The Orlando City Council voted to approve Central Florida's first mobile shelters at a Monday meeting, despite opposition from the public.
The 407 Connect Project is a three-year program, consisting of the purchase and conversion of two Greyhound-style buses to be repurposed as overnight homeless shelters, providing Downtown Orlando with nearly 20 beds each. The name plays on Orlando’s area code but also on the number of people projected to be lifted out of homelessness through the program.
Commissioner Shan Rose of District 5 stressed the impact these bus shelters could have on the community.
“There are people who get up every day who have to go to work, and they’re sleeping on the streets. This is an opportunity for someone to sleep in a bed and have some sort of dignity when they wake up in the morning,” she said.
The mobile shelters will remain parked and closed during the day at the Christian Service Center for the Homeless, and the organization's staff will open access to operate the bus shelters on site, seven nights a week, until morning. The project aims to provide respite, reduce the number of people sleeping on the street, and connect guests to additional resources, expecting a housing success rate of 85% of its clients.
Council members were in favor of the program, asking mainly about funding. The city’s Accelerate Orlando program and Downtown Orlando Community Redevelopment Agency will fund its costs for three years, which will be just over $1.8 million. After that, the city will have to reassess.
Commissioner Robert F. Stuart, of District 3, said he’s most excited about the “Roadshow” plans — to drive the bus shelters into other areas of Orlando and Orange County to show neighboring local governments that out-of-the-box solutions can be both helpful and cost-effective, hoping to inspire a trend.
“I’ve heard the county talk about a lot of things that they would like to do and nothing ever seems to get actually done,” Stuart said. “This is