Get with him or get out of his way: Ron Book's on a mission from God to end homelessness

Miami Herald

20-03-2025

On a frigid evening in January, two homeless men sat on a bench downtown, swilling malt liquor. It was the night of 2025's first Homeless Census, a biannual count of Miami-Dade's street-sleeping population conducted by the county's homeless services agency, the Homeless Trust.
Ron Book, the Trust's chairman — a 5-foot-8 septuagenarian, who that night sported ripped skinny jeans and designer blue sneakers — marched up to them. 'How are you?' he asked, his go-to icebreaker in such situations. 'Do you want to come inside?'
A van would pick them up in the same spot the following afternoon, he promised, to take them to a shelter. A kind of goodwill gambit, Book gave one of the men, Roberto, his personal phone number and instructed him to call if he had any issues.
Roberto began to cry, then sob. He stood up and wobbled over to Book.
'I love you, brother,' Roberto professed. 'This guy is the Homeless Trust.'
A somewhat sloppy embrace ensued between Roberto, who had for weeks been sleeping on the street, and Book, for whom all of this is actually a side project, and whose day job as a mega-lobbyist has made him both fabulously wealthy and one of the most well-connected and politically influential private citizens in the state of Florida.
That January Homeless Census was particularly weighted with expectation. It was the first such count since a state law, HB 1365, took effect in October, outlawing public sleeping and, as of the new year, empowering Floridians to sue their local governments for non-enforcement. It came as mounting costs have threatened many Miamians' ability to make rent or pay their mortgages. And as the United States struggles to rein in unprecedented levels of homelessness, the future of federal funding for local service providers like the Trust has been thrown into doubt.
But Book, 72, appears undeterred. Ending homelessness in Miami-Dade is his 'mission,' he says, given to him by 'the big guy upstairs,' and he wants to make good on it before he's no longer here.
For upward of two decades, Book has been a — if not the — principal driver of homelessness policy in Miami-Dade County. As chairman, Book decides on what the Trust spends its $100 million budget, with whom it works and how it positions itself publicly.
That will remain so, at least for another three years. The Miami-Dade County Commission voted unanimously in November to re-up his chairmanship, despite Book having healthily exceeded the post's term limits — two consecutive three-year stints. But the message from a number of commissioners was clear: It's curtains. Draw up a succession plan, and be ready to take a bow.
Book's own timeline might differ. He intends to personally see the homelessness issue through to the end — that is, until everyone is off the streets. 'I'm not leaving,' snapped Book, his voice climbing to an insistent yell at a reporter's suggestion that this might be his last dance. 'I'm not leaving until we're f------ done.'
Talk of age or term limits or sustainable institutional leadership notwithstanding, Book believes he's the one who will shepherd the county to the promised land of zero homelessness — and he thinks the end is in sight.
So for better or for worse — depending on who you ask — it's Book at the wheel, piloting Miami-Dade's homelessness community through what might be a treacherous and decisive few years to come.
•••
South Florida's local governments aren't exactly known as paragons of public administration, but Miami-Dade's success in reducing the unsheltered homeless population to fewer than 1,000 people is largely unparalleled across America's major metropolises.
The distinction is rooted in the early 1990s, when nearly 8,000 people slept on the county's streets. Miami-Dade made history back then as the first local government in the U.S. to establish a tax that would directly benefit the homeless.
Known as the Food and Beverage Tax, the 1% levy is tacked onto checks at restaurants throughout the county, depending on how much annual revenue they generate and whether they serve alcohol. The bulk of its proceeds go to the Homeless Trust, which last year pulled in $38 million from the tax. Of the Trust's $100 million budget, roughly 60% is earmarked for long-term subsidized housing, while a quarter funds emergency shelter operations.
One of the tax's principal backers was Alvah Chapman, a former Miami Herald publisher and homeless crusader. Chapman hated lobbyists, considering them 'terrible influence peddlers,' Book said. And Book himself had done little to counter that perception; in fact, he had done some to advance it.
