Weekly Update 2025-08-12-Homeless Face Civil Commitment
Weekly update for August 12, 2025. This is recording number 322.
Dear Members and Advocates,
The homeless registrant population in Miami-Dade County has broken 500 people. According to the FDLE database, there are a total of 596 individuals with a “transient” address in Miami-Dade listed on the sex offender registry. 28 are listed as absconded, 67 are in confinement, leaving 501 on the streets of Miami-Dade. According to a February 3, 2025 press release, Miami-Dade’s point in time (PIT) count, recorded a total of 858 unsheltered individuals. Since persons on the registry can’t be housed in homeless shelters and don’t qualify for housing subsidies, the statistics translate to 58% of Miami-Dade’s unsheltered homeless are on the registry.
According to the OPPAGA Triennial Review of Sex Offender Registration and Monitoring (December 2024), 31% of registered sex offenders in Miami-Dade were homeless. With registration being lifetime in Florida, the size of the registry significantly growing each year as more people are added, and the availability of compliant housing decreasing, this problem will only continue to increase.
But this isn’t news. We’ve been writing about this problem for years and there hasn’t been any solution in sight. So why is it re-emerging in one of our Weekly Updates? It’s because last month President Trump signed an executive order mandating that homeless individuals be evaluated, “consistent with 18 U.S.C. 4248, to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment.” We all know that Florida is big on increasing its capacity in detention facilities (think “Alligator Alcatraz”) and has approved a massive increase in its fiscal year 2025-26 budget for these types of facilities. All the more reasons to worry that Florida will be looking to solve its homeless registrant problem by civilly committing them.
Last week we reported that in some cities around the United States, the homeless registrant population is getting attention. In Oklahoma, one honest journalist acknowledged the unpopular reality that residency restrictions are the cause of the problem. And a Wisconsin town is in the process of rolling back it’s ordinance following the appeal of a 60 year old person forced to register because of an offense that took place more than thirty years ago. Here in Florida, we’ve had a small taste of success more than 5 years ago, when the city of Ft. Lauderdale was forced (after a lawsuit) to eliminate school bus stops from the restricted zones, expanding the available housing for convicted offenders from 1.4% of the city to 15.3%. But given that Broward County (where Ft. Lauderdale is the most populous city) has this state’s highest percentage of homeless registrants (at 34% according to the OPPAGA report cited above), that change didn’t do nearly enough.
Sadly, a year after the victory in Ft. Lauderdale, came a loss in Miami-Dade on a residency restriction challenge. There hasn’t been another significant challenge since. Now, however, with this proverbial civil commitment gun to our heads, the pressure to do something is even greater. Over the next few weeks, our legal committee will be organizing a brain trust of attorneys and social scientists to formulate a gameplan to push back against the cause of this problem; residency restrictions. Advocating for humane and effective reforms before punitive measures that further entrench homelessness and incarceration among this population is no easy task. Sometimes it takes more.
Sincerely,
The Florida Action Committee
Discover more from Florida Action Committee (FAC)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Homelessness among former offenders in Florida is not incidental—it’s the direct result of laws that make reintegration nearly impossible. Restrictions on where individuals can live, work, shop, or even be with family have created a system that punishes beyond the sentence. Laws barring residency near places frequented by children may sound protective, but academic research consistently shows they do not improve public safety.
Public disclosure of offender information, lawn signs, and exclusion from parks, beaches, and shelters serve more to shame families than protect communities. Sex offenders are barred from emergency housing, care homes, and receive no housing subsidies. Florida’s leadership increasingly promotes wilderness camps and civil commitment as solutions—proposals that edge dangerously close to exile for citizens who have already served their time.
The term “sex offender” itself is misleading. It encompasses a wide range of behaviors—from public urination, selfies, streaking, nudity, prostitution and consensual teenage relationships to serious violent crimes. Yet lawmakers treat all under this label as equally dangerous. In reality, a comprehensive review of academic studies shows sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates—second only to murderers. Most new offenses are committed by individuals not on any registry.
