FL- Creators of Tuttle problem can fix it -- now

8-20-2009 Florida:

Plenty of talk out there lately. Speeches. Promises. Threats. Sound bites on the evening news. Lots of stuff about solving the Julia Tuttle Causeway conundrum.

The Tuttle conundrum, you might have noticed, has not gone away.

Talk hasn't done a damn thing about putting sex offenders into actual housing. They're still forced to live like vagabonds in the middle of Biscayne Bay. ``I'm still here,'' Rene Mora observed from beneath the causeway Wednesday afternoon.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement classifies Rene Matamoros Mora as ``transient,'' an odd designation for someone who, at the state's insistence, has resided at the same wretched address for more than two years. ``I can't go anywhere else. It's those residency restrictions.''

Of course, you'd expect that from Mora, 55, who has been barred from the Miami housing market since he finished his 13-year prison stretch. But Attorney General Bill McCollum has joined the chorus, calling local residency ordinances that force sex offenders into homelessness ``very wrong.'' And Gov. Charlie Crist has finally offered up a tepid acknowledgement that something has gone amiss.

JUST BAD POLICY

Ron Book, the very lobbyist who originally pushed city and county commissioners to adopt the overreaching ordinances that chased sex offenders under the causeway (some have dubbed the homeless colony ``Bookville,'') now talks about ratcheting back the 2,500-foot restricted radiuses around schools, playgrounds, parks, etc.

Even Miami-Dade County commissioners have been uttering the unhappy sounds of politicians who realize their ill-conceived ordinance has created a stinking monument to bad public policy smack in the middle of Biscayne Bay.

All that, yet Rene Mora still sleeps there every night in his battered van, away from his wife and her apartment. And despite the talk, threats, promises and Ron Book's assertion that he can find legal housing for the sex offenders, there was no sign Wednesday that the Tuttle situation has improved.

Compared with six months ago, more homeless men reside there in ever worsening conditions. Trash now overwhelms the place. They still live without toilets or running water, and now the heat of a Miami summer cooks up a fetor of rotting garbage, human waste, dead fish and unwashed bodies. Tents and parked cars now line the berm on either side of the bridge -- putting the inanity of residency restrictions in plain sight for passing motorists.

WHY NO ACTION?

For two years now, this unsanitary affront to a civilized society has festered on Biscayne Bay. The Miami-Dade Commission could make it vanish instantly with a countywide ordinance pulling back the restrictions. But all we get is talk.

And lawsuits. The city of Miami has sued the state. The ACLU has sued the county. Sen. Dave Aronberg, who tried, futilely, the last two years to shepherd through legislation cutting residency restrictions to 1,500 feet while adding very tough sex-offender loitering laws, thinks certain ``cowardly'' political leaders ducked the issue and hoped, instead, that some judge will take the political heat.

So now we can wait for a judge to undo the Tuttle conundrum. Or wait until 2010, when Sen. Aronberg thinks his legislation -- and good sense -- will finally prevail.

Until then, expect a lot of talk. ..Source.. by FRED GRIMM