Mental health facility will help with anti-homeless law, says judge

When Miami-Dade Administrative Judge Steve Leifman began to conjure up the idea of the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery years ago, he had no idea that just as it prepared to open its doors, a statewide ban on homeless residents sleeping on the streets would go into effect.

"It's amazing how visionary we were when we built this, having no idea that this law would come into place," the judge told WLRN in a recent interview inside the building. "I think this will be part of the solution."

Once it is fully opened and operational, the facility will have 208 beds for people with mental health conditions, who will be able to live there for up to a year as they undergo treatment. The priority users will be those flagged by the court system and the county as those with severe mental health conditions who are frequently arrested for low level crimes.

"Almost every single one of them has been identified as being homeless," said Leifman. "The numbers are pretty stunning, not surprising. But yes, they're almost all homeless."

Medical and dental services will be offered on-site at the facility. Occupational training will be offered to patients to teach them how to work in the restaurant business, and a courtroom is built into the facility for any required hearings. The facility — the first of its kind in the nation — is based on the idea of creating an integrated hub where all sorts of services someone with a severe mental health condition might need, under one roof.

"An individual with this level of illness needs to recover. But the services either don't exist, they are too fragmented, inaccessible and it's in pieces. There's no comprehensive care," said Leifman. "The idea is to use this building to break that cycle and actually shrink over time, significantly, the homeless population."

The facility will be used for inpatient as well as outpatient care.

The latest countywide homeless population count in August registered 1,004 unsheltered residents sleeping on the streets. Over 2,700 people sleep in homeless shelters every night, and are not counted in the census.

As the state law banning sleeping in public goes into effect, the number of homeless residents being arrested and booked into jail for illegal camping has skyrocketed. The vast majority of homeless residents arrested and booked into jail are charged with other low-level crimes and are quickly released.

Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, told WLRN during the latest count that he fears local governments will simply turn to arresting more homeless residents under the new law.

The ban on sleeping in public technically went into effect on October 1, but starting on January 1, local governments can be sued for damages for allowing people to sleep in public.

Book and other advocates worry the law will prompt local governments to simply arrest their way into compliance with the law.

"We cannot turn the jail into a homeless shelter and think that that's ending homelessness. It's not gonna do it, it's not gonna solve any problem. They're gonna go to the jail. They're gonna stay a day. They're gonna stay three days. They're gonna get time served and what have we gained out of that? They're gonna be back somewhere and we're gonna re-arrest them," warned Book.

Book previously spoke in support of the state law, saying it would "minimize" encampments over time.

Miami-Dade jails currently have about 4,700 inmates in custody, up from an average of about 3,900 per day before the COVID 19 pandemic. The vast majority of inmates have been diagnosed with mental illness, said Judge Leifman, citing internal reports the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida receives from Miami-Dade.

Once the facility is up and running, he hopes that the one-stop-shop approach will be able to "significantly reduce" the local jail population by offering mental health treatment to frequent inmates.

The Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery site in Miami's Allapattah neighborhood was once used by the state to restore competency for criminal defendants who were not mentally competent, but it sat unused and largely abandoned for years.

The county government fast tracked a plan to rehabilitate and reopen the facility as a mental health treatment center a decade ago, after the Justice Department declared that the main jail's psychiatric ward had "unacceptable" conditions for the mentally ill, forcing the county into federal oversight.

The rehabilitation of the aging facility — leased to Miami-Dade County for $1 a year by the state of Florida — broke ground in 2019.

The City of Miami has already granted the facility a Certificate of Occupancy, clearing a major hurdle.

The county is currently undergoing the last phase of upgrades before it expects to receive accreditation from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. Door handles and fire extinguisher panels must be replaced to minimize suicide risk.

The county has allocated $16 million in funding to run the facility for the first year, and the county commission recently granted permission for Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to negotiate final contracts with operators.

The seventh floor needs to be completed, and a kitchen needs to be built, so the building will not open at full capacity at first.

But nonetheless, Judge Leifman sees the end coming near, in sync with when the state law banning sleeping in public fully goes into effect this coming January.

"There's no reason we shouldn't be able to be open early next year," he said.