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust workers, city officials, and police officers visited the site. Now they’ve announced a new campaign they claim will finally find housing for the long-transient sex offenders.
Among those supporting the move is Homeless Trust chairman Ron Book and his daughter, state Sen. Lauren Book, who both visited the camp after New Times‘ story was published. Book, whose day job is an über-influential lobbyist, has long backed the county’s harsh restrictions on sex offender housing. And when New Times contacted him earlier this month, he argued that “the Constitution doesn’t guarantee where you can live when you break the law.” At the time, he insisted he had no intention of reexamining or changing the county’s rules, asserting that “it’s not a question of will [sex offenders] reoffend; it’s a question of when.”
So has Book changed his tune? “This has got to close,” he said of the camp Monday in an interview with the Miami Herald.
The lobbyist insists that, in fact, nothing has changed. Book says the county is simply allocating resources to the sex offenders for temporary rental assistance, such as first month’s rent and security deposits. But he says that service has always been available to the offenders and blames them for lacking the initiative to arrange proper housing.
So why is the county finally stepping in now? “It’s become a health hazard and a health emergency,” Book says. Even though he had no response when New Times asked him about the tent city’s sanitary risks two weeks ago, Book claims, “I was only notified a week ago. Before that, nobody ever said this was a health crisis.”
He admits local property owners have filed complaints over the years but argues that the taxpayer-funded Homeless Trust “[doesn’t] operate based on people complaining.” Instead, Book states that the role of the Trust is to “provide assistance equally to the homeless” but that it is “not [his] job to find housing for sex predators and offenders.”
Because offenders are prohibited from living in most subsidized federal housing and homeless shelters due to the restriction, it is their responsibility “to avail themselves to other funding paths for housing,” Book says. “It’s not a free lunch.”
Even so, many county officials, such as Commissioner Xavier Suarez, insist there must be a better legislative solution to deal with the tent city. In a 2014 interview, Suarez told New Times: “That we restrict where [offenders] can live and not provide any facilities for them isn’t human or logical.”
Regardless, Book says the county will soon announce a deadline to shut down the encampment, essentially evicting the sex offenders once again.
Where will they go when this tent city is closed? That’s up to them, Book says.
You know, yesterday as I was watching the horror unfold in Texas I was wondering how RSOs are being treated in the affected areas? Has anything been heard from Texas Voices (I think that is what they are called correct?)
Can FAC give an update on where our people in Miami are now?
They are still at the encampment
Sept 9: Looks like Ron Book found a way to “clear the tracks,” with Miami police support:
http://www.wtxl.com/news/miami-shelters-homeless-against-their-will-as-irma-closes-in/article_9d05477c-9575-11e7-9085-6f9256faeb4a.html
I stand by tired of being mistreated….that’s where we and our families start…they can’t lock us all up…
So is this the thing that finally gets FAC members to join a public demonstration? I think the Homeless Trust should be pressured to fire Ron Book.
This is why I’m pretty much done with FAC. You don’t support people taking drastic actions to change their situations. Why not protest? It literally caused goverments overnight to take down monuments all over this country. That’s what drastic immediate action has the POTENTIAL to do. FIghting THEIR WAR, using THEIR LAWS, and THEIR RULES, relying on fickle judges in the slow as molasses legal system, will take YEARS to produce any results. All the while, those poor people will still be living homeless wherever they go. I don’t care how much of a legal fight is put up, a nationwide or statewide overturn of residency restrictions is just not gonna happen unless drastic action and nationwide media attention is brought to it. And dang skippy, if I was those people living in that camp, I’d stay my happy a$$ right there. Force me to move. Hell, their family has already suffered enough for them being out of prison, what difference would it make if they got put back in there for standing up for themselves??? They would actually be living better and more sanitary in there, than they are now. It’s just frustrating. But I just had to vent it. I know FAC is fighting their asses off. But sometimes, you just need to change the game and change the rules you’re fighting with.
They can’t stop you if you want to do something like protest or whatever, but they can’t endorse you because then they are liable if any adverse action comes from it. I’m sure that in their minds they might agree with you but they can’t as an entity put their name to something like that. That’s all. At least that’s what I think, anyway.
We fully support every individual’s First Amendment rights to speak out and peacefully demonstrate.
We are not endorsing or participating in the organization of protests or demonstrations. Unfortunately the individuals living at the tracks will bear the brunt of the backlash it will bring.