Despite completing treatment and showing low risk of reoffense, many are denied access to their own children, not because of the nature of their crime, but because of the label. They are forbidden from parks, beaches, and even casual greetings to children in public. These laws tear families apart and perpetuate fear, not safety.
Former offenders are not monsters—they are fathers, brothers, veterans, and citizens seeking redemption. They need community, not exile. The solution is not more laws or segregation, but common-sense policies that support reintegration, respect human dignity, and prioritize evidence over fear.
This is an informative article. However, it is leaving out an important point that I have been trying to advise everyone of since this order was published, and that is this order targets all registrants, not only the ones who are homeless. There was a fact sheet put out by the Whitehouse that must be read which explains this order. As long as people don’t read the fact sheet they will remain in the dark. FAC should have brought this up in it’s article.
Could you post a link to the fact sheet? Thanks.
I read it. It’s nothing new. The wording was placed to show authority and propaganda; it says nothing else.
Our President needs to repeal the SORNA Act before it’s too late. Grab the popcorn folks . I’m on my second bag watching how this Epstein saga of lies and deception unfolds.
Decades of political and elite decadence falling on its sword.
Another thought. Seeing how homeless shelters in Florida, at least the one in Volusia County, do not take registrants , are the homeless registrants going to be helped or are they looking at incarceration because there is no place for them to go. I certainly think that is what the Executive Order is going to do if strongly enforced.
homelessness is self-inflicted, if you’re lazy, like to use drugs, stay out and peddle, This is why we have homeless
That’s a very ill-informed comment. A study was done in connection with Ford and Anderson v. City of Ft. Lauderdale that performed a GIS mapping of the city to determine the available housing that was compliant with the city’s SORR. It determined that less than 1.5% of the entire city was compliant with the ordinance. That’s Broward County’s largest city. As the article cited, 34% of the registrants in the county are homeless. If you restrict thousands of people to whatever happens to be available, affordable, and has a landlord willing to rent to someone on the registry into 1.5% of a city, the result is homelessness. That has nothing to do with laziness, drug use, or choice. That’s simple math.
Bwj
Our Potus is offering help, shelter with mental assistance to them So it’s not exactly that there is nothing on that table for them ..If they choose not to accept, consequences will be jail
Nancy, I would hardly consider civil commitment “shelter with mental assistance”. It’s going back to prison indefinitely.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration gutted the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — the small agency that had coordinated homeless policy across the government and had been an advocate for housing first policies.Trump has defunded addiction programs that include “harm reduction.” This is certain to disrupt frontline health care programs that work to reduce overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs. Ann Oliva with the National Alliance to End Homelessness has said, “Institutionalizing people with mental illness, including those experiencing homelessness, is not a dignified, safe, or evidence-based way to serve people’s needs.”
This executive order is forcing people to choose between compassionate data driven approaches like housing, or treating it like a crime to have a mental illness or be homeless,” said Jesse Rabinowitz with the National Homelessness Law Center.
They are offering civil commitment which is no way help. They hold you indefinitely with no accountability as to how they justify this. Just because they claim to offering help does not make it so. Nancy, you should truly be more skeptical of government and politician’s.
Concerned
Nimbyism is a thought process that often derails any decent measures to address the problem. Communities pass residency restrictions against registrants that severely limits housing. People refuse to fund affordable housing. People don’t want to pay for mental health care access.
I can go on. What People want is out of sight and that cannot be this country’s way forward.
I feel that there is a risk that registrants will become a symbol of the anti homelessness movement that is happening in this country. The government seems intent on ignoring the root causes of homelessness, and focuses on out of sight out of mind instead. I await more residency restrictions.
yes, we are waiting for whats coming next, also. None of this makes sense to me.
connie, it won’t be pretty. They need to find place to live, hopefully not behind our houses