Regional reporting collaborative aims to track the impact of Florida’s tough homelessness law
News Collaborative of Central Florida: Last week’s release of the annual point-in-time count made the challenge abundantly clear: Central Florida still doesn’t have enough ways to house its vast numbers of homeless residents. And planned improvements are lagging.
The Orlando Sentinel and other members of the News Collaborative of Central Florida, a group of independent news organizations, set out this week to cover reaction to the PIT homeless count, conducted on one night in January each year. Reporters found that Osceola County still lacks any shelter beds for its homeless population, and that in one Seminole County town a homeless man was offered help, and then arrested the same day.
But they also found a reason for hope in Orlando, which has just acquired nearly $1 million in federal funding to support a program that offers unsheltered individuals help ranging from rent subsidies to bus tickets out of town.
The reporters’ findings come against the backdrop of the state’s new camping ban that targets homeless residents for potential arrest and, advocates say, made the federally-required PIT survey much more difficult. The survey itself showed about the same number of unhoused people as last year – with an increase in Osceola County and small decreases in Orange and Seminole. But there is reason to believe the numbers are deceptive.
“When it comes to the PIT Count, that would have been much higher if the camping ban was not in place, I do believe that,” Eric Camarillo, founder and president of Salt Outreach, told WKMG-Channel 6 / ClickOrlando.com. “To be honest with you, I wouldn’t be surprised if the PIT Count numbers were two or three times higher.”
Members of the News Collaborative have been tracking the issue and sharing reporting since the camping ban was implemented on Jan. 1. Here are their reports:
OSCEOLA COUNTY: No shelters but growing need
Per the new state law, unhoused individuals are prohibited from camping on city streets, sidewalks, and parks. Police regularly tell them they need to find shelter.
But … Osceola County doesn’t have a homeless shelter.
“We have no resources there other than the cold night shelters for the weather. The need is growing exponentially in Osceola County,” said Salvation Army Orange and Osceola County Area Commander Maj. Ken Chapman.
According to the Homeless Services Network, the PIT count found 373 people experiencing homelessness in Osceola County, an 8.7% increase over 2024. Of them, 188 were found to be living on the streets, in the woods or in their cars in January.
“Affordable housing isn’t expanding to prevent this,” said Martha Are, CEO of the Homeless Services Network. “We’re in an extremely challenging housing market right now.”
Will Cooper is the Chief Operating Officer at Hope Partnership, a non-profit working to end Osceola’s homelessness. He worries the problem is much worse than the count portrays.
Cooper said many of Osceola’s homeless have pushed camps farther out of sight this year, likely attributable to the state law, and in some cases to heightened deportation concerns surrounding ICE enforcement.
“It was heartbreaking to get stories from our team, talking to someone face-to-face, who maybe you encountered that Monday at our services, who doesn’t feel comfortable saying they slept outside last night,” he said. “Those who are Hispanic, or not White-presenting, showed a higher level of concern of giving their information. It’s a consent survey; if you said ‘I don’t want to take it,’ you’re not counted, but our counters know they’re out there.”
– Ken Jackson, Osceola News-Gazette
SEMINOLE COUNTY: Homeless . . . and then arrested
Jan. 29 was a pivotal day in Rodney’s life.
He was at the corner of State Road 434 and U.S. Highway 17-92 in Longwood when workers for the PIT count interviewed him. He told volunteers he had been homeless since 2019.
Rodney was one of the 436 people in Seminole County who were counted as homeless on the night of Jan. 27, according to figures released Friday. What’s more, he got on a waiting list for permanent supportive housing.
But after getting counted, Rodney said police approached him for panhandling and arrested him because he’d been asked to leave the intersection three times before. Ultimately, Rodney was charged with trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia for having a pipe that tested positive for marijuana, according to police.
“So right then and there you can see what’s really happening to people that are temporarily displaced,” Rodney said. “You got people that want to house you, and people that really want to house you,” a reference to jail.
“Both sides won that day,” Rodney added.
Oviedo Community News is not fully identifying individuals arrested or trespassed in this story because the arrests alone would not have been covered before the new camping ban law was in effect. The Longwood Police Department said that the intersection where Rodney was confronted is dangerous for pedestrians and people panhandling.
The total number of people experiencing homelessness in Seminole County went from 420 to 436 in 2025, a 3.8% increase. That figure includes people sleeping in emergency shelters and transitional housing.
But the number of unsheltered homeless – what people think of as street homeless – actually dropped slightly, from 163 people in 2024 to 156 people in 2025.
Seminole County has seen a 159% increase in the total homeless population in the last two years.
