Anyone who’s worked with people experiencing homelessness knows that sheltering them is only half the battle. Getting them back on their financial feet — and back into independent housing — is the necessary ultimate goal. Otherwise, the homelessness problem only grows.
Florida has the nation’s third-largest homeless population, behind California and New York. But in South Florida, Miami-Dade County is widely credited with a model for confronting homelessness — namely, its Homeless Trust, funded by a special 1% restaurant tax.
And right now the Homeless Trust is poised to buy a hotel in Cutler Bay and convert it to housing for people who are ready to leave shelters and live independently, particularly seniors and veterans.
But Cutler Bay residents — and the town's mayor — are balking at the idea. And their resistance is raising questions again about how and where to transition the homeless back into mainstream life.
On the South Florida Roundup, WLRN’s Tim Padgett spoke about the proposal with Ron Book, the chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. He also spoke with Cutler Bay Mayor Tim Meerbott.
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“This is not a homeless shelter,” Book said. “It is intended to be permanent supportive housing… to move people that have either been in shelter or are fresh, situationally homeless individuals, not chronic, not identified with mental health, substance abuse, and alcohol issues, [but who are] ready to immediately go into housing.”
The Homeless Trust has pursued similar projects in other areas of Miami-Dade County like North Miami. The nonprofit had signed a $14 million agreement in September to purchase the La Quinta Inn on Caribbean Boulevard in Cutler Bay, which has 107 units.
Trust officials told the Miami Herald that the motel is ideal in many ways: it’s in a commercial zone separated from residential neighborhoods, it’s adjacent to the south Miami-Dade busway for public transit and it’s directly across from shops, services and jobs.
“We believe the criminal justice statistics will go down dramatically,” Book said on the South Florida Roundup. “We have over 5,000 individuals living in similar units around this county every single day, and you never read a word about them being problematic. This is an issue of NIMBYism ['Not in my backyard']. They just simply don't want individuals that are formerly homeless in their backyard.”
However, opponents of the Trust’s plan for the location argue that the motel conversion would be incompatible with the Town of Cutler Bay’s plans for redevelopment. The town recently announced plans for a $1.5 billion development on the site of the adjacent Southland Mall, which would include the hotel.
“Our zoning allows for greater development in that area for the housing that we so sorely need on that La Quinta site,” Meerbott said on the show. “Rather than putting units just for the homeless transition, it could be redeveloped into over 500 units providing more affordable housing for the entire town of Cutler Bay.”
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The mayor said the development would provide more than 4,500 units of housing.
“It’s gonna be the jewel of the south,” Meerbott added. “It's gonna create an economic hub where all of our citizens that don't have to drive an hour north anymore, can stay in the city to work, live and go to school.”
On the South Florida Roundup, Padgett also discussed WLRN's investigation into Miami's hiring of the city manager’s wife for office remodeling and President Biden’s decision to free Venezuela’s alleged corruption mastermind from his Miami jail cell.
You can listen to the full conversation here.
Note: A mention Cutler Bay Mayor Tim Meerbott made during the Jan. 5 show regarding local residents’ fears about “a needle exchange program” being part of the county’s housing program for former homeless people in Cutler Bay is false and based on social media disinformation.
In addition, Miami-Dade Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book claimed that the La Quinta Inn location in question currently experiences a high volume of crime. The Cutler Bay city government refutes that assertion and points to police call data that indicate the hotel is not a comparatively high-crime site.
