Miami Advances Plan To Ship Homeless To Island

Miami’s NBC affiliate reports:

The city of Miami passed a plan to move its homeless population to a camp that will be built in Virginia Key Beach North Point Park. The area is currently an open field in the park. The location of the camp is ironically located right across the water from the most exclusive place to live, Fisher Island.

This park was busy with activity on Monday when NBC 6 visited the site. Tourists and locals were out at the city park. When they learned about the plan for a homeless camp, some were shocked.

There is a petition going around to stop the city from building the homeless camp in the park. But the city says it’s moving forward with the pilot program.

Miami’s ABC affiliate reports:

Residents of Virginia Key and local groups came together to voice their outrage over city officials’ proposal to turn the northern part of the island into a homeless encampment.

Concerned parents and local groups held a protest on Saturday to make their voices heard against the proposal by City of Miami commissioners. Esther Alonso, the owner of Virginia Key Outdoor Center, said the island is no place for any development at all.

“You’re taking the chronically homeless, shelter resistant population, bringing them to an isolated area, removing them from everything they know,” she said, “providing only mobile services and pretty much isolating them on an island two miles from the nearest roadway.”

The Daily Beast reports:



Commissioner Joe Carollo, a Republican, first proposed the idea last October and was met with immediate backlash from homeless advocates. Around the same time, Carollo was also instrumental in the passage of a new ordinance to clear tent encampments—which resulted in an ongoing lawsuit against the city of Miami.

While Carollo did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment, he did defend the plan to the Miami Herald and slammed critiques who have compared the plan to Alcatraz. “No one wants this in their neighborhood, it’s always somebody else’s they want to dump it in,” Carollo told the outlet.