Very few things have been able to unite Miami like the collective disbelief over the sheer stupidity and crassness of Commissioner Joe Carollo’s proposal to build a homeless encampment on Virginia Key. His plan was so chock full of crazy that virtually no corner of our community was left unoffended.
Environmentalists saw the folly in building an encampment on an island shared by a nature preserve, the NOAA Fisheries and the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science.
Climate change activists balked at the idea of warehousing homeless people on land that is under eminent risk of sea-level rise.
Health and safety proponents panicked at the thought of forcing people to live a few yards from the Central District Wastewater Treatment Plant, on an island, in tiny homes not suitable to ride out a possible hurricane.
Our Black community and all those who care about civil rights saw the obvious racism of dumping 50-100 housing insecure people near one of Miami-Dade County’s most important Black heritage sites.
Let’s be honest, if the question was “Where should we house a homeless population that is 60% Black and 30% Hispanic?” this plan clearly answered with “Put them over there with the rest of the s--t.”
Amazingly, none of this seemed to bother Christine King, the sole Black commissioner on the dais, who thought the distance between the cultural heritage site and the proposed tiny homes village was far enough.
Virginia Key was just one of three sites under consideration in the Carollo plan. To no one’s surprise, none of the sites considered were either appropriate or in his district. Yet Carollo hypocritically called anyone who criticized the plan a NIMBY – “not in my back yard” – or an elitist. He also accused Black opponents of “playing the race card.”
While the Carollo plan was full of bombast and name-calling, it also was absent any type of cost analysis for building an encampment, bringing in electricity, sewar and running water, and – not to mention – all of the services and safety necessary for a community of actual living, breathing, human beings. So, for those who demand a government that spends your tax dollars wisely, this plan left you out as well.
Possibly most angered by the Carollo plan was anyone who knows anything about the homeless community. Those people were shocked to learn that the stated rationale for his proposal is his inhumane belief that homelessness is an esthetic issue, one that either needs to be cleaned up or hidden from sight.
Commissioners King, Carollo and Alex de la Portilla, the three in the unholy alliance who championed these senseless remedies, ignored what should have been the most important consideration: Housing unstable people are just that – people – and we should help and house them, not shove them aside. If we started with, “Where can we best care for them?” instead of “Where can we hide them?” it is doubtful that Virginia Key would ever be a consideration.
And now we’ve discovered that while all this lunacy was unfolding, the city of Miami had in its possession a different plan, a better plan.
The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, the verified experts in our community with regard to helping the unhoused, sent a comprehensive homeless housing plan to the city nearly five months ago, a plan that Carollo and the rest of the city commission ignored. Not only that, while Carollo was pushing for his hot mess, he was, at the same time, attempting to undermine the Homeless Trust. He asserted during his proposal that if it was doing its job, his plan wouldn’t be necessary.
Like every other part of this proposal, this defies logic and ignores facts. Miami has far fewer people on the streets than any other similarly sized municipality in the nation.
Carollo also asserted that Miami pays the organization “millions of dollars” to take care of the homeless. That’s also false. The city doesn’t write a check to the Homeless Trust – it’s funded by the county’s food and beverage tax, which is then leveraged for state and federal grants for a total budget of about $60 million per year.
Sixty million dollars might seem like a lot until you realize that the Homeless Trust pays to house, clothe, feed, and care for the physical and mental well-being of more than 8,000 people living in some sort of shelter or housing in Miami-Dade County right now. That $60 million, therefore, translates to less than $7,500 per year, per person – or around $25 a day. Compare that to the $58,200 salary and $46,400 per year fringe benefit package Carollo and his cohorts receive. Compare it to the $107,025 per year we spend to keep one person incarcerated in Miami-Dade County.
If Carollo and his plan’s supporters truly cared about the city’s homeless, they should stop the politicking, fabrications, ignorance and racism, and instead hand the money they would have spent for an encampment on Virginia Key to the people who’ve proven they know what they’re doing.
If anything deserves to be flushed down the toilet to find its way into Central District Wastewater Treatment Plant, it’s this plan. Call Mayor Francis Suarez and tell him to save face by working with the Homeless Trust on real solutions.