After a number of failed amendments from Democratic legislators, a measure that would ban public sleeping by unhoused people is positioned for a House vote.
The Republican Rep. Sam Garrison bill has been called a “carrot and stick” approach to managing the homeless problem in the state.
HB 1365 bans counties and municipalities from permitting public sleeping or public camping on public property without explicit permission, in a move deemed by the bill language to fulfill an “important state interest,” with what Garrison has called a “Florida model” for handling the issue.
Counties would be charged with setting up encampments that ban drugs and alcohol and include rehabilitative social services as a way of enforcing the prohibition against rough sleeping. The camps could only be in one place for 365 consecutive days
Those conditions include clean restrooms, running water, security on premises and bans on drugs and alcohol. They must also be located in places that don’t impact the value of nearby properties.
Democrats attempted to change the language to no avail, with eight amendments rejected.
These included a Rep. Anna Eskamani measure that would have allowed counties to designate camps for longer than the 365 days stipulated in the bill, and a Rep. Susan Valdes amendment that would have pushed back the effective date of this bill to 2026.
Garrison brought an amendment of his own, one he said he’d crafted with the Florida Association of Counties, that did succeed. It moves back the effective date for the cause of action, which allows people to sue localities for not implementing the rule, to Jan. 1, 2025.
Other components of the bill would go into effect Oct. 1.
The legislation accords with a state desire by the Governor to have camps such as those outlined in this bill and the Senate companion (SB 1630), with restrictions on what occupants can do and “help” available, in efforts to include what he has called “judicial scrutiny.”
“You got to have sheltering ability and then if they want to set up some of these sites, it can’t just be some site that is like Sodom and Gomorrah where they’re using drugs and doing all this stuff. It needs to be a situation where help is available,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said last week.
The Governor, who has suggested institutionalization should be brought back, said that mental health help for the unhoused is “important.”
To that end, the legislation includes “behavioral health services, which must include substance abuse and mental health treatment resources.”
DeSantis also previously suggested that locally provided homeless camps were only necessary because of a perhaps misguided legal interpretation from the Earl Warren-era SCOTUS.
“Courts have said you have to do that. I’m not sure that’s what the Constitution actually says. But you know what? This is the Warren Court and they just made it up as they went along.”
The Governor has said he doesn’t want Florida to “become San Francisco” in repeated denunciations of that city’s problem with unhoused people. This legislation may be the vehicle to that end.
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