Op Ed from Michael Rosenberg: Miami-Dade needs Pets’ Trust more than ever

Opinion By Michael Rosenberg, co-founder of the Pets’ Trust
I went to the Miami-Dade animal shelter in Medley Sunday, to observe the protest, not to participate. I wanted to see what the message was, what it is the protesters wanted.
The animal shelter at Medley holds a special place for me. As a human, I lived in a dog cage in that building for three days in October of 2012. Yes, it was hot, old and decrepit, and a place where 60 to 80 mostly healthy animals were killed every day from 1970 to 2013  to make space for the 100 or so dogs brought to the shelter each day, on average. The policy from 1970 (as far as I can go back) to 2013 was to kill for space.
One hundred animals would be surrendered each day, and 60 to 80 were killed to make space. Every day.
Read related: Protesters want answers, justice for Rocky at Miami-Dade animal shelter
The Pets’ Trust was founded to try to stop that. But while the community overwhelmingly supported the Pets’ Trust plan with their votes, elected officials did not honor those votes. If you really want to be angry, watch the movie to learn more about the Pets’ Trust and what our elected officials didn’t do: Political Animals…The Story of the Pets’ Trust.
Flash forward to 2025, and while the killing has dramatically decreased (in the shelter), the intake of animals stays the same. Many animals are still turned away. The new shelter that was built in 2015 is beyond capacity, so the dungeons of Medley were reopened to create more space.
No one wanted to open this old draconian shelter, but as the new shelter simply could not hold all of the animals, the Medley shelter was brought back to its awful life. There was simply no place to keep this overflow of continued incoming animals and killing for space is not an option anymore.
Of course no one likes the Medley shelter. It’s natural to want to protest the conditions there. The good news is this Medley shelter is coming down and a brand new 25,000 square foot, very modern facility will be built in South Dade. It will take time to build it, but at least it is coming.
However, warehousing animals is not the solution and this is where the majority of the money is going towards. In the past 12 years MDAS has received $327 million dollars. The County plan spent $200 million dollars more than what had been their previous average budget from 2012 back and the chart shows you what they have to show for it. Intake numbers are the same as the early 2000’s when the average budget was $10 million, and today it’s actually worse because more and more animals are being turned away and the shelter is over double its capacity.

Most animals come in healthy and some start to become sick from contagious diseases, stress and become unadoptable which can lead to being euthanized. The adoption rate has not changed in the past 12 years and spay/neuter surgeries are far behind.
Read related: Animal advocates protest shelter conditions, use of old ‘house of horrors’
It’s wonderful that the protesters want to keep the plight of our animals in the forefront of public attention, but signs calling this a death camp, a killing shelter, or that Miami-Dade Animal Services Director Annette Jose is lying, are not the correct message.  The message for what was needed and still is needed is the message of the Pets’ Trust Plan, the overpopulation problem that is the cause of there being so many animals — half a million cats on the streets for example — is an extensive spay/neuter program doing at least four times what we are doing now.   We need to do over 100,000 of these surgeries a year, not 25,000…..or we’ll never get ahead of the problem and sadly, the new shelter will be full on the day it opens.
If I participated in this protest, my sign would have been…..More Surgeries Now!
Again, I thank the protesters for wanting to make conditions better, but while the new animal shelter will be a better place to live, it will not solve the animal overpopulation problem which is the root of all of this mess we are in.
Michael Rosenberg is a tireless advocate for animals and humans in Miami-Dade and beyond. Rosenberg is co-founder of the Pets’ Trust Initiative, which got 65% of voters to agree in 2012 on a massive spay/neuter plan to help keep the population of strays down. He is also the longtime president of the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations.
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