Miami Beach police increased enforcement of a city ordinance banning public camping in mid-2024, heeding the requests of elected officials. The number of camping arrests more than tripled in 2025. Here, a Miami Beach patrol car is parked as officers overlook Ocean Drive in the neighborhood of South Beach on Miami Beach, Florida, on Friday, March 20, 2026.
PHOTO BY AL DIAZ
adiaz@miamiherald.com
Miami Beach has ramped up enforcement of its outdoor sleeping ban, using tactics including drone surveillance and “hostile architecture” to drive down its homeless population. An overnight census in January found just 93 homeless people in the city — the lowest count since 1997 — but critics say the city is simply pushing people into jails and onto streets elsewhere in Miami-Dade County.
FULL STORY: Jail time, drones and bumpy walls: Inside Miami Beach’s homeless arrest machine
Here are key takeaways:
• Police made roughly 800 camping arrests in 2025, more than triple the year before. Since commissioners changed the ordinance in 2023 to remove a warning requirement, officers have made more than 1,100 camping arrests.
• Last year, 45% of all arrests in Miami Beach involved people who are homeless, up from about a quarter in 2021.
• When police offer to take someone to a shelter rather than arrest them, people usually decline. From January 2024 through February 2026, police sent 189 people to shelters but made six times as many camping arrests during the same period.
• Homeless defendants facing bonds can rarely pay. Some have spent more than two months in jail on camping charges. The county estimates it costs taxpayers $294 a day to jail someone.
• While Miami Beach’s homeless count dropped, the countywide street count hit 1,184 — the highest since 2008. Ron Book, who leads the county’s Homeless Trust, said the city is “exporting their homeless problem.”
• Police launched more than 40 drone flights over dune areas last year, discovering 75 encampments and arresting eight people. The city also installed concrete bumps on walls near Lincoln Road and North Beach volleyball courts to prevent comfortable sitting and sleeping.
This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own originally reported, written and published content. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.