Five men, all registered sex offenders convicted of abusing children, live along Miami's Julia Tuttle Causeway because there is a housing shortage for Miami's least welcome residents. The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country. Florida's solution is, house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway. Nearly every day a state probation officer makes a predawn visit to the causeway. Those visits are part of the terms of the offenders' probation which mandates that they occupy a residence from 10 pm to 6 am. 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. With nowhere to put these men, the Department of Corrections moved them under the causeway. Convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him. He has been living under the bridge for about three weeks. State officials say unless the law changes their hands are tied, and for now the sex offenders will stay where they are.
(Miami, Florida)