Bill to shield homeless individuals’ data advances

Image via AP.

Personal data collected during homeless counts would be exempt from Florida’s broad public record laws, according to a bill the House Children, Families & Seniors Subcommittee unanimously passed Tuesday.

Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland of Sarasota filed the bill (HB 699) so that workers who collect homeless information for a federal database don’t have to worry about creating a public record that might expose personal information.

“It’s the right time to protect this population’s privacy,” McFarland said. “So many people have experienced housing insecurity coming out of COVID. The last thing we would want to do is take any of that information and have it negatively affect them as they apply for jobs or get their lives back on track.”

McFarland said people who take the counts that are reported to the federal government are leaving people out of the homeless census because being counted could expose their information, she said.

“They don’t use the (federal information system) because of fear of triggering a public record,” McFarland said.

The database is important because it’s used to shape policy about where homeless people are and what services they need, McFarland said.

“It’s quite robust and is very useful in managing homeless points of entry across the state and the country,” McFarland said of the federal information system.

Sometimes, however, people are lying in the street without providing this information, she said.

The legislation would not make information about numbers of homeless people exempt from the law, however. It only affects information that can be used to identify a specific individual.

Sen. Joe Gruters has proposed similar legislation (SB 934). It too received unanimous approval last week in the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee.

Exemptions to the state’s Sunshine Law have become a matter of more concern, however. There are currently 1,159 exemptions to the state’s open government laws. The state Supreme Court has agreed to take up Marsy’s Law, a 2018 constitutional amendment that extended some privacy protections to crime victims.