Budget cuts are forcing The Mayfair Residence at 1960 Park Avenue in Miami Beach to close its doors to some homeless residents trying to get back on their feet. Photo by Eleanor McCulloch

The Ladder
Budget Cuts Force Homeless Residents of Miami Beach Out of Their Temporary Homes

By Lee Molloy

In a recreation room complete with a pool table and a big screen TV, Charles, Juan and Cornelius look like any other three guys in their early forties sitting around and having a chat at the end of a long day.

Charles is a fairly good-looking guy with longish black hair, perfect white teeth and wears smart but casual clothes. He says that he has just returned from his job working at a media company in Doral.

Juan, a big man with short neatly cut hair, sports a cool red T-shirt under his casually trendy backpack. Juan has had some bad lucky recently — he says he lost his job after suffering an epileptic seizure while working with machinery, and his doctor could not declare him fit to return to work. He is “uncertain about what tomorrow is going to hold,” he said.

On the other hand, their friend Cornelius, who hails from Northern Ireland, is in good spirits because he had just returned home from his brand new job working security for a high-end hotel, although his crisp white uniform makes him look somewhat like a Homeland Security officer.

“When they ask me, ‘Are you Homeland Security?’” Cornelius said, “I say, ‘No, I’m homeless security.’”

The three men live at the Mayfair Residence on Miami Beach, which is a transitional housing home operated by the Douglas Gardens Community Mental Health Center. Douglas Gardens run two programs for 42 residents at the Mayfair. Half are in the Shelter Plus program where the residents give a percentage of their income, either benefits or pay, to live in the residence. The other half are in the Primary Care program.

Primary Care provides a six-month stay at the Mayfair and residents are given specialized treatment for issues like mental health problems and substance abuse, with the goal of getting a foot back on the ladder to self-sufficiency. The program includes treatment, job and skills training and rehabilitation under the guidance of case managers. Residents in the Primary Care program are housed rent-free during their stay and receive two free meals per day.

“It is a great program, it’s a wonderful program,” Juan said, who has been homeless, on and off, for more than 25 years.

According to Charles he used to have a good job in public relations and an apartment on West Avenue in South Beach. Eight years ago, however, due to a severe bout of depression, he was unable to work so he set himself up in a tent in the woods near railroad tracks in Hialeah. He says he grew his own vegetables and lived a self-sufficient life.

Charles always kept up his appearance because he was “ashamed of the stigma,” of homelessness, he said, adding that, “you would never have guessed I was homeless.”

However, Charles says that last summer he had a toothache and found his way to Camillus Health Concern in Miami where he started to get the medical services and health care he needed from the clinic. It was at Camillus that he learned about the Mayfair and was accepted onto the program in May.

Charles admits that before he had his mental illness he would “look down at the homeless,” he said. “I would think ‘get off your ass and do something,’ but now I have more empathy. … I’m very thankful and grateful that I’m not that anymore”

Juan has also been receiving medical assistance and says that since the clinic got his medications balanced, he has had fewer seizures. He too is starting to feel that he has a foot back on the ladder. “Once you’ve been out there,” he said, “you really don’t want to go back.”

However, on August 19, Program Director, Regina Wilson informed Charles, Juan, Cornelius and the other residents in the primary care program that the funding for their program was ending on September 30 and they would no longer be able to live at the Mayfair.

“We were just shell shocked,” Charles said.

Juan says that he is very concerned and hopes that the program will find the funding to stay open. “People fear they are going to be homeless again,” Juan said. “People are really, really afraid.”

Wilson confirmed that funding for the program had been cut, but is not at all happy with the situation.

“We really believe this is a needed program for people who are obviously mentally ill, and obviously homeless,” Wilson told The Lead. “Most of those people have no income and no viable way to get an income without some significant assistance.”

The Money

Douglas Gardens receives their funding to run the Primary Care program at the Mayfair from the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, the county agency tasked with allocating funds and contracts homelessness support services. The department has an annual budget of roughly $40 million.

The Homeless Trust is partly funded by 85 percent of the 1 percent county tax on businesses with liquor licenses that gross more than $400,000 in food and beverage sales. Hotels, however, are exempt from the tax, along with businesses in Surfside, Bal Harbour and Miami Beach.

