The City offers a variety of voluntary services to provide support for those individuals choosing to end their homelessness. Homeless clients may access shelter services, family and friend’s reunification, identification document replacement, entitlements assistance and referrals to medical/ mental health/ substance abuse providers.
As one of only two municipal outreach teams in the County, our City is the only municipality that staffs a Homeless Outreach Team and operates a walk-in center. Our multi-cultural team manages 57 shelter beds funded fully by the City. These beds are located at three shelters (Miami Rescue Mission, Camillus House and The Salvation Army) to ensure that the City can offer placements appropriate to the homeless person seeking help. In addition to the beds purchased by the City, the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust provides up to an additional 40 beds, when available.
The City provides continuous street outreach efforts to maximize client engagement. In March 2019, the Camillus House-Lazarus Pilot Program was launched to serve 10 chronically homeless participants with persistent mental illness whose mental illness contributes to their personal homelessness. This program focuses on continuous client engagement, and medication management, when applicable. Currently, only one client remains on medication management and one client has been housed.
For those seeking employment, the City funds a transition program which provides a 32-hours paid employment experience. Program participants receive work and interview clothes in order to assist the transition back into the workforce. While the client is in the program, they receive a direct referral to CareerSource to assist with finding permanent employment. This employment opportunity eases the transition to full-time employment while using the recent homeless experience to engage others to leave the streets.
On March 12,2020 the City declared an emergency order as a result of COVID-19. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Homeless Outreach Team continued operations and the provision of services. Outreach workers augmented their efforts by distributing informational COVID-19 flyers and face masks. In addition, in response to the Commission request to provide food for unsheltered homeless, outreach workers distributed food cards to a variety of local restaurants. The homeless program also expanded its collaboration with Camillus Health Concern and Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust to provide COVID-19 testing during outreach engagements and quarantine /isolation placements for homeless seniors and vulnerable persons.
Although, engagement efforts have continued throughout the pandemic, there has been a significant decline in shelter services and family/friend’s reunification requests when compared to prior years.
It is important to note that in order to ensure safety, some services (such as the employment transition program) were suspended as a result of COVID-19. What is of overriding value in the data is the sheer number of homeless persons who are approached, offered services and subsequently decline assistance. Since the pandemic’s onset, the City has obtained refusals of service from 218 non-duplicated homeless persons. Given the pandemic and current environmental factors, the refusal of services underscores our homeless population’s reluctance to accept help and, far more importantly, the lack of urgency on their part with regards to their personal homelessness. This perspective has been underscored during the enhanced efforts to reduce homelessness on Lincoln Road and The Decoplage condominium area. Furthermore, it should be noted that enhanced outreach efforts included the offer of hotel and other non-shelter placements as a precaution to COVID-19 spread as an alternative to traditional shelter placements. Despite this, acceptance rates remained low.
From a capacity standpoint, the City currently purchases 57 shelter beds and has access to up to 40 additional beds managed by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. With this existing bed inventory, the City experienced an estimated 10 shelter bed vacancies per day since the pandemic began. In addition, the Homeless Trust had made available quarantine and isolation beds at local area hotels and living facilities.
The City’s current strategies and services balance the need to end homelessness with the individual’s right to self-determination and independence. Our supports, including shelter, employment and support services, can only be successful when leveraged a person’s decision to end their personal homelessness.
More so, as a municipality that staffs a dedicated contingent of police officers with access to direct shelter placements, our City has uniquely positioned itself to emphasize the voluntary acceptance of services over arrest or punitive actions and remains in compliance with Pottinger protections. The fact that the City's homeless population has actually increased during the pandemic despite eviction moratoriums underscores that this population is less likely to have established community connections which normally serve as natural supports to reduce homelessness. More so, since the vast majority of the current homeless population migrated from other jurisdictions, a lack of community attachment prevails which serves as a barrier to accessing available services and subsequently ending personal homelessness. This, coupled with the prevalence of criminality within this population, are substantial barriers that may require more than just the availability of voluntary human services to reduce our City's street population.