Miami-Dade County says Miami Beach needs to foot the bill for 10 years of free homeless services.
Miami Beach and Miami-Dade officials have been in an ongoing feud over homeless services after Miami Beach City Commissioners rescinded a Nov. 5 ballot item that would have opted the city into a 1% food and beverage tax to help fund the county’s Homeless Trust.
In the heat of the arguments, County Commissioner Eileen Higgins, whose district includes parts of Miami Beach, said the city has been benefiting from the Homeless Trust without paying its fair share.
“They have been the recipient of many services at no cost,” Higgins told WLRN in an interview. “They continue to have a strategy of exporting the homeless [off the beach] and have done so on the burden of every other municipality.”
The county estimates that the tax would have generated about $10 million a year in Miami Beach. County officials currently plan to take surplus funds from a city redevelopment district to make up for the shortfall.
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Higgins’ office requisitioned a report from the Homeless Trust that says Miami Beach receives millions of dollars worth of services from the nonprofit agency without paying into the food and beverage tax.
Miami Beach is one of only three municipalities in Miami-Dade County that does not pay the additional tax. The others are Surfside and Bal Harbour.
“Although Miami Beach has not participated in the Food and Beverage program for the past 30 years, the Homeless Trust has always afforded Miami Beach all the benefits the Continuum of Care (CoC) provides,” the report states.
The trust claims Miami Beach has been the recipient of about $2.8 million in services funded by the trust or money or federal grants that flowed through the trust. Those services include a Homeless Management Information System and housing assistance.
The $2.8 million figure represents a mix of amounts spent annually and over a period of three years.
Miami Beach Commissioners say opting into the tax would be too onerous on businesses and residents who already must pay a resort tax at restaurants. They also want a guarantee that the money Miami Beach pays into the trust goes directly to services within their borders.
“This tax unfairly targets our small restaurant businesses, for the benefit of developers and Homeless Trust vendors,” Miami Beach Commissioner David Suarez told WLRN in a written statement.
Suarez was the commissioner who led the charge to scrap a ballot item that asked Miami Beach voters if they wanted to opt in and pay the 1% tax that pays for homeless services, as well as domestic violence prevention programs. Commissioners voted 4-3 to invalidate the item in the middle of early voting, after thousands of voters had already cast their votes.
Suarez called the tax “bad governance,” and said the city already spends $5.2 million annually on direct homeless services.
“CMB should only be on the hook for $4.8 million to make up for what the tax would have raised,” he said.
This past weekend, the city held a homeless resource fair.
Miami Beach is home to a large number of homeless individuals in the midst of a crisis point for housing and the unsheltered in Florida. According to the most recent count by the Homeless Trust in August, there were 134 people living on the streets in Miami Beach.
The situation has become more tenuous with a new Florida law that effectively bans outdoor sleeping. At the same time, Camillus House, one of Miami-Dade County’s primary homeless shelter facilities, has had to reduce its inventory of shelter beds because of rising costs.
More than 50 people who were staying at Camillus House in the City of Miami needed to be relocated last week because of the shelter’s downsizing. Those individuals were sent to a hostel in South Beach, raising the ire of Miami Beach officials who saw it as retaliation from the county.
Starting next year, residents will be able to sue city governments if they do not arrest homeless people for sleeping in the street. Elected officials expect this to be a tremendous cost for local governments.
“We expect an increase in the jail population, we expect increased jail processing … there will be legal costs for that and we will have to be able to provide more permanent supportive housing and that costs money to build,” County Commissioner Higgins said.
