A new Florida law that bans people from sleeping or camping on public property fully took effect on New Year’s Day, placing Orange County commissioners in a position where they are all but forced to consider adopting their own local version of the law in order to comply.
They’re
on it next week.
“We have to respond,” Orange County mayor Jerry Demings stated in November, during a board update on the state of homelessness in the county, when the idea was first brought up.
Unlike inside Orlando city limits and at least a half-dozen other neighboring municipalities, sleeping on a sidewalk, street or other public property is not banned countywide, so places in unincorporated Orange County are not covered.
Several Orange County commissioners were visibly uncomfortable with the idea, being in close communication with local nonprofits that provide housing, food and job assistance for people without shelter.
“I think we have to be really careful not to craft something that will end up being really costly on the back end and inhumane,” said county commissioner Nicole Wilson, an environmental lawyer reelected to her seat earlier that month. “We are better than that.”