Amid the swarms of travelers at Miami International Airport, teams of advocates scan the crowds, hoping to identify people seeking refuge from South Florida’s blistering sun.
They have, for years, made regular visits to help homeless people living at the airport. And they’re out there again this week — after a 17-year-old girl was brutally ambushed at MIA.
For Ron Book, the chair of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, people experiencing homelessness gravitate to airports because they’re large and have air conditioning as well as accessible bathrooms. It’s also an easy place to blend in with travelers.
Book said he met with county officials on Sunday to discuss the situation after the girl was attacked “without provocation” the night before on the fourth floor of MIA’s Concourse J in the pre-security area, according to police. She was able to escape to the third floor, where officers found her.
Alexander Paul Love, 29, was arrested in connection to the stabbing. Police say he attacked the teen with a butcher knife and sliced her 18 times, including her neck, face and legs. Investigators have yet to confirm if Love and the girl knew each other, though both Love and the teen were living at the airport.
The Trust, Book said, works with police and airport staff to provide services, like behavioral healthcare, housing and job training, to homeless individuals living in the airport. And while the girl’s ambush shed light on the situation, the agency has been aiding the unhoused at the airport for years.
“We’re going to continue to do all the things we’ve been doing,” Book said. “When we know there’s people out there, our outreach team will be there.”
Ralph Cutie, director and chief executive officer of the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, which oversees MIA, said anywhere from nine to 25 homeless people stay at the airport at night. Police do nightly sweeps and try to offer homeless individuals at the airport shelter assistance. But if they return, they could be issued a written citation for trespassing.
“We don’t want our airport to be a shelter, and we are going to continue to work diligently to find alternatives,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Miami Herald Monday.
Part of the issue, however, is that shelters in Miami-Dade are at capacity, Book said. That’s why the Trust has been attempting to purchase buildings, including a hotel in Cutler Bay, to transform it into more than 100 apartment units.
“When we place people in housing, they remained housed,” he said. “Our system just works. And it works [because] of the totality of the wrap-around services…”
But for Book, the ambush — and the media coverage of the violence — propagates stereotypes and further stigmatizes homeless individuals.
“It sets my heart on fire,” he said. “It makes me double down on my commitment of what we do.”
Fort Lauderdale airport faces similar dilemma
A homelessness response team has been stationed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport since 2022, Broward County Mayor Nan Rich said. The team is tasked with getting the airport’s homeless population into local shelters.
“It’s a place where people can go, it’s public,” Rich said. “They can walk around, and it’s not like sitting on a park bench or something. We have to move people along and get them in some kind of [shelter].”
Rich described members of the team as experienced and said they’re not just looking to just move people out.
“It’s trying to get help for people and to get them into services so that we can solve the problem,” she said.
The Broward County Aviation Department said it has had weekly meetings with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the county’s human services department to address homelessness at the airport since March 2022. The different agencies have collaborated to place unhoused individuals at the airport in shelter beds at the Salvation Army.
The initiative even began providing mental health services through nonprofit Community Health Centers in 2023, added Celina Saucedo, assistant director of aviation and administration.
“The airport is not a shelter. That has been our mantra throughout these conversations,” she said. “We know that it’s not unique to FLL or MIA, the fact that unhoused individuals are choosing to come to airports. This is happening all over the United States of America, and it’s something that airports are very much aware of right now.”
Saucedo noted there’s a simple answer as to why.
“In our experience, and what we have heard from airports all over the United States is, it’s a place where they can charge their phones, they can get a hot meal, they can find a place to sleep when it’s hot outside, as it is right now,” she said.
___
© 2024 Miami Herald
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
