Homeless people in South Florida this winter are increasingly moving aboard abandoned boats sitting along the coast, in a new squatter “phenomenon” that only emerged for local sheriff’s offices in the last year, Fox News Digital has learned.
“This is the epiphany of 2023. We’ve had a homeless and homeless population in Martin County for a long time. Not a big one, but we have people moving around temporarily. And we have had the problem of abandoned ships. These are two separate problems,” Chief Deputy John Budensiek told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this week.
“But when our marine deputies started picking up, tagging and moving these ships, they learned last year that many of these ships were inhabited by homeless people,” he continued.
Late last year, local media began reporting on the increase in homeless people moving into abandoned boats and how the Martin County Sheriff’s Office was working to remove boats and squatters, or bring some of those abandoned boats up to code. A derelict boat is defined as a vessel found on a waterway with at least two violations, which can range from having no motor to leaking fuel. Dumping an abandoned boat is a state crime that can lead to jail time or fines.
Martin County is located in South Florida on the east coast of the state, about 40 miles north of Palm Beach. Budensiek explained to Fox News Digital that the area is a hot spot for sailors, fishermen and tourists, with many sailboats traveling from the area to the Bahamas and back.
Homeless people in South Florida are increasingly moving in abandoned boats along the coast. Martin County Sheriff’s Office
“One of the byproducts of having many ships in our area, is that some of these ships tend to be badly damaged and become inoperable. And because they can operate, some of these owners will abandon them or they will sell them to someone who doesn’t re-register the vessel. Those people, on the other hand, stay on this boat or run this ship until they are completely useless. And they sink or they leak fuel, if they have the capacity to carry fuel, or they leak human waste and it becomes a real danger to us environmentally,” he said.
Although abandoned boats have long been an issue in the area, the deputy chief said that in the last year, the number of abandoned boats has only increased. He said as 2023 approaches, the sheriff’s office counted at least 50 abandoned boats last year, all of which were cited by authorities. Twenty-nine of the 50 boats were removed and destroyed, while the rest were brought into compliance.
Budensiek explained that the individuals squatting on boats are mostly not homeless people who are working to find a job and get off the streets. On the contrary, they are described by the deputy chief as homeless people, who are often drug addicts, who suffer from mental illness and do not try to get out of their depression.
Martin County is located about 40 miles north of Palm Beach. Getty Images
“The homeless population as a whole seems to be transient. Unfortunately with South Florida, the homeless come from northern communities where the weather is cold year round here. We have input from them and we do our best, but they have the right … to do certain things. So we want them to succeed, but we don’t want them to come and ruin the quality of life of people who work hard and pay taxes and try to keep, especially in this case, our waterways safe and clean,” he said.
Distinguishing compliant shabby boats from squatter-inhabited derelict boats, however, is a difficult task, Budenseik explains.
Chief Deputy John Budensiek explained the situation to Fox News Digital earlier this week. Fox News
“It’s hard to tell the difference. There are many ships that are functional for people to live in, that you and I may not live in, but they are habitable,” he said.
The sheriff’s office is on a mission to dispose of abandoned boats, or bring them up to code, and is working with the US Coast Guard to test boats docked outside area waterways to see if they are up to code.
“We’re going to go around and test these boats that are anchored outside our channel, and testing means going and making sure the lighting is working, so you can see them at night if you’re trying to move through our waterways,” he said.
One thing is for sure if an abandoned boat, Budensiek said, is testing whether a ship is leaking sewage into the water.
“Actually what worries us in terms of the environment is that most of them don’t have functioning bathrooms. So what we found happening here in our county, we had these homeless people squatting on boats, and using facilities. And the facilities in boats just flow directly to our estuary, directly to our ocean and our river here,” he said.
“Environmentally, it’s a disgusting problem that we’re dealing with, and we’re doing everything we can to identify who these people are, what ship they’re on, name them, move them and get them off our shores, off our shores . ,” he said.
Authorities dropped dye into the suspected abandoned boat’s toilet, to see if it leaked into the water, he explained.
“They also test them with dyes … They run these dyes through the toilet system in the boat. And if the dye comes out in the water, then we know the boat is not healthy and is actually leaking sewage into our estuary,” he said.
Reports of people squatting at home across the US have increased since the outbreak, including in Florida, though Budensiek said the issue has not affected his community as much as it has in others. Instead, the office deals with boat squatters as well as people moving to Martin County in RVs.
“We don’t, we only have a few such cases,” he said when asked if the issue of regular squatters on the land had increased in recent months. “But what we have here are individuals coming into our county in RVs. Again, this is the same thing we’re dealing with with these ships, where they live in the RV until the RV doesn’t work anymore. Then they leave it on the side. street,” he said, adding that squatters taking over abandoned boats is a “new phenomenon.”
Removing and destroying an abandoned boat comes at a high price: anywhere between $7,000 and $40,000. Funds paying for the transfer are not taken from the resident tax base, but from boat registration fees, Budenseik said. A portion of the boat registration fee is waived expressly for the purpose of moving abandoned boats “to make our waterways an attractive place for residents and people who come here to enjoy our waterways,” he said.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
