Jesse Scheckner
Lobbyist Ron Book will stay on for another three years as Chair of the Homeless Trust, Miami-Dade’s lead agency in overseeing assistance and services for the unhoused.
Over that period, a plan to replace him needs to be drawn up, several county leaders agreed.
Book said an unofficial plan already exists.
Miami-Dade Commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to reappoint Book to lead the Homeless Trust, again waiving residency requirements and term limits that would have long ago barred him from holding the post.
Book lives in Broward County, while Miami-Dade ordinances require members of any county board to be Miami-Dade residents. Book has served as Chair since 2004 and been a Homeless Trust member since 1993. County ordinances provide that no member of the Homeless Trust can serve more than two consecutive three-year terms.
The Miami-Dade Commission can, and has for the past quarter century, waived those restrictions for Book, whose efforts to address homelessness reduced the county’s unsheltered population from 8,000 in the early ’90s to around 1,000 people by 2015. That figure has remained largely static since, but Book has said it could drop much more if more housing provisions are brought online.
The trust, which has an almost $90 million annual budget, has started to move in that direction in earnest. In September, it secured Miami-Dade Commission approval to spend $15 million in county funds to buy and retrofit a 107-room La Quinta Inn in Cutler Bay for rent-controlled housing for homeless seniors.
Book, 71, has more plans for the organization he helped found decades ago. But by 2027 it may be time for a change or, at the very least, for there to be a concrete strategy for someone to succeed him, Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said.
“I appreciate your passion and commitment. I know you live and breathe this issue, and the work you’ve done for and on behalf of this community is tremendous,” she said. “But I do think, in line with the changes that are being made countywide with term limits being applied to the (Miami-Dade Commission) that those term limits should be applied to you as well and that … is a discussion that should start to take place.”
Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez and Commissioner Eileen Higgins agreed. Higgins praised Book’s work for the trust, which has “been relying on Ron and Ron’s energy and Ron’s commitment for too many decades.”
“The Homeless Trust owes this board and the residents of this county a long-term transition plan,” she said, “so that it exists long after we term out and long after Ron Book also leaves.”
Rodriguez suggested that Book should remain a member of the trust so its new leader “can lean on you for advice and for your expertise and institutional knowledge.”
But it’s not just those attributes of Book’s that make the Homeless Trust so successful, according to Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, the immediate past Miami-Dade Commission Chair and a member of the Homeless Trust’s Executive Committee.
Gilbert said Book is “irritating” and “bothersome” when pursuing favorable treatment for causes he supports, but it’s those very traits, compared with Book’s tenacity and passion for the issue, that have made him so effective.
“I believe in term limits. I do, for elected officials. But we don’t necessarily have anyone who would put as much personal time (and) energy — who actually has the knowledge — to do this right now,” he said. “And so … it’s easy for me to say, yeah, we need to waive (the requirements) and let him do this, because not doing it actually hurts people in our community.”
Gilbert also noted, and Book concurred, that there is something of a succession plan in place at the Homeless Trust. The idea, which Book said he’ll get to Commissioners in writing, is to have the agency’s Vice Chair, Tina Vidal-Duart, take over when he steps down.
“She’s actively engaged. She’s toured our facilities,” he said. “We have a plan in place so that when I’m not here that there is somebody who picks it up so there’s no blip, no speed bump along the way.”
Some in the community opposed Book’s reappointment. The Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equality (MCARE) blasted the decision, which the group said came amid the objection of 1,200 county residents who called for Book to be removed “due to his punitive approach to homelessness” and “unilateral imposition of policies on the Trust that align more with the interest of his private sector corporate clients than those of the homeless.”
The group pointed to a law (HB 1365) legislators passed this year that Book supported that bans local governments from allowing people to sleep or camp on public property and requiring cities and counties to round up and relocate unhoused people to communal areas with minimum sanitary standards and substance abuse restrictions.
“Cruelty and punitive approaches are not solutions to the trauma of homelessness and poverty,” MCARE Executive Director David Peery said. “We need new, transparent, trauma-informed leadership that prioritizes humane solutions over criminalization.”
Former Miami-Dade Community Council Area 11 Chair Martha Bueno — who ran against Rodriguez in 2022 — said Book’s private work conflicts with his public service. She pointed to Book’s lobbying client, Boca Raton-based private prison operator The GEO Group, which operates multiple private prisons in Florida and stands to profit from the incarceration of arrested homeless people.
“The Chair of the Homeless Trust criminalized homelessness so that he could, you know, somehow help the people?” she said in a video posted to X on Tuesday. “He makes money when they go to jail, and that is not concerning?”
The vote Wednesday came hours after billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, announced a $5 million donation to the Homeless Trust through Bezos’ Day 1 Families Fund.
It’s the largest single philanthropic contribution that agency has ever received and is equal to a donation Bezos gave Miami-Dade’s homelessness-focused Chapman Partnership nonprofit in 2022.
A press note from the Homeless Trust said the money will go toward providing immediate, short-term “crisis housing,” offering short- to medium-term rental assistance with supportive services and creating new housing through the acquisition and renovation of property.
