ORLANDO, Fla. – One week after a fire at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, more than 200 men experiencing homelessness are still displaced.
The men’s dorms are still uninhabitable because of the fire and water damage, and it may be weeks before those facilities re-open.
Freddy Clayton, president of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, said they housed more than 80 men the first few nights after the fire last Wednesday. They expanded their capacity by adding mats and cots in the chapel, dining room and hallway at their facility on W. Colonial Drive.
Clayton said he spoke to Allison Krall, CEO at the Coalition for the Homeless, Thursday morning.
“I asked her about the status and if they needed additional help,” Clayton said. “They have a mitigation team in there trying to figure out what they need to do and replace, and it is probably going to be another month from what she said before the men’s shelter re-opens.”
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Organizations like Clayton’s have stepped up to make sure the 237 men who were displaced have a safe place to sleep and warm meals in the meantime.
Krall spoke about the damage to her facility the day after the fire. She said it started in the men’s dorms, right over the kitchen which is inoperable as well.
As community partners and donations have helped out, the incident has highlighted a greater need across Central Florida. Clayton said every organization he knows that serves the homeless is running at capacity right now.
“At our two facilities, our men’s home and our family home, we have waiting lists of folks who want to get in and the waiting lists are significantly longer than they ever have been in my eight-year tenure,” Clayton said. “And then to have something like this fire add to the difficulties, it could be a calamity.”
An annual count in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties documented 2,258 people experiencing homelessness last year. Families with children made up 35.12% of the population in the count — 793 of the people counted.
“The issue is not going to get better without significant effort, and a change in policies and regulations and procedures in our community,” Clayton said.
[Homeless census: Volunteers conducting annual count in Metro Orlando]
Clayton said there is massive need for services for the homeless, including housing, addiction and recovery services, mental health assistance and programs that offer the full range of services they need.
News 6 asked him about solutions, for both immediate needs and in the long term.
“Right now, because of the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets and the sprouting of these tent cities across Orlando, there’s a gigantic need for emergency shelter, and the city has recognized that,” Clayton said. “They established a think tank that issued a report that said specifically the city needs to open dispersed shelters throughout our community so that no one area of the city bears the brunt of taking care of these folks.”
Clayton said there is also an urgency for affordable housing.
“We will not get the housing unless the city and county and other municipalities here make developing housing easier, quicker, and cheaper,” Clayton said. “They pose huge roadblocks to developers who want to build housing of all price ranges, and that causes a gigantic restriction on the housing available at the low end of the price range of the economic spectrum, and until that changes we will not resolve the housing crisis.”
According to the Coalition, which told News 6 it had plenty of non-perishable food items on hand, the following help is most needed:
- Donations of ready-to-eat meals
- Donations of men’s underwear and clothing, especially larger sizes
- Monetary donations
- Volunteers to help sort donations
Learn more at the Coalition’s website.
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