Memorial service comes amid year of frustration for advocates
This story, which originally appeared at ClickOrlando.com, is part of a collaborative initiative of independent local news outlets working toward a more informed and engaged Central Florida.
Among the tall palms of downtown Orlando’s Heritage Square, bedecked with lights, a small artificial Christmas tree near the entrance to the Orange County Regional History Center might be easy to miss.
On Wednesday morning, dozens gathered to pray and to remember 136 people who also, on any other day, might have gone unnoticed.
“We pause, gather and reflect to honor those who have died on the streets or in emergency shelters,” said Kristi Nowrouzi with IDignity, an organization that helps people get paperwork and identification cards.
One by one, advocates picked up a white paper dove and added it to the tree. On 135 doves, the name of someone who was homeless who died this year.
The 136th dove went to “John Doe,” a homeless man who died, whose name may never be known.
“People who are not likely to have had a memorial service of their own, folks with limited family and social connections,” said Martha Are, chief executive officer for Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “The important part is that they have a service to honor them the same way housed people are honored.”
According to the annual census of homeless people, the Point-In-Time Count, there are around 2,781 people in the Orlando area who were considered homeless in 2025, with 1,090 of those people sleeping outdoors or in cars. Advocates who try to connect homeless people with services will tell you the number is higher.
Advocacy groups say they have gotten more than 4,000 homeless people into housing programs this year alone.
Many people do seek help. According to the Homeless Services Network, in November alone, 1,014 newly homeless people sought help from agencies in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties.
For others who get help, they may have connected with an outreach team. Staff and volunteers go into the woods, under overpasses, to parks, anywhere homeless people can find a place to sleep.
Richard Amabile, who works with United Global Outreach and Samaritan Resource Center, says it can take time and patience to build the trust to get people to accept help.
“Try to meet them where they are at, in the encampments, on the streets, at gas stations, in the medians, wherever they are. Try to introduce myself, get to know them, try to meet them where they are, to build a relationship with them, and try to build some trust with them so I can assess their needs and try to help them,” Amabile said.
These days, it’s tougher to build that trust.
Over the past year, about a dozen local media partners have tracked and reported on how Florida’s public camping ban is affecting the homeless community and those who try to help them.
The law, HB 1365, forced local governments to find ways to get people off the streets by allowing residents to sue if they feel nothing is being done.
A News 6 analysis of court records found 195 arrests in Orange County from Dec. 31, 2024, to Dec. 16 for public camping.
Another 88 arrests occurred under some variation of the charge of “being in a park after hours.” Three arrests were found in the court records under the charge of “sitting or laying down on a sidewalk downtown.”
The majority of the arrests are in the city of Orlando. News 6 found a total of 279 arrests by Orlando Police Department in court records across all charges. Six were found in Ocoee, and one each were found in Apopka and Winter Park.
(Editor's Note: Osceola News-Gazette public records requests showed one arrest under the law this year in Osceola County; the Kissimmee Police Department issued a citation for camping in a public space on Nov. 24.)
One of the top arrest locations is Heritage Square, where this year’s memorial service took place.
That fear of arrest is making it harder to find people to help them. For some people, that adds to their own feelings about their situation.
“Being previously homeless myself, honestly, my thoughts were – I felt like I was not valued,” Amabile said. “I didn’t really meet people that were going out into camps and doing all that, probably because I was just hiding or what the case may be.
“I don’t want people to feel that way, I want them to know that they’re cared for, and there is help, and it is possible to recover if you are addicted….” Amabile added tearfully.
“We know that people are still hiding,” Are said. “There are definitely people who are looking for places where they can sleep without triggering an arrest or being moved on.”
Sleep deprivation can add to the health challenges that people without a home already face, like lack of adequate food and water, or consistent care for chronic health issues, leading to a shortened lifespan.
“Living on the streets is very stressful, and there’s a strong correlation between extreme stress and health challenges,” Are said. “And back to lack of consistent sleep. Sleep deprivation is really significant for people who are unsheltered, so all of those things work together to create a challenging environment, contributing to the shorter lifespan.”
Nowrouzi said this year the service had fewer names to remember, but the list is no less heartbreaking.
“It’s really easy to pass judgment as we drive past people who are walking down the streets, and we know that they don’t have a home of their own, but everybody has a story, and there’s a lot of circumstances that may have driven them to where they’re at in their life right now,” Nowrouzi said.
At the end of the service, people were invited to take a dove off the tree to remember the person named.
We met Richard Amabile as we helped him find Joseph Crenshaw’s name on the tree.
Amabile met Crenshaw several times over the last few months during his outreach. Amabile described him as bright, kind, and always trying to help. He had struggled with drug addiction, but was doing well in a program. Amabile said he also cared for a woman who had one leg, who was now alone.
“This just happened a couple weeks ago, and a lot of lives were touched by his life,” Amabile said. “And a lot of people miss him now. A lot of people mourn his loss, and I’m mourning this loss because of it.”
