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The Democrat Civil War Rages On
The Palm Coast City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance aligning the city with a state law that prohibits local governments from allowing the homeless to sleep or encamp on any public grounds, including parks, public buildings and rights of way. Flagler County enacted a similar ordinance last November.
The bill, signed by the governor in March 2024, allows local governments to designate certain grounds as encampments. Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston said she will be having discussions about that with County Administrator Heidi Petito, though if the local governments were to reach such an agreement, their elected bodies would have to approve it by resolution and likely spell out the agreement in a so-called “interlocal agreement.”
For now, no such designated grounds exist anywhere in the county or its cities. The provision of a designated encampment isn’t as simple as setting land aside. The Department of Children and Families would have to certify the location, and meet certain criteria.
For example, the local governments would have to prove that there aren’t enough beds in a local homeless shelter. That would be an easy one to meet in Flagler County, where there is no homeless shelter. The designated land may not be contiguous with any residentially zoned land, whether that land is already built up or not.
Local governments would also be required to have a management plan for the designated area. Safety, sanitation, rest rooms and running water must be provided, all of which would make such an encampment potentially so expensive as to disincline governments from enabling them. On the other hand, as a legislative analysis of the new law states, the bill “exempts a fiscally constrained county that designates public property to be used for public camping or sleeping from the requirement to establish and maintain the minimum standards and procedures specified in the bill, except for the prohibition on illegal substance and alcohol use, if the governing board of such a county makes a finding that compliance with the requirements would result in a financial hardship.”
But the bill also empowers residents or businesses to sue the local government and stop such a designated encampment from being established. So the mere threat of such a lawsuit may frighten local governments away from attempting a makeshift shelter.
“The problem with criminalizing sleeping in public with no in-county legitimate resource to divert people to would be that the jail is going to become the de facto (albeit short term) housing program,” says Carrie Baird, executive director of Flagler Cares, the social service organization where the unhoused are occasionally referred by the Sheriff’s Office and others.
The council also intends to discuss the issue with Flagler County commissioners at their joint meeting on April 29 at City Hall.
Palm Coast’s ordinance goes into effect likely in May, when the second reading of the ordinance is tentatively scheduled. Violators may be issued a two-year trespass warning, which may be appealed within 10 days. The appeal is heard by the local government’s special magistrate. The magistrate’s decision is final.
Palm Coast Code Enforcement Manager Barbara Grossman said she did not have an estimate of the number of homeless people in the city.
According to the Volusia Flagler County Coalition for the Homeless’ 2024 “Point in Time Count” of the homeless in Volusia and Flagler counties, the last available report, there were 32 unsheltered homeless people in Palm Coast and Bunnell that January–14 in palm Coast, 18 in Bunnell, up from 29 the year before.
Unlike the 2023 report, the 2024 report did not break out the number of sheltered homeless that year. There were 32 sheltered homeless people in the county in 2023. The sheltered homeless have temporary housing or safe havens. The unsheltered live in places not meant to live in, like parks, empty lots, cars, sidewalks or abandoned buildings.
“I’d be using the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office in order to trespass them,” Grossman said. “Do I see a couple out there? Yeah, I do. Normally, what happens if there’s a private property that has a campsite, then what the sheriff’s department does is get a letter from the private property owner, and that private property owner allows the sheriff’s office to trespass them off the property.”
Where are the unhoused sleeping meanwhile, Council member Ty Miller asked. Officials readily ask the question. But answers are as elusive as the individuals in question.
Miller wants to make sure that there’s some level of service to the unhoused, so they’re not merely displaced from one place to another. “I would just advocate that we keep that in mind going forward,” he said. “If we’re just displacing somebody, we’re not helping them, then it’s going to continue to be a problem, and it’s just a bit down the street.”
City Council member Dave Sullivan recalled how a few years ago Flagler and Volusia counties attempted a joint agreement that would have required Flagler to pay 25 percent of the operating cost of Volusia’s homeless shelter. Those talks broke down. “ Obviously, the state passed the [law], and I’m not aware of anything in there talking about anything special for veterans,” Sullivan said. “But there are some agreements concerning veterans and their ability to stay on public property.”
In fact, the state law and the city ordinance make no distinction between veterans and non-veterans who are unhoused. The 2024 count of homeless in Flagler and Volusia found 75 homeless veterans in the two counties combined, including two families and 26 “chronically homeless veterans.”
So far enforcement of the state law or of the Flagler County ordinance has been light: the Sheriff’s Office’s daily log of arrests shows very rare arrests, if any, of unhoused people who have violated a trespass warning, suggesting that there’s little appetite to waste resources on chasing after people already living as ghosts. But the state law enables private individuals and businesses to invoke
“I have been homeless,” the one person who addressed the council on the issue said. “All you’re going to do is hurt those individuals more. You’re going to keep them in the system. You’re going to trespass them. They’re going to violate the trespass. They’re going to go to court, and they’re going to just pile fees on top of fees, because what one thing y’all are lacking is, those people are at the bottom, and they do not care what you people do. They’re going to do what they want to do because they are trying to survive. Your rules and regulations have no matter to them.” He said trespassing individuals from one place will simply push them to another.
City Council member Theresa Pontieri was interested in a measure that would keep people from setting up in medians, as the unhoused often do when they are soliciting money. Pontieri cited traffic-safety issues. City Attorney Marcus Duffey recommended leaving that discussion to a separate possible ordinance.
The council approved the ordinance on first read in a unanimous vote.