When Oviedo Community News interviewed Rodney, he was sleeping outside near a retention pond on a sheet of cardboard. Tucked among the Aldi grocery store canvas bags and backpacks and trash bags and loose bedding that make up his belongings is a well-worn bible, post-it-notes sticking out of the top.
“So many people in the world think good riddance, that’s OK. It’s really not,” Rodney said. “Don’t treat spirits like trash. Don’t treat people like trash. Have that heart.”
– Abe Aboraya, Oviedo Community News
ORLANDO: RUSH to ease the crisis
With nearly 750 Orange County residents living outdoors in the latest homeless count, Orlando is doubling down on a program that could help house hundreds in the city – through approaches beyond building new shelters.
The city has received $875,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to run another year of its so-called RUSH program – the third such infusion rewarded to the program in recent years.
RUSH’s success has been especially gratifying to its creators – the city of Orlando and the nonprofit Christian Service Center – because it may be possible to replicate across the region, in cities that have done less to confront the challenges of homelessness.
“This program joins the shelters in being the programs where the success is hidden. You don’t see the people who are housed every night … our community only sees the people who are unsheltered,” said Lisa Portelli, a senior advisor on homelessness to Mayor Buddy Dyer. “This is the quiet, silent, good work that’s done every day.”
This year’s PIT count put the number of Orange County’s homeless at 1,972, and the number of those living outdoors at 746.
While officials suspect an undercount, they also credited 2025’s totals to the success of programs focused on long-term housing, including RUSH.
In 2024, homeless services agencies in the three-county area housed 5,132 people through their initiatives – which includes those housed by RUSH.
The federal money came as part of a $14.1 million disbursement to local agencies across the state, initially targeted for hurricane relief.
In 2022, HUD first rewarded the city Orlando’s first batch of funds amounted to $666,918 in 2022, and after that was spent, it received another $350,344 grant to keep the effort going. The program was dubbed Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing because of the hurricane funding connection.
The money has provided long-term housing for close to 500 people so far, said Eric Gray, the CEO of the Christian Service Center.
Orlando’s program pairs families in the city who are either homeless or facing a housing crisis with long-term solutions. In some cases, that comes cheap like a bus, train or plane ticket to stay with a family member, who confirms in writing they’ll take a person in.
In other cases, it requires a heftier investment to cover rent and a security deposit. The average cost ends up being about $1,100 per person, Gray said.
He said the vast majority of people the program helps either have an income, or are receiving social security or disability assistance.
“There’s no doubt the need is there,” he said. “Probably my favorite part of the whole job is I don’t think a single work day has gone by in a full year where I didn’t sign a request to house somebody or put them on a bus.”
– Ryan Gillespie, Orlando Sentinel
WEST ORANGE COUNTY: No easy answers
Advocates and volunteers say there is plenty of evidence that the area’s homeless problem is worse than the PIT count can measure. For instance, Scott Billue, founder of the faith-based homeless outreach organization Matthew’s Hope, told VoxPopuli in an email that last year, 1,140 individuals from across West Orange County came through his Winter Garden location alone.
Gray, the Christian Service Center director, added that it’s also “near impossible” to get an accurate count of people living in their cars, a rising phenomenon now estimated to account for more than 50 percent of those experiencing homelessness nationwide. “So you can safely assume the [PIT] count is low by half,” he said by text.
Homelessness has many causes, but high rents and housing costs certainly contribute. According to USAFacts, Florida has the highest median rent-to-income ratio in the United States — 36.2 percent. (Over 30 percent is considered “housing burdened.”)
Gray guesses that some 30,000 Orange County residents will experience homelessness this year. “This is 2 percent of the total population and this number is likely low,” he said in his text.
– Norine Dworkin, West Orange Vox Populi
ORANGE COUNTY: Camping ban impacts services
Beyond possibly suppressing the PIT count, the state’s camping ban is also impacting local agencies that offer services to the homeless.
“With the camping ban we knew it would be harder to find people for the count,” said Camarillo, the Salt Outreach founder and president. “It’s already hard to find people, I mean, the PIT Count has hundreds of volunteers going out across Central Florida to count people and you can only go so deep into the woods.”
Not being able to make contact with people in need means some homeless people may not be aware about services available to assist them or get them housing.
“That’s really been unfortunate, honestly,” said Camarillo. “We’re having to work even harder to find the people that need help.”
— Christie Zizo, WKMG-Channel 6/ClickOrlando.com
Members of the News Collaborative of Central Florida’s project covering the homeless camping ban are Central Florida Public Media, The Community Paper, LkldNow.com, Ocala Gazette, Orlando Sentinel, Osceola News-Gazette, Oviedo Community News, West Orange Vox Populi, Winter Park Voice, WKMG-Channel 6/ClickOrlando.com and WUCF-TV.
