Homeless drifters in South Florida have taken to living in abandoned boats off the coast as the latest solution to their lack of shelter.
Police in Florida are calling the development a “squatting phenomenon,” with dozens of boats commandeered by homeless people in just a year after officials became aware of the problem.
While South Florida has been dealing with rampant homelessness for years, the new tactic appears to be fueled by the rising cost of living in the Sunshine State, which is causing more and more residents to give up on maintaining their boats.
Martin County officials have responded by cracking down on the derelict vessels, describing those who take over the boats as “bums” — people who are often drug addicted, mentally ill and living in squalor.
It comes months after police in Daytona Beach – about 160 miles north of Martin County – were forced to dismantle a bizarre “booby-trapped meth island” that was also overrun by addicted squatters.
Dozens of abandoned boats have been seized from homeless drifters off the coast of South Florida, which officials are calling a “squatter phenomenon.”
Martin County Supervisor John Budensiek said the crisis threatens to destroy the area’s fishing and vacation communities because the drifters are “ruining the quality of life for people who work hard and pay taxes.”
Martin County Chief John Budensiek said the issue is an unorthodox one for police to deal with now, but it’s also not a big surprise.
“We have had a homeless, wandering population here in Martin County for quite some time. Not a big one, but we’ve had people who were transient. And we’ve had the issue of abandoned ships. These were two separate issues,” he said Fox news.
“But when our Navy representative started citing, tagging and removing these ships, they discovered last year that many of these ships were inhabited by vagrants.
“This is a revelation from 2023,” he added.
Neglected boats are defined as boats that have committed at least two violations, such as being dumped in the water without an engine or leaking fuel.
Those caught dumping abandoned boats face significant fines or prison sentences, but locating and tagging abandoned vessels is time-consuming for local police due to the sheer number of boats in the fishing and holiday hotspot.
‘It’s difficult to make a distinction. There are a lot of functional boats that people live on, that you and I may not stay on, but they are habitable,” he said, noting the difficulties in finding boats with drifters.
Budensiek said the issue of abandoned boats polluting the coastal region is nothing new, but the newest residents are stepping up their efforts. Removing and destroying the abandoned boats is also a huge drain on police resources, reportedly costing between $7,000 and $40,000 per vessel.
More and more boats are being abandoned due to the skyrocketing cost of living, providing a new solution for drifters to find shelter. Officials said they only recently became aware of the issue
The sheriff’s office said it has found at least 50 abandoned boats in recent months, putting a huge drain on resources as removing and destroying the vessels can cost up to $40,000.
“One of the byproducts of having a lot of ships in our region is that some of these ships tend to decay rapidly and become unusable,” he said.
“And as they become operational, some of these owners will abandon them or sell them to someone who doesn’t re-register the ship.
“Those people, in turn, stay on these boats or operate these ships 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 become a real danger to our environment.”
In late 2023, he told Fox News that at least fifty rickety boats had been tagged off their coastline.
In particular, the deputy said those taking the boats are hardly productive members of their fishing and vacationing communities, and are not actively looking for work or housing to get them off the streets.
He described them as “vagabonds” because they continually pollute natural waterways, are usually addicted to drugs, suffer from mental illness and generally make no effort to avoid living in misery.
Officials said the biggest concern with the boats is the waste and pollution they cause to waterways, with Martin County’s economy based on tourism and fishing.
“The wandering population as a whole appears to be transient,” he continued.
“Unfortunately in South Florida, vagrants come from the northern communities where it is cold here this time of year.
“We’re getting an influx of them and we’re doing our best, but they have the right… to do certain things. So we want them to succeed, but we don’t want them to ruin the quality of life for people who work hard and pay taxes and try, especially in this case, to keep our waterways safe and clean.”
Since only recently becoming aware of the crisis, Martin County officials have cracked down and are working with the U.S. Coast Guard to test a large number of boats on their coastline.
He added: ‘We go around and test these boats that are anchored just outside our canals… What really concerns us environmentally is that most of them don’t have functional bathrooms.
“So what we see happening here in our province is that we have drifters squatting on the boats and using the facilities. And the facilities in the boat just flow into our estuaries, straight into our ocean and our rivers here.”