Born to a dentist and a nurse, Book grew up in North Miami with illusions of public service and a precocious ambition. An oft-repeated story that foretold his lobbying career: A 13-year-old Book was upset that his neighborhood park had no lights at night, so he picketed the mayor's house until lights were installed. Intrigued by politics, he canvassed for local commissioners during their campaigns before shipping off to the University of Florida to study political science and run track. Short and hypercompetitive, Book had trouble keeping up and eventually quit running after realizing he 'wouldn't be the best.'
He ditched UF for Florida International University, got a B.A. in political science, then went to Tulane for law school, where he honed his inclination to get up earlier, stay up later and generally outwork everyone else.
Upon graduating, Book fell into a job with then-Florida Gov. Bob Graham, helping to sell the governor's political agenda to legislators. He established himself as a prolific fundraiser, then bounced over to the private sector, where he worked for a law firm that paid him 'an awful lot' of money.
In the personal realm, he married Patricia 'Pat' Duda, a flight-attendant-turned-chocolatier. Of their courtship, then on the scale of months, Patricia — in her late 20s at the time — recalled going on a three-day work trip and returning to an empty apartment. Book had moved all of her stuff into his place.
'I've always been kind of overwhelmed by Ronnie,' she said. 'He's kind of larger than life.'
While Book recalled no such incident, he emphasized 'that doesn't mean it didn't happen.'
The same 'get-it-done' philosophy that wooed Pat both propelled and complicated Book's budding lobbying career, which was bruised by run-ins with the law throughout the mid-'80s.
He was investigated but never charged in a bribery scandal involving a former vice mayor of Opa-locka and a Hialeah mobster. In an insurance fraud case, in which he allegedly inflated the purchase price of a Mercedes that he had reported stolen, Book ultimately pleaded no contest to an administrative misdemeanor — submitting a falsely notarized affidavit. His punishment: A $1,500 fine, a $1,000 donation to the Camillus House homeless shelter and 200 service hours teaching civics in Miami-Dade high schools.
A decade later, Book was accused of illegally funneling thousands of dollars to political candidates via third parties, including one of his secretaries. He pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor campaign finance violations in the 1995 case and was hit with a $2,000 fine on top of the $40,000 he agreed to donate to charity.
'I was caught up in building a career and building a reputation for getting things done,' Book said of the incident, 'that I never really thought about it being wrong.'
In spite of that colorful legal history, when Chapman needed to overcome opposition to the 1% levy, it was Book he enlisted to sell it to state and local lawmakers. And that's what Book did: Miami-Dade County commissioners passed the tax in 1992, and the state legislature approved it the following year.
'I won't be so arrogant as to say the Food and Beverage Tax doesn't pass without me,' reflected Book, 'but the Food and Beverage Tax probably doesn't pass that legislative session without my help.'
•••
What, exactly, is Book's help?
Book's help is connections. It's getting into a legislator's office and showing them the light. It's making agreements palatable to multiple parties.
Clients pay Book tens of thousands of dollars for that help because they can expect results, and results have become Book's brand.
Politically independent, Book proudly embodies a sort of capitalistic neutrality. He'll end a meeting with a lawmaker of either party with a hug or an affectionate arm squeeze or a pat on the back and with plenty of well wishes and see-ya-arounds.
'[Book] does his best to ingratiate himself with elected officials, with flattery, services, gifts,' remarked Katy Sorenson, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner who described Book as 'one of those Florida characters right out of a Carl Hiaasen novel.'
'I would always have to tell him, 'Don't send me a huge cookie extravaganza for the holidays, I'm just going to send it back or donate it,'' Sorenson recalled. 'He always sent it, and then I'd end up donating it.'
