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It's been about six months since a new, controversial state law banning unauthorized camping or sleeping on public or private properties went into full effect. But just how effective the law has been at curbing homelessness is uncertain – it depends on who you ask.
Known as Florida's camping ban, as of Jan. 1, 2025, the law allows local residents, business owners and the attorney general to take civil action against any local jurisdiction not complying with the law. Many cities and counties across the region adopted ordinances, establishing penalties and even the arrest of alleged offenders.
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In Central Florida, unsheltered homelessness had increased by around 225% between 2019 and 2024, according to an annual, federal census of unhoused people across the region called Point-In-Time Count. But for the first time in years, all but two Central Florida counties had decreases for 2025 – when the camping ban was in effect.
Homeless services providers had anticipated this, saying the new law would likely create a "chilling effect" among the unhoused. Services leaders like Chris Ham, executive director of Seminole County's only emergency overnight homeless shelter, said that the threat of criminalization erodes trust between the outreach teams and the unhoused population and that it drives them to hide deeper into the woods to avoid arrest.
"This year, our numbers did go down, and we're not sure. We think it's anti-camping. We don't know if people were more reticent to talking to volunteers because of some of that," he said. "We do know that homelessness has not gone down. We know that the number one driver of homelessness is still the lack of affordable or attainable housing in our community. So we're still seeing people struggling, and our largest increase is in seniors on fixed incomes."
Ham said lower numbers doesn't mean the law is solving homelessness, but for Florida House Rep. Chase Tramont of Volusia County, a Republican, the first lower count in years means something is working. "The goal of this wasn't necessarily to solve homelessness. The goal was to protect taxpayers and protect residents, to walk around taxpayer funded property safely and enjoy the quality of life. That was the point of it," he said. "It's an all hands on deck approach. The government should be the last resort for that, in my opinion."
For Tramont, he said state and federal aid has made it too easy to survive while homeless. Laws like the camping ban are needed to change that.
The District 30 lawmaker served six years as board member of First Step, one of the two emergency overnight homeless shelters in the Volusia area. He said local governments were ignoring people living on the streets and that this new law puts systems in place to help people help themselves.
"Policy that promotes continuing to encamp in public places is the biggest, is the greatest disservice you can do to a homeless person because you're enabling that," he said. "Safety net programs exist for people that genuinely need it – children, people who are disabled, single mothers, pregnant women. That's what the safety nets are designed for.. not for 25 year old, able-bodied individuals that had nobody to take care of but themselves."
For some unhoused people, like 26-year-old Brevard County resident Scott Green, the law sparked change – he's seeing the community come together and paying attention to the issue of homelessness with kindness.
"I've noticed how people's attitudes are changing. Some used to be real mean, but now you can tell, they come out, they're trying to understand. They're really trying to help," he said.
Some of the staff at ROM agreed, saying that, for better or worse, Florida's camping ban created a sense of urgency and that they've seen more done for the issue of homelessness in the last six months than they have in the last 10 years.
Tramont said he's open to speaking with anyone in the community who has ideas on how to improve or change the camping ban but said he's not aware of any plans in the legislature to amend or discuss the law.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report for America corps member.
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