Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner announced at a news conference on Monday a new plan to battle homelessness in the community— a month-long program known as Operation Summer Relief.
The summer initiative will seek to keep individuals from living on public property during the month of August, a period when average temperatures reach the highest.
The program will offer a series of options to encourage people going through homelessness to accept services and shelters, according to city officials. To do so, the city will partner with homeless outreach services, shelters, health care providers and Miami Beach police.
Meiner stressed compassion and empathy as a way to encourage people to accept their offers, as well as mental health care. However, he also emphasized that despite these two tactics being in place, the city would also take a tough-on-crime approach, driven by concern for public safety.
"Do not mistake our compassion for weakness," the mayor said.
The initiative will allow armed authorities to move people out of parks and off beaches and sidewalks, and they will focus particularly on those seeking overnight refuge in these spaces.
"Public spaces are for the public, period," Meiner said. "There should not be a person on public property."
The initiative comes as another controversial legislation around homelessness comes into effect at city, state and national levels, with the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cities to arrest the homeless for sleeping in public.
Miami Beach passed a ban on public sleeping in October, allowing for arrests to be made without warning if the individual declines shelter placement. This carries a penalty of up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. Arrests have increased as enforcement of the ban has intensified in recent months, according to the Miami Herald.
A similar law was signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which prohibits cities and counties across the state from allowing people to sleep in public. That legislation will go into effect in October.
Now, as August nears and the initiative is set to go into effect, activists and people living on the streets are showing their opposition.
"I think it's horrifying," Kat Deusterhaus told CBS News. "I was homeless at the age of 16 and if it weren't for the kindness of someone putting me up in housing I could have been arrested here in Miami Beach."
Similarly, Rodrick, a 54-year-old man going through homelessness in Miami Beach who walks with a limp said he is too disabled to work, cannot afford a mortgage or rent, and says he feels at home in various places on the barrier island. When asked about the initiative by CBS News, he simply replied, "I'm not leaving."
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