It’s now illegal to sleep in public in Florida. What happens to Miami’s homeless?

Ileana Napoleoni has lost nearly everything. She’s been living on the streets of downtown Miami since early this year. Most of her possessions, including her daughter’s ashes, were picked up by the city in a street cleanup operation over the summer. What remains of her belongings is now spread across three backpacks.

Napoleoni, 63, fears one of the few things she has left — her freedom — is at stake.

As of Tuesday, counties and cities across Florida are required to enforce a statewide prohibition on public camping and sleeping. The new law was implemented as cities and states across the U.S. have struggled to address a rise in homelessness. Florida’s solution was simple: outlaw it.

Unsure of what’s to come, Napoleoni hopes for the best. Like many people who regularly sleep on the street, she’ll sleep where she can and try to stay out of sight, likely finding a new resting spot every few nights.

One thing is for certain — after several unsettling stints at some of the county’s shelters, Napoleoni said she’ll do anything to avoid making a return.

“I’d rather go to jail,” she said as she sat on a curb under the shade of a towering Interstate 95 overpass .

READ MORE: A Florida law affecting homelessness kicks in Oct. 1. Here’s what will change

Starting Jan. 1, residents will be able to sue local governments that fail to enforce the state ban. Cities and counties could find themselves liable for steep damages. Miami-Dade is scrambling to get people off the streets.

“Not in 30 years have we experienced this intensity of addressing the [homelessness] issue,” Ron Book, chairman of the Homeless Trust, Miami-Dade’s homeless agency, remarked during the Trust’s board meeting Thursday. “We have no rooms at the inns.”

Bringing new housing options online for people like Napoleoni has been a top priority for the Trust, which aims to add 1,000 units of housing for extremely low income people within the next year.

Book’s principal goal is to avoid the construction of encampments, which the new law says can stand in designated areas for up to one year. The county has rejected encampments as undignified, potentially unsafe solutions to the homelessness crisis. “I don’t want us to look like Los Angeles,” said Book, referencing that city’s struggle to deal with sprawling tent encampments.

The county is making progress. It voted in September to purchase a hotel in Cutler Bay and convert it to housing for low-income seniors. Some 175 tiny homes could be available by early next year. Both of those measures could clear up beds in the county’s shelters.

As a crisis measure, Miami-Dade is also looking to construct a short-term, low-barrier navigation center. Imagine a big box, Book said — a large, indoor space with beds, bathrooms and onsite health services. Recognizing a skepticism to shelters within Miami-Dade’s homeless community, Book hopes a navigation center can be a short-term, indoor way station on people’s journeys to sustainable, long-term housing. With a navigation center, “our ability to direct people straight to housing will be better” than it would be with an outdoor encampment, he said.

Currently, just over 1,000 people in Miami-Dade have no roof to sleep under. For many of those people, that may still be the case come Jan. 1, when the county is legally responsible for keeping them off the streets.

That threat of lawsuits could bring people experiencing homelessness into greater contact with law enforcement. Because the law applies to counties and cities — not individuals — it makes no mention of arrests or jail time . Enforcement is entirely up to local governments, who run the risk of being sued if their execution of the law is ineffective and people are caught sleeping in public.

Different police departments will receive different marching orders. But Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, a union with 6,500 members in police departments throughout South Florida, guesses that most officers will, at least at first, try to just move along people who are sleeping on the street.

The Miami Police Department clarified that its approach will prioritize providing homeless people with information regarding available support and shelter services. If an individual refuses to go to a shelter, the department added, “officers will assess the situation, prioritizing public health and safety.”

Stahl’s translation : If homeless people won’t move and won’t go to a shelter, they might be arrested on misdemeanor charges, like trespassing. Those normally carry a 24-hour jail stint, after which offenders are released.

In any case, the Homeless Trust says shelter space is at capacity. At least for now, there aren’t enough beds to go around, even for the people who want them.

People who have fallen on hard times and are experiencing homelessness aren’t criminals, argued Napoleoni. “They’re punishing the people that have nothing, and they’re taking away the little dignity that we have,” she said.

Beyond right or wrong, Stahl, the union president, noted that jailing homeless people will be costly for local governments. Spread across its target daily inmate population of 4,600 people, Miami-Dade’s Department of Corrections’ operating budget comes out to roughly $287 per inmate per day — or $104,942 annually. To house people in the shelter system costs a fraction of that — Book estimates roughly $31 per person per day.

Arrests aren’t the solution, Stahl stressed. They could nevertheless become reality for people like Napoleoni who might refuse to go to a shelter, highlighting a point of tension in the county’s efforts to address homelessness without arrests.

Lazaro Palomino, a 42-year-old from North Miami who has been sleeping on the streets for a little over a year, is among those who say they will not go to a shelter. When a car accident totaled his only mode of transportation to work, Palomino lost his job, then his apartment.

Despite his misgivings about jailing homeless people, Palomino sees merit in the law. In his view, permitting camping has allowed “shantytowns” to crop up. With them, said Palomino, come sanitation and safety concerns, including trash accumulation and public defecation.

Looking forward, Palomino hopes to avoid the police entirely. His strategy is to keep moving, to not camp in any one place for too long and to sleep in out-of-sight locations.

“I don’t think they should send people to jail, but I won’t go to a shelter,” he said, adding, “I’ve been to three already, and they haven’t helped me.”

“I just need a job,” he grumbled as he pulled from a hand-rolled cigarette.

Like Palomino, Napoleoni said she became homeless after falling on hard times — in her case, her husband passing away. Over an evening chorus of honking horns and screeching brakes that sounded from the overpass above, Napoleoni recounted life with her late partner, Charles, outside of Clewiston, a sleepy town in the Everglades. Her days of bass fishing or birdwatching and nights of stargazing with friends in the backyard are now just memories.

Charles died last year. Napoleoni, who had spent the previous eight years as his full-time caretaker, moved to Miami soon after his passing in search of work.

Then she broke her hip, and her job search came to a halt. Within six months, the 63-year-old, who was also supporting her adult son, burned through the $20,000 she had left.

She soon found herself sleeping on the street.

“It just gets darker and darker as days go by,” she said. “I wake up hoping this is a nightmare.”

This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.