But Book's lobbying career is built on far more than just superficial charm. He studies topics unsparingly, leveraging the insight that comes from having been around Florida politics for nearly five decades. He's economical when talking, and he'll condense a policy's context, as well as arguments for and against it, into a meat-and-potatoes elevator pitch.
'He would make a compelling argument on any topic that he was engaged in, without notes, without anything to guide him through it, just because he knew the subject matter so well,' said Florida Senate Majority Leader Jim Boyd. 'He presents himself in a way that, you know, you trust him, you believe him.'
Part of that trust perhaps comes from Book's apparent ubiquity, both at the Capitol and, more broadly, within a certain celebrity milieu. Any interior wall over which Book has authority is covered in photographs of himself, sometimes with his family but nearly always with someone famous. Across his two offices and his home are pictures of Book with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Buffett, Alonzo Mourning, Jeb Bush, Jimmy Carter, Dwyane Wade, Ron DeSantis, Michael J. Fox, the Dalai Lama and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few. On the bureau behind his desk, Book smiles with Shaquille O'Neal. Above the copier, he poses with Magic Johnson.
Book has many professed 'dear friends,' some 'dear, dear friends,' and a few 'dear, dear, dear friends.' They include some of the aforementioned — Jimmy Buffett, Alonzo Mourning, Dwyane Wade — as well as the Heat's Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra and Brazilian artist Romero Britto, who painted for Book, among other things, a decorative toilet seat.
On whatever pictureless wallspace remains, one can observe the fruits of a major Book pastime: competitive bidding. Official versions of every torch from every Summer Olympics since 1936 hang in both his Hollywood and Tallahassee offices. An assemblage of women's suffrage ephemera — Book boasts that it's one of the largest such private collections in America — is on display in his Hollywood office. Collectibles from seemingly every presidential administration adorn his walls, as do dozens of signed footballs, basketballs, hats, jerseys and assorted rock-and-roll memorabilia.
For a piece Book really wants, he might find himself up until 1 or 2 in the morning. There are auctions in which 'no matter what somebody else is going to pay, I have to pay more.'
'It's all about the game,' he chuckled as he admired a framed copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune's infamously premature 'Dewey Defeats Truman' front-page headline.
'I love winning.'
•••
And, throughout his career, Book has done quite a bit of winning. He's been successful in regularly securing resources for the Homeless Trust, which must navigate state and federal politics as it competes for the grants that make up much of its annual budget. Those funds support the county's network of shelters and have doubled Miami-Dade's stock of low-income supportive housing since 2005, growing it to nearly 5,000 units that provide essential subsidized housing and social services to many in need.
But given the Trump administration's chainsaw approach to government spending, the chairman might be facing one of his toughest funding challenges yet.
Book isn't worried, though. At least, he doesn't seem it.
Leaning back in his plush leather office chair — the throne of his lobbying firm's Tallahassee headquarters — Book coolly opined on the rapidly metastasizing anxiety and speculation occurring 500 miles south in Miami-Dade and, more generally, across the country.
It was late January. President Donald Trump's Office of Management and Budget had just announced a pause in all federal grant funding. At stake were $3 trillion in federal grants that finance countless social services nationwide, including half of the Homeless Trust's annual budget.
As he digested the announcement, Book's face hardened into a sort of pensive rictus. His hands appeared frozen, mid-gesticulation. He paused, as he often does when trying to set or control what might be a delicate narrative, because when he speaks as chairman, he speaks as the Homeless Trust. Despite Trust Executive Director Vicki Mallette's decades of experience in news and government public relations, it is Book and Book alone who speaks publicly for the agency.
'It was the first Trump administration,' he resumed, 'that treated [the Homeless Trust] better than most any other administration, Republican or Democrat.' And, he went on, it was Trump's first Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, who was 'very good' and under whom the Trust did 'extremely well.'
Whether Book's equanimity was genuine or rather a performative attempt to manifest it, his response betrayed the mentality with which he runs the Trust: as a lobbyist who's made a career reading the tea leaves of power and politics.
