{"id":43687,"date":"2024-04-02T14:58:47","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T18:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=43687"},"modified":"2024-04-02T14:58:51","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T18:58:51","slug":"polk-county-leaders-say-new-law-banning-people-from-sleeping-in-public-fails-to-address-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/04\/02\/polk-county-leaders-say-new-law-banning-people-from-sleeping-in-public-fails-to-address-homelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County leaders say new law banning people from sleeping in public fails to address homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"677\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Homeless-3.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-43688\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Florida has seen a\u00a0<strong>17% increase in homelessness<\/strong>\u00a0in the past year alone and local leaders say a new bill prohibiting municipalities from allowing homeless individuals to camp or sleep on public property will likely do very little to address the issue.<br><br>As he signed\u00a0HB 1365 on March 20, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the law serves the best interests of \u201claw-abiding citizens.\u201d<br><br>\u201cToo often people in other states, other cities, they\u2019re not doing well. It\u2019s like they let the inmates run the asylum,\u201d DeSantis said, from a podium that read, \u201cDon&#8217;t Allow Florida to become San Francisco.\u201d<br><br>But the measure doesn\u2019t include any specific penalties for those sleeping on the street. It does, however, allow residents and business owners to sue local governments for not enforcing the law.<br><br>And that is a problematic approach, according to some Polk County leaders.<br><br>The bill allocates $30 million in preparation to enforce the new law, but for the most part local officials in Polk County aren&#8217;t sure how HB 1365 is going to be enforced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former Republican Senator Jeff Brandes said on the WEDU program \u201cFlorida This Week,\u201d \u201cI think when you get to the end of that, you realize people are still going to be living on the streets. Either the cities are not going to be able to do that or the jails are going to be full. And you\u2019re going to hear from the sheriffs that you\u2019re going to need to expand the jails.\u201d<br>On April 22 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case regarding the legal treatment of unhoused people as well. In&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/2023\/23-175\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">City of Grants Pass v. Johnson&nbsp;<\/a>the court will decide whether it is considered cruel and unusual punishment to imprison homeless people for sleeping outside, even when shelters are unavailable. If the court\u2019s decision is that you cannot punish people for sleeping outside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida has seen a\u00a017% increase in homelessness\u00a0in the past year alone and local leaders say a new bill prohibiting municipalities from allowing homeless individuals to camp or sleep on public&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[8023],"class_list":["post-43687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-polk-county-leaders-say-new-law-banning-people-from-sleeping-in-public-fails-to-address-homelessness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}