Heard on NPR yesterday. It's been happening for a while but numbers have grown so large the residents under the bridge are becoming more visible to motorists. Here's a bit from an older report from CNN on same subject.
"Several Florida cities enacted laws that prohibit convicted sexual offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools, parks and other places where children might gather.
snip
"Because of those restrictions, because there are many places that children congregate, because of 2,500 feet, that's almost half a mile, that's a pretty long way when you are talking about an urban area like Miami, so it isn't surprising that we say we are trying but we don't have a place for these people to live in," Grant said.
For several of the offenders, the causeway is their second experience at homelessness. Some of them lived for months in a lot near downtown Miami until officials learned that the lot bordered a center for sexually abused children.
Trudy Novicki, executive director of Kristi House, said the offenders' presence put the center's children at risk. "It was very troublesome to learn that across the street there are people who are sex offenders that could be a danger to our children," she said.
Keeping the rats off
With nowhere to put these men, the Department of Corrections moved them under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With the roar of cars passing overhead, convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him."
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/05/bridge.sex.offenders/index.html
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