•••
But not everyone's a fan. A homeless advocate who has himself experienced homelessness, David Peery directs the Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity, and, in Miami-Dade's somewhat fractious world of homelessness policy, he's been one of Book's principal foils. Peery regards the Trust, which he thinks Book runs with a 'unilateral style,' as a 'homeless industrial complex' that doesn't address the systemic factors that cause homelessness, like housing affordability and a porous social safety net.
The county's approach under Book, argues Peery, is superficial — rotating people in and out of shelters without pushing for dramatic changes — and punitive. As evidence he points to Book's vocal opposition to providing street services — food, tents and, famously, bathrooms — to those who, given the scarcity of housing and limited shelter space, have nowhere to live but on the streets.
Book has backed restrictions on the permits that nonprofits need to feed people in outdoor public spaces. Noelvis Gonzalez, the founder of one of those groups, One World One Heart, deems such policies inhumane, shortsighted and dangerous.
'If you stop these services, you have petty theft,' she posited, eyeing the 100-strong line of people standing under an I-95 overpass waiting for food on a recent Thursday night. If the county allowed it, said Gonzalez, she'd be there far more than once a week.
As he oversaw trash collection that Thursday evening, Gonzalo Morey, a 66-year-old homeless man who helps serve food every week, commended the Trust's efforts to place people in housing. But he agreed with Gonzalez.
'Nothing is more dangerous than hunger,' he remarked. 'When someone is hungry, they'll do what they have to do.'
A man named Juan, who recently found himself back on the streets after spending 11 months in a shelter, noted that people go in and out of the shelters because there isn't enough permanent housing.
'Without this,' he said, gesturing to the breadline in which he had just stood, 'people will die. They have no other options.'
Book owns his opposition. As, in his words, 'an alter ego of the Trust,' Book believes he is charged with ending homelessness, not 'sustaining' street living. Bathrooms be damned. He'd rather put Trust money toward other endeavors, like permanent housing, for which the Trust earmarked $62 million this year.
'I certainly don't want to make it easier to remain on the streets,' he affirmed. Providing those benefits can keep people from accessing housing services, argues Book, who frequently invokes the sprawling tent encampments of Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City that he says he will work 'at all costs' to avoid.
It's a dogma that's not without controversy. Armen Henderson, a doctor at the University of Miami who does medical outreach to the local homeless population, contends that nothing in his experience suggests that helping people survive on the street will keep them from accessing services.
'And, by the way, what services?' questioned Henderson. 'There isn't enough space to accommodate everyone who's living outside.'
Henderson went viral in 2020. The founder of Dade County Street Response, Henderson was cuffed by police in front of his home as he packed a van full of tents that he planned to distribute to people sleeping on the street.
Much like Peery, Henderson considers the Trust's approach to be punitive and Book's integrity as Trust leader to be compromised. In his view, it's precisely Book's lobbyist-chairman MO that's to blame.
'Are you a Lamborghini-driving lobbyist, or are you for the homeless people of Miami-Dade?' Henderson inquired of Book, who actually recently ditched his Lamborghini for a McLaren.
'Who does he really work for?'
•••
Book works for, among many others, the government of Miami-Dade County, and he does so in two capacities: as chairman of the Trust and, separately, as its lobbyist in Tallahassee.
His firm, Ronald L. Book, P.A., is, from a staffing perspective, boutique. It's just four lobbyists — two of whom share a small office — and a smattering of college-aged interns, all crammed into a fluorescent-lit grotto nestled among the large lobbying firms and 'consultancies' scattered across Tallahassee's Capitol Hill district.
But Book's firm does the work of outfits multiple times its size. The clients that Ronald L. Book, P.A. represents before Florida electeds paid the firm nearly $3 million in the final quarter of 2024, making it the fifth-highest earning lobbying company in the state.