You said the same thing last time we held a protest. They’re already about to be forced out of the camp and that is not the fault of any protest. Perhaps you can just as easily blame whatever efforts FAC has done, like this lawsuit, as the catalyst for the current crisis. After all, everything that has been done up to this point has not changed the crisis. It is the same today as it was before FAC even existed. Your fears are asinine. Do you think the Books are any less pissed at FAC’s efforts just because you oppose his efforts quiety?
Lawsuit was filed in 2014.
Nobody’s efforts are being blamed. Attorneys are handling the lawsuit (which WON in the 11th Circuit) and we defer to them for the appropriate action to take.
If I remember right….all that win was about was that Dade was told they could not dismiss the law suit.
So what’s going on now??
You remember incorrectly. A comprehensive update can be found here: https://floridaactioncommittee.org/legal-update-sorr-challenge/
Along with the scheduled trial date and everything that needs to go on until then.
That’s excellent. Thanks so much for the link. I did not realize all that was being done.
Did you folks not see that they actually posted against Book’s efforts to silence Derek? FAC has always said they believe that the face of FAC (for the time being) should maintain a professional projection. That being said did you not see them post on the other thread that they support fully Derek’s right to free speech and applaud his efforts in the fight (not an exact quote)?
MJ – Yes protests DID being down monuments all over the country but let’s not forget it was not without pain and bloodshed. Also, there is a HUGE difference. Enough support by the general public existed for the protestors to accomplish what they did. The same is NOT true for RSO protests nor the advocates for abolishment of the registry.
In the late 1880s segregation began in the South. Although it was based solely on the color of one’s skin remember that using the white facilities by a black was a crime. In 1886 SCOTUS upheld that separate but equal WAS Constitutional (Plessy vs. Ferguson). It was not until 1954 that things began to change (Brown vs. The Board of Education) and took all the way to 1964 (The Civil Rights Act) to completely abolish racial segregation.
So what is the point to this history lesson? To point out several things…it is true that the blacks committed no original crime (unlike RSOs) but they are similar in outcome because RSOs have paid their debt to society but are still treated as criminals and not allowed to move forward. In fact, our country continues to punish ALL felons long after their debt is paid (there really is no such thing as paying one’s debt to society in the USA). Another point is this – if blacks had tried to protest the Jim Crow segregation laws in the early 1900’s not only would they have lost but they would have been hurt or even killed – it just was not the “right” time. That does not change the injustice of the laws it is just reality. Which brings me to my main point – in the late 50’s and mid 1960s our society had changed enough that there was a younger generation that was realizing the insane inhumanity of racial segregation. So, enough public support (like the Confederate monument removal, or legalizing cannabis) existed to begin to make a change. The RSOs do not have that (not even close). The key right now is education and unfortunately time. Time for what? Time for enough young people (and others) to grow up knowing someone on the registry or loving someone on the registry. For advocates to emerge that are not on the registry (too few right now). And time for people to learn the truth about so many things they have been lied to about concerning sex offenders and sex crimes.
If Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on the bus 20 years before she did what do you think would have happened? She would have been jailed, released, maybe hurt, and nothing else. However, the timing was just right and when she refused it became national news – people from all over the USA stood up and said these laws are wrong! Not only did her own city rally behind her but so did the country. When MLK Jr. started his campaign if Malcolm X had become the face of that fight I guarantee it would not have had the support it received and needed. And remember, it was not smooth sailing – many lives were lost. Malcolm X’s form of angry protest has a place and serves a purpose but it did not belong as the face of the MLK movement. So, Derek’s type of protest (angry peace?) has a place to be sure and his hubris and bravery are to be commended. However, do you really want that to be the representative face of FAC? The public is not ready for that and the support in society is not there. FAC as often as they can SUPPORT the efforts of any registry protestors – but not to ENDORSE. They cannot risk the public opinion that would ensue by associating with something they (the public) feel uncomfortable about and see in the light painted by the Book’s (or the majority of them).
Great thing about this is that both FAC and Derek have your back – they have the back of all RSOs – whether you support them or not and that is the beauty of both.
Here here Karen. Well said. I see your point beautifully. That’s the problem though. Time. I’ll be in my 80s before anything is done, all the while living a miserable, poverished life because of these ridiculous laws. But I see your point. We have two different sharp sides to the same weapon fighting for us, and that can’t be a bad thing at all.