The Miami-Dade commission voted today to allow the county Homeless Trust to buy a hotel in Cutler Bay that will be used as permanent housing for 130 elderly homeless residents.
The project was strongly opposed by many South Dade residents and district commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins. But other county commissioners overrode their concerns, saying homeless housing is important for the whole county.
A state law goes into effect Oct. 1, banning sleeping in public. That has Miami-Dade scrambling for ways to get more than a thousand residents off the street.
Ron Book is the chairman of the Homeless Trust. He says on top of buying the hotel in South Dade, the Homeless Trust has identified a location where it hopes to place 75 to 100 “tiny homes” for housing homeless residents.
"It’s South," said Book. "It’s South where we have a continued growth of people who want to stay South. They don’t want to move north. They lived in the South, they grew up in the South, they are homeless in the South."
Book declined to say exactly where that location might be, but acknowledged this plan might face opposition as well.
READ MORE: Arrests of Miami-Dade's homeless residents skyrocket since new law
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