According to David Raymond, Executive Director of the Homeless Trust, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides the bulk of the funding. This year the Homeless Trust received $26 million in federal cash.

The county has used the money to increase its budget for homelessness prevention from $90,000 to $675,000 in 2008.

“It is cheaper to keep people from being homeless than to deal with people once they are homeless,” said Raymond. 

Also funded by HUD, The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program provided another $7.4 million in additional funds, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which resulted from the federal economic stimulus package.

However, like many government entities this year, the Homeless Trust was in a budget deficit and, according to Raymond, had to use $1 million dollars of their reserve funds to maintain the level of service.

The Homeless Trust does not actually provide services itself, but rather administers the money to fund private service providers like Douglas Gardens. According to Raymond, they put the contracts to provide primary care housing out to bid — where $1.3 million had previously funded 91 beds, the agency was now funding 106 beds with $704,000.

The Mayfair Residence was simply “too expensive to continue to fund,” Raymond told The Lead.

Wilson, however, put it a little more glibly. “They wanted more beds for the buck,” she said.

Troubled in Paradise

In January, the Miami Dade County Homeless Trust conducted a census of the homeless, which showed that every night there are roughly 4,300 homeless people living in Miami-Dade County, more than half the 8,000 people who were counted in the first census of 1996. The figures are one of the reasons why the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust is regarded as a success model in the nation.

In 2009, however, approximately a thousand people are still sleeping on the streets every night in the county, and the remainder is in emergency shelters or a transitional housing program. Around half of those in shelters are families, and a third of those are children.

Locally, more than 200 sleep on the streets of Miami Beach.

Juan, who said that he had been homeless during the most brutal of winters in New York City, said that he had learned to build cocoons out of paper and plastic just to keep from freezing, conceding it was much better to be homeless in Florida.

But the sunshine state does create other challenges for those living on the streets.

Charles explains that those without shelter must be careful of severe sunburns, heatstroke and becoming dehydrated. “I tried to keep myself hydrated all the time,” he said.

Florida’s homeless also have to contend with the number of acts of violence that are committed against those on the street. In 2008, for the fourth year in a row, Florida ranked No. 1 in the country for attacks on those without a place to sleep, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. In ten cities across the state, which included Miami, there were a total of 27 non-lethal acts of violence on homeless people, and three that resulted in deaths.

“One time I got stabbed. Some kids stabbed me,” Juan said. “I don’t want to be a victim; I don’t want to be out there.”

The three men at the Mayfair Residence also believe that the hatred of the homeless could be institutional in nature.

“Unofficially the city doesn’t welcome the homeless,” Charles said. “It’s bad for tourism and bad for business.”

According to Raymond, of more than 1,400 emergency beds for homeless people in the system, not one of them is in Miami Beach.

The Mayfair residents also related stories about being hassled by the police.

Cornelius recalled a time from when he was still drinking. The police, he claims, stopped him when he was drinking a Heineken on South Beach. Because he was dressed nicely, and drinking an import beer they presumed he was a tourist and just told him to go back to his hotel, he said.

“But, if I’d been drinking a Natural Ice…” His voice trailed off; the implication clear that he believed his experience would not have been so nice.

Charles says that although he believes the police do sometimes unnecessarily harass the homeless, he is “all for going after those who are actual troublemakers.”

The homeless on the Beach are also often given a hard time when confused with panhandlers. According to David Raymond and Miami Beach Assistant City Manager Hilda Fernandez, many of the panhandlers seen on Miami Beach are not homeless at all.

“There are panhandlers on Washington Avenue that we know for a fact are not homeless,” Fernandez said at the Sept. 1 meeting of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, a gathering of local political and community activists held every week at David’s Café on Meridian Avenue.

However, even if the public perception of homelessness on Miami Beach were to change overnight, it would still probably be too late to help the Mayfair residents who, according to Charles, are already starting to be moved out. “Our case managers will be responsible for getting us into either shelters or other transitional programs,” he said.

Raymond confirmed that a place to sleep inside will be found for each Mayfair resident. However, as Charles explained, the residents who were starting to become “a close knit group who talk, counsel one another and help each other out” would now be separated. 

“If even some light is drawn to this,” Charles said, “then something good may come out of it.”

If you or anyone you know may be homeless or in danger of becoming so, call the homeless helpline: 1-877-994-4357 or 305-375-CARE.

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