There’s been a major reduction in Miami Beach’s homeless population over the last few years — and the city has been using increasingly aggressive tactics to help make it happen.
Police ratcheted up enforcement of a ban on outdoor sleeping, making around 800 arrests in 2025.
City workers installed concrete bumps on walls to make them more difficult to sit or sleep on.
Officers even began flying drones to find homeless people hidden in the dunes along the beach, launching more than 40 drone flights last year that led to eight people being arrested.
Now, city officials are celebrating their success — despite criticism from advocates who say Miami Beach is simply pushing the homeless population into jails, shelters and the street in other parts of the county.
At his State of the City address last month, Mayor Steven Meiner revealed that an overnight census in January had identified just 93 homeless people in Miami Beach — the city’s lowest figure since the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust began conducting counts in 1997.
The same census showed increases in the homeless population in the city of Miami and countywide.
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