On a frigid evening in January, two homeless men sat on a bench downtown, swilling malt liquor. It was the night of 2025’s first Homeless Census, a biannual count of Miami-Dade’s street-sleeping population conducted by the county’s homeless services agency, the Homeless Trust.
Ron Book, the Trust’s chairman — a 5-foot-8 septuagenarian, who that night sported ripped skinny jeans and designer blue sneakers — marched up to them. “How are you?” he asked, his go-to icebreaker in such situations. “Do you want to come inside?”
A van would pick them up in the same spot the following afternoon, he promised, to take them to a shelter. A kind of goodwill gambit, Book gave one of the men, Roberto, his personal phone number and instructed him to call if he had any issues…