With Help from Advocates and Allies, a Rare Housing Success Story in Florida Is Under Threat from Fear-Driven Politics
President Donald Trump’s second term has brought a continued lack of compassion toward people experiencing homelessness—an approach echoed by many Republican leaders in Congress and amplified by conservative think tanks like the Cicero Institute, which promote punitive, anti-homeless legislation nationwide.
In Miami Beach—a city with a long track record of mistreating its homeless population—the latest display of cruelty is unfolding as officials move to shut down the Bikini Hostel, a refuge that, according to David Peery of the Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity, could be a significant step forward in the fight to end homelessness if allowed to continue operating.
The Bikini Hostel stepped in to provide shelter after 53 people were displaced from Camillus House, a Miami-based facility that could no longer accommodate them. Unlike traditional shelters, the hostel offers a more dignified, comfortable living environment—something David Peery, who has firsthand experience with shelter life, says makes a meaningful difference. Residents aren’t just housed—they’re respected and successfully connected to transitional and permanent housing.
Despite its success, city commissioners have falsely claimed the hostel poses a safety risk. In reality, there have been no reports of criminal activity linked to residents, and the hostel has proven itself to be a practical and compassionate short-term solution.
It could become a model for long-term progress in Miami Beach and beyond if allowed to continue. Instead, city officials are moving to shut it down, putting its residents at risk of being displaced once again, with nowhere to go.
The Role of the Cicero Institute: A Rising Tide of Criminalization
Ten months ago, work left over from the first Trump administration laid the groundwork for the current hostility. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which upheld laws criminalizing homelessness, poured fuel on a fire that had already been ignited by conservative think tanks like the Cicero Institute.
Founded by billionaire venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, the Cicero Institute has become one of the most influential forces driving the criminalization of homelessness nationwide. Through copy-paste legislation, Cicero provides ready-made bills that states and cities can adopt to increase penalties for sleeping outdoors and empower police to forcibly remove people from public spaces. These laws prioritize punishment over housing, and many have passed quickly with little public debate.
Now, Cicero is pushing even further. It’s calling for statewide bans on unauthorized street camping and urging governments to replace Housing First with “minimally viable” shelters and sanctioned encampments, a phrase that, in Cicero’s own words, signals a shift toward lower-quality, short-term solutions that keep people alive without giving them a path out of homelessness.
Peery doesn’t buy the premise.
“We need to disabuse people of the myth that homeless people are somehow disproportionately responsible for crime because that’s not what’s borne out in the statistics,” he said. “People who are struggling to survive on the streets are very vulnerable, and they’re mostly there to protect themselves.”
“What you’ll see among homeless people is that they are predominantly the victims of crime. They’re the victims of people who style themselves as vigilantes or people who are mentally unstable and are looking for a vulnerable group of folks to strike out against.”
He warns that when we echo narratives that paint unhoused people as dangerous, we not only justify inhumane policies—we fuel real-world violence.
“When we recklessly use these words that say that homeless people are somehow criminals and the progenitors of crime, what we do is trigger people and we push them into violence against homeless people,” Peery said. “We see that cities that have the highest rates of criminalizing homelessness, meaning arrests and so forth, are generally cities that have the most violence against homeless people.”
The Cicero Institute claims its policies are compassionate. But critics argue they strip resources from proven housing solutions and funnel public dollars into policing, surveillance, and incarceration—all while advancing a narrative that blames unhoused people for their circumstances and legitimizes policies that isolate, punish, and dehumanize them.
“Now, if you’re talking about sanctioned encampment sites, those are dangerously susceptible to becoming internment camps that violate basic human rights,” Peery said. “The solution for homelessness is not to isolate (homeless people) away from the general public. The solution for homelessness is housing, plain and simple … And that’s a much cheaper alternative (to) placing them in camps.”
Rhetoric with a Legacy
The Cicero Institute has also taken aim at Housing First, falsely claiming that “states should direct funds away from expensive and ineffective Housing First programs.” The organization has even made the absurd claim that it takes eight to twenty housing units to serve just one homeless person.
This kind of misinformation is familiar to Peery and all of us watching the Trump-era rhetoric resurge.
“What Trump is doing is not creating the problem. He’s simply capitalizing on the problem and escalating the problem,” Peery said. “And it seems that the intent is to drive homeless people into internment camps, into tent cities outside of the cities themselves.”
“And this is a very dangerous precedent that can work its way up the socioeconomic ladder. First, you have internment camps for homeless people and then internment camps for the working poor who can’t afford the outrageous rents within cities, and then it slowly climbs and climbs and climbs. That’s what history shows.”
“When authoritarian regimes first come to power, they attack the most vulnerable, marginalized groups, and then they work their way up the ladder. Pretty soon, anybody who can’t afford rent is gonna find themselves in a tent city or an internment camp.”
Letting People Speak for Themselves
When Miami Beach first began its attempt to shut down the Bikini Hostel, MCARE quickly organized a press conference. Peery made a point to ensure the focus was on the people directly impacted. They let the residents speak for themselves about the great conditions at the hostel and how it was helping them look for permanent housing. Giving homeless people a platform to express themselves is key to combatting spreading hostility, Peery said, adding that MCARE also aimed to show the wastefulness of Miami Beach’s current approach.
“(Miami Beach has) spent nearly 50 percent of their police resources on chasing a population that represents maybe about 0.5 percent of the city,” Peery said. “It is costing the county a lot of money to house people whose only crime is that they’re poor. It’s also endangering the community in that the police are spending so much time chasing the poor rather than looking at real crime. So, it’s incumbent upon us to publicize that.”
History Echoes—and Offers a Moral Call to Action
One of the most moving elements of this story is the owner of Bikini Hostel, Phillip Muskat, and his personal family history fueling his commitment to keeping the space open.
Muskat’s relatives were passengers aboard the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner that fled Nazi Germany in 1939 carrying 937 Jewish refugees. The ship was denied entry by Cuba and then turned away by the United States, including from ports near Miami Beach. Forced to return to Europe, many of the passengers ended up in countries that were later invaded by Nazi Germany. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 254 of them were murdered in the Holocaust.
The story of the St. Louis has become a powerful and tragic symbol of what happens when nations turn their backs on people in need of refuge. As Muskat sees it, the moral lesson still applies today—not only in debates over homelessness but also in how the U.S. responds to asylum seekers and displaced people around the world.
“(Phillip) believes that it is a moral imperative to never turn away anyone who is seeking shelter, who is seeking a safe harbor or a place to sleep because his family was very close to being murdered in the Holocaust,” Peery said.
A Fork in the Road: Internment or Investment?
The City of Miami Beach is notorious for wanting to push homeless people out—often to preserve the tourist-friendly image they present to the world. But this time, with strong advocacy from leaders like Peery and allies like Muskat, they may not get their way.
Instead, a rare upgrade from shelter conditions, a model that restores dignity and provides real pathways to housing, could continue to operate, transfer more people to permanent housing, and serve as a template for cities nationwide.
If we let it.
