DADE COUNTY, Fla. — You may have seen Mayor Francis Suarez's campaign video announcing his presidential bid. In that video, he says that Miami’s homeless population went from 6,000 to 608.
But experts and homeless advocates, even residents in Miami, say that those numbers just aren’t accurate.
It’s a short statement from Mayor Suarez that has sprung outrage and confusion, “Now instead of 6 thousand homeless, we have 608, and I am not finished yet.”
“He’s really not been at the forefront or the mid-front or the back front. He’s taken a rather passive role,” states David Peery, the founder and executive director of Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity.
James Torres is the President of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance. He shares the same sentiment, “If you are going to get on the bandwagon to talk about an item in your city and on a national platform, please have the real facts. Don’t make it a political game for yourself. Because at the end of the day, you are just hurting the people who will turn around and back you up.”
Miami’s Downtown is known as a hot zone for unsheltered individuals to congregate. Torres calls it a crisis, “This is where the real issue is, and the downtowners, in general, are upset about it.”
In Miami Dade County, the Homeless Trust, the organization tasked with assisting our homeless population, conducts a ‘Point in Time’ count twice a year.
The census is like a snapshot of a specific time where volunteers and trust members go out on the streets and count how many sheltered and unsheltered individuals there are.
The system is not perfect, but it is a measure used to compare the population year after year and see if any specific areas need focus.
The count for this year found that in January, Miami’s homeless count was 608.
It’s a number that Suarez has championed, but experts are not satisfied.
Stephen Schnably, a professor at UM, is one of those experts. He’s confused about the Mayor’s claims on lowering that number from 6,000.
Schnably says the last time a recording was around that high was in 1992.
“The 6,000 figure came from a decision by Federal Judge Atkins in a decision that was rendered in 1992.” He furthers, “There was very little shelter space at the time, so a lot of people would have been experiencing homelessness.”
But according to the trust, under Suarez’s tenure as Mayor, since 2017, the highest recorded number of homeless individuals was 3,847.
But every year it’s fluctuated. This year in the county, the amount of sheltered and unsheltered amounts to 3,657. That’s a 12% increase when compared to last year.
Those assisting the unsheltered, like Peery, say that the Mayor has not done much to keep numbers down, “I would love to hear of one specific action that he took because I am not aware of any action. All of the ordinances, legislations, and laws were pushed by Miami’s City Commission members. And I think some policies were pushed by the trust.”
Some policies limit where and when individuals can feed those on the streets. The City Commission also banned homeless encampments and enacted a police force called ‘HEAT’ to enforce these regulations.
The City Commission had considered housing unsheltered populations on the island of Virginia Key, but Suarez convinced the commission to shelve the idea.
Experts say the only idea that Suarez has created is called ‘functional zero.’ It’s an initiative to make Miami the first major city to reach functional zero chronic homelessness.
Its success has not yet been quantified.
But at the end of June, Suarez attended a graduation ceremony for the program.
“Mayor Francis Suarez, he means well, and yes, he is trying to do those things, functional zero. But I personally, and we have seen it as downtowners, it’s not necessarily working because you have to have other components line up with you to get there,” shares Torres.
Florida 24 Network contacted Suarez’s team multiple times to comment on his number calculations and the measures he’s taken to combat homelessness. Since Tuesday, we have not heard back.
