Mayor Suarez said the number of Miami homeless fell from 6,000 to 600. Here’s a fact check
In the first days of his presidential campaign, Miami Mayor and Republican primary candidate Francis Suarez has touted a decrease in the city’s homeless population, but the numbers he’s citing are a mystery.
“Now, instead of 6,000 homeless, we have 608,” Suarez says in his campaign launch video published two weeks ago. In a tweet published Friday, Suarez wrote “our homeless population which peaked at 6000 — as of our last census, is at 608 — and we will not stop.” He’s repeated the claim in various speeches.
The two data points Suarez compares are the result of two different counting methods — and they are 31 years apart.
Matthew Marr, a sociologist and homelessness researcher at Florida International University, called Suarez’s assertion a “convenient and misleading presentation of the point-in-time enumerations.”
On Jan. 26, 2023, 608 people were counted sleeping on the street — the number Suarez cites as the “latest census” figure. Another 2,037 otherwise homeless people were sleeping in shelters, mostly in Miami, according to the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust’s Census report.
Suarez has not said when there were 6,000 unsheltered homeless in the city, and his campaign did not respond to the Miami Herald’s questions regarding these claims. The Homeless Trust report has 6,000 listed under a subtotal for 1992. But, according to the trust, that number came from a profile of the homeless population countywide in conjunction with the Governor’s Commission on Homelessness. And it does not specify whether this includes people in shelters.
The 608 figure, reflecting those living in the street, is drawn just from the city.
The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, a tax-funded agency founded in the 1990s, sends teams out twice a year to count the number of people sleeping on the streets on a specific night. This is called the “point-in-time” count, and the trust has been using that strategy to estimate homelessness since 1997. Although the point-in-time figures have their shortcomings, they are accepted as estimates and are key to securing federal grants to support social programs meant to help reduce homelessness.
“I was surprised and shocked,” said James Torres, president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, a consortium of homeowner associations, describing his reaction to Suarez’s claim. “It’s not accurate.”
The same data cited by the Suarez campaign to highlight the 608 figure show that the city’s estimated homeless population has neither decreased nor increased dramatically during his mayoral term, according to a Herald analysis. The numbers fluctuated between 500 and 700. In January 2017, a few months after he was elected mayor, the trust counted 609 people sleeping on the streets — just one more than those counted in January 2023.
Using the point-in-time data provided by the Homeless Trust, the city of Miami’s unsheltered homeless population peaked in January 2001, when 1,157 were counted as sleeping on the street.
Homelessness down, but not during Suarez
Using the trust’s own numbers, which date back to 1997, the tally of unsheltered homeless people in the city saw the most significant decrease between 2003 and 2009 — from 1,152 counted in April 2003 to 411 counted in January 2009. Suarez has been an elected official since 2009. The decrease began in the late 1990s when Suarez was a student at the University of Florida.
During that time frame, housing options expanded for the homeless population. Lotus House, Miami’s only homeless shelter exclusively for women and children opened in 2006. Camillus House also expanded housing options for the homeless during this span.
The Homeless Trust, the leading government agency responsible for addressing homelessness, has a $90 million operating budget that is partly funded by a 1% tax on restaurant checks across most Miami-Dade cities, including Miami. The city has also contributed millions to the Trust and other institutions that work with homeless people, including Lotus House and Camillus House.
The city’s financial support for homeless initiatives, which predate Suarez’s time as mayor, has continued under his administration.
Torres, who has lived downtown for about nine years, says he has not seen significant improvement despite the spending on social programs.
“I would love to tell Francis Suarez that he needs to confront these challenges upfront rather than indulging himself and promoting himself for his presidential bid,” Torres said.
Miami’s history with homelessness
In the late 1980s, long before Suarez entered public life, Miami police’s alleged harassment of homeless people prompted a class-action lawsuit led by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union. The case led to a landmark 1998 agreement that provided homeless people protections from police harassment and arrests for loitering.
Twenty years later, Suarez sponsored a move to end the consent decree in his first year as mayor, over the ACLU’s objections. A federal judge sided with the city and removed the protections in 2019.
Since then, the city has enacted laws adopting more restrictions for people experiencing homelessness, each sparking passionate debate.
In 2020, the City Commission created regulations that limit where and when individuals and organizations can feed people living on the street. Those who break the rules can face hundreds of dollars in fines. In 2021, commissioners banned homeless encampments and empowered police to arrest violators.
Suarez, who has largely stayed away from public commission meetings and rarely participates in debates on legislation, did not publicly comment on either measure.
Then in 2022, commissioners considered building up to 100 “tiny homes” for homeless people on Virginia Key, a “transition zone” first suggested by Commissioner Joe Carollo. Suarez later convinced Carollo and the commission to shelve the idea and pursue a temporary camp elsewhere. No site has been chosen.
The city’s treatment of people experiencing homelessness prompted another federal lawsuit in 2022. ACLU attorneys representing multiple people living on the street are challenging the city’s practice of destroying personal property during regular cleanups of public sidewalks. The case is expected to go to trial in November.
This story was originally published June 27, 2023 at 12:47 PM.
