Florida banned public sleeping and camping as a way to ensure its problem with homelessness is checked, but the issue is still ongoing nearly two years after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure.
Asked about it at a press conference in Broward County, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he and Attorney General James Uthmeier could do more to make sure that law is enforced.
“I think the Attorney General is looking into accountability for some of those officials, and I’m certainly willing to use the authority I have to hold anybody accountable who’s not following the law,” DeSantis said.
Uthmeier did put the city of Winter Haven on notice after pictures surfaced of unhoused people sleeping on park playgrounds. The city claims it is abiding by the law and has shut down 25 illegal campsites since it was enacted.
Florida bans counties and municipalities from permitting public sleeping or public camping on public property without explicit permission, compelling these localities to round up the homeless and put them somewhere. Counties were tasked with setting up encampments that ban drugs and alcohol and include rehabilitative social services as a way of enforcing the prohibition against rough sleeping.
DeSantis, who has suggested institutionalization should be brought back, said Monday that Florida’s law was “groundbreaking.”
“Locals have a responsibility to make sure that those places are kept free of seeing that. Now, I do think, in a lot of parts of Florida, that’s been very positively received, and I think folks have followed the law. But I’m not surprised to hear there are certain pockets that they almost think elections are just advisory … and they just think they should be able to keep going on doing what they’re doing,” DeSantis said.
“That’s not the way it works, right? And so we need accountability. I’ll use the levers that I have available to be able to make sure that the purpose and intent of the legislation is done.”
DeSantis has wide-ranging executive powers to take action in the case of emergency should he choose, including deploying the National Guard or State Guard. Thus far, he has stopped short of such mobilizations.
DeSantis said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year in the Oregon case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson “probably has cleared the way for us to be a little stronger on” enforcing the law, as it affirmed the Florida model.
But with time running out on his governorship, there currently is no legislation to tighten the law, putting any increased enforcement on the executive branch.
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