And, much like their Trust counterparts, Book's lobbying staff hustles, often literally, to keep up with their boss. They split their time — flying to Tallahassee during the week before shuttling home to their friends and families in South Florida for the weekend — as Book has done for decades. When the legislature isn't in session and things are relatively chill, Book lobbyist Gaby Navarro estimates she 'only' works 11-hour days.
No matter the season, Book certainly works more than that.
His age, recent back-to-back bouts of cancer and ongoing radiotherapy complications notwithstanding, Book's drive is so tireless that it's become something of a reverential joke among many who interact with him.
'I don't know how much he sleeps,' quipped Boyd, the Florida Senate majority leader. 'But, in a funny sense, I kind of view him as, like, the Energizer Bunny.'
Maybe it's the sugar, which — be it in candy, soda or pastry form — is omnipresent in his office. Doughnuts are particularly favored. On a Tuesday morning in January, Book's first and final meal until dinner began when he turned on two doughnuts with a fork and knife, devouring them in the three minutes he had between morning phone calls. Rana Brown, another Ronald L. Book, P.A. lobbyist, recalled aloud the sacchariferous diet of Will Ferrell's character in the movie 'Elf,' marveling that 'Ron utilizes every moment.'
•••
Former state Sen. Lauren Book thinks it could be something else compelling her father's dogged work ethic. Maybe it's a 'fear of failing.' Maybe it's a need to be 'the best.' Or maybe 'it's easier not to think about some of the harder things' when you're always working.
Samantha, his second child, wonders if behind all that work he's really happy. It's all part of what Lauren, 40, described as 'the cost of Ron Book.'
With Book often away on work, and with their mother battling depression, the three Book siblings — Lauren, Samantha and Chase — found themselves under the care of Waldina Flores, a hired nanny. Flores sexually abused Lauren for years, until Lauren came forward about it in 2002. Though Flores was only convicted of abusing Lauren, Samantha and Chase both told the Herald that Flores had sexually assaulted them as well. A Honduran national, Flores served 20 years in state prison and has since been deported from the U.S.
'The level of pain that it causes you as a parent is immeasurable,' Book said, tearing up. 'You're supposed to protect your children.'
While some might've pulled back from their frenetic work lives after such a revelation, Book doubled down on his. In addition to lobbying and homelessness, he assumed child sex abuse prevention as a raison d'être. He became chairman of Lauren's Kids, a child abuse prevention nonprofit that his daughter founded in 2007 while in her early 20s.
In the years that followed, Book took to the warpath, lobbying hard throughout Miami-Dade and Florida to punish child sex offenders with restrictions on where they could live. The limitations were great enough that many fell into homelessness and formed an infamously squalid encampment — which they christened 'Bookville' — under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.
For Book the lobbyist, and for Book the understandably vindictive father, the restrictions were a win. But Book the Trust chairman found himself responsible for placing those same homeless offenders in housing. The Homeless Trust spent months negotiating fervent NIMBYism as it scoured Miami-Dade for lodging options, limited by the same sex offender housing restrictions for which Book had previously fought so ardently.
•••
All the while, Book kept up in Tallahassee, handshaking and fistbumping and back-patting his way around the Florida Capitol as he speedwalked from meeting to meeting. He became, as one of his lobbyists put it, 'The Process' — Tallahasseean shorthand for the sausage-making exercise of legislating, which includes the efforts of the many dozens of lobbyists who scurry around the Capitol 'informing' lawmakers.
As for their part of The Process, Book & Co. represent roughly 100 clients, including three dozen local governments or public bodies — the cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Jackson Memorial Hospital — as well as private entities like the University of Miami, AT&T and Hard Rock Stadium, where an eponymous pedestrian tunnel in Book's honor herds Dolphins fans to their seats.
But it's Book's other clients that critics Henderson and Peery see as conflicts of interest for the Trust chairman. Those include Geo Group, a major private prison company, and OpenGov, a government technology software company whose founder, tech billionaire Joe Lonsdale, has personally championed camping bans across the U.S., including Florida's. Or the Florida Apartment Association, which vehemently opposes rent control despite rising housing costs that exacerbate the risk of homelessness.
Book characterizes those alleged conflicts of interest, of which he maintains there are none, as red herrings perpetuated by detractors who just want to 'be negative' and 'tear someone down.' They could go to hell, he said of the critics, adding with not a little indignation, 'the only air-conditioned prisons in Florida are the private ones.'
Henderson and Peery point to the passage of HB 1365, the Florida camping ban, in support of their notions that Book is more loyal to his corporate clients than he is to Miami-Dade's homeless population.
Book has repeatedly decried HB 1365 since its passage last year. He's characterized it as misguided and as an ineffective attempt to 'arrest your way out of homelessness.' But he did at one point speak in favor of it — 20 days after the bill had been filed, in front of a Florida House subcommittee. Then, for nearly five minutes, Book hailed the bill, saying it set in place a process to minimize tent encampments à la LA and to get Florida 'from homeless to housed.'
What changed?
Upon reflection, Book offered that he was excited the homelessness issue was finally getting some attention, although the final result 'wasn't what I would have wanted in a bill.' He said he had no idea that Lonsdale — the camping ban campaigner who is also CEO of a company that Book represents — was advising the governor and legislative leadership on Florida's ban.
But ultimately, said Book, 'if you want to bring about change, you need to know how to access and drive the system.' While he maintains that the camping ban is harmful, he said it has given him an opportunity to fight for greater housing and shelter creation. 'And if you don't think that's good,' he retorted, 'then do me a favor — get out of my way.'
With the same with-us-or-against-us attitude, the chairman swiftly dispatched a rebellion late last year from within the ranks of Miami-Dade's Trust-funded homelessness organizations. Eddie Gloria, CEO of Camillus House, one of the county's oldest homeless service providers and formerly one of its largest shelters, pushed to double what his organization charges for the nightly cost of a bed at its emergency shelter. The move came as the state's camping ban took effect, and Book was incensed.
So began a game of chicken. Neither side blinked. Book let the Trust's 141-bed contract with Camillus expire. He took his business elsewhere, and that was that. As a result, dozens of homeless clients were moved out of Camillus House, dealing a million-dollar blow to the shelter, which nearly halved its occupancy level.
'He's a force of nature,' said Gloria, who celebrated Book for having built 'a great system, a great continuum of care that people across the country admire.' Gloria, like many of his counterparts at organizations that receive Trust money, caged any harsher criticism he might have of the chairman.
Of those interviewed by the Herald, talk of disagreements with Book were often hedged with praise — of his dedication, his determination and, most critically, his results.
A common refrain: Book can be challenging, but he's done lots to expand the resources that Miami-Dade has to address homelessness.
And he aims to keep expanding them, at least until, as he put it, 'we're done' — once everyone's off the streets.
That could theoretically be done rather quickly, Book says. He just needs to raise $100 million in additional capital to buy the Trust more housing units — roughly 600, he estimates, on top of those he already plans to open this year.
Until then, the Trust, impelled by the added urgency of the camping ban, is hopeful that it can bring hundreds of new housing units online before year end, including dozens of 'tiny homes' (location to be determined) and a converted hotel in Cutler Bay that will house low-income seniors.
Less than a week before Christmas, Book was in the dining room of Mia Casa, Miami-Dade's recently acquired homeless shelter for seniors. He was handing out pizza and dancing with residents as he clacked a pair of claves.
A woman approached him. Book had personally placed her in Mia Casa, which the Trust purchased during the pandemic. He had done the same for a number of residents, having passed them on the street, inquired into their situation and organized for their prompt pickup.
She gave him a hug.
'I'm glad you're here,' he whispered to her.
This time, it was Book's turn to cry.
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.