Florida sheriff issues warning for authorities enforcing homeless crackdown

Tough-on-crime Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd tells Fox News Digital that a new Florida law prohibiting homeless people from sleeping outside will increase the quality of life for regular people by clearing sidewalks and public places of homeless people who clog up these areas and make them unsavory.

However, homeless advocates say the law may put unhoused people in danger by driving them away from urban areas with critical services and potentially making them "vulnerable to predators."

The new law, one of the strictest anti-homelessness measures in the nation, came into effect last week and bans camping on streets, sidewalks and in parks. Local governments are required to offer temporary housing to the homeless, where individuals will be prohibited from using drugs. They must also be offered substance abuse and mental health treatment.

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Judd said the law needs to strike the right balance between providing safety for residents walking the streets while at the same time helping those in need. He said that while he's empathetic to the circumstances of homeless people, it doesn’t give some of them the right to block sidewalks.

"And that's important because our family, our children, our wife, our husband, our significant other has the right to walk down a sidewalk without having to step over or walk around a homeless person that's decided to set up camp in the middle of the sidewalk," Judd said.

"That's a quality-of-life issue for everyone, and because you don't want to live in housing and because you don't want to work and live like the rest of America, it doesn't give you the right to lay around in the public parks, lay on the benches, set up your nasty little camps. So that's what we're cleaning up. But we've always done that here, and at the end of the day my heart breaks for them, and we're going to help them, but they've got to help themselves."

The new law gives municipalities the power to arrest those not complying, but Judd said his department does regular outreach to the homeless to help them and that he wants to avoid a situation where homeless people are arrested, taken to jail and end up in the prison system.

"What we're working toward is what we've always done, [which] is not letting the jail be a de facto homeless camp, and that's not going to happen," Judd said. "We’ve got to be careful when we implement this. It's designed so that government really doesn't set up housing camps because that part of it is very onerous."

"What I hear overwhelmingly is, 'We want food, clothing and shelter, but we don't want to go into homes. We don't want to go into organized places. We just want to be left alone.' So our challenge is: Where do they go? 

Martha Are, the CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, told Fox News Digital that the new law will push homeless people out of built-up areas, which could prove the difference between life and death. The group works to provide stable long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness in Central Florida. 

"If you think about the horrendous storm that just tore up the Southeast. If people had been experiencing homelessness and had been more isolated further into the woods, farther away from other people, harder to find, they may not have even known that the storm was coming," Are said.

"They'd have been afraid to believe it, to listen, so if they had seen a police officer coming out to try and encourage them to get to safety before the storm, they may have avoided that officer, never gotten the message and then been completely overwhelmed in a storm. Those are the kind of real-life consequences with this type of legislation."

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Are said the legislation does little to tackle homelessness, which she said is driven largely by the lack of affordable housing. 

She said the No. 1 demographic of homeless people in Florida is the elderly, who oftentimes are on fixed incomes and then get priced out of housing, forcing them to take to the streets. For example, the population of Orange County grew by 25% between 2010 and 2020, whereas the housing stock grew by 15%, she said.

"When you've got many more people moving here than you're developing housing and transportation, then you end up with this mismatch," Are said. "And so there are certain people that are more vulnerable in that type of market."

Under the new law, local governments can offer county-owned land for people to sleep on as long as they keep it clean and free of crime, and as long as the people staying there are provided access to showers and mental health services. For approval, the county must prove there are not enough beds in homeless shelters to keep up with the local homeless population and that the camp would not hurt the property value or safety and security of other homes or businesses in the county.

The legislation provides $30 million to help municipalities enact the law, and it provides the homeless with mental health and substance abuse treatment, but Are said only $10 million of new money is being provided since the remainder of the funds are already annually allocated.

If counties don’t have enough shelter beds, the law allows them to erect outdoor encampments where the homeless could live for up to a year, with the biggest counties required to equip them with sanitation and 24-hour security.

Are said it would be difficult for local governments to meet those standards, and that if a type of homeless encampment was to be set up it would pose serious safety concerns, for children in particular.

"The people experiencing unsheltered homelessness are extremely diverse … then you're talking about putting young children, youth and families with lots of human trafficking, violence, people who are mentally ill and substance users. And unfortunately, that would become like a playground for predators.

Are said the solution to solving the homeless crisis is to invest in adequate housing and transportation and make sure there are enough shelters for people to go to.

"Short of that, we are going to continue to see more people experiencing homelessness, and then when we criminalize it, we essentially say that you're a criminal because you're having this experience that in many cases was absolutely beyond someone's control. 

"And then it becomes quite dangerous, and it would say an unfortunate thing about our communities and our state if we continue to pursue that strategy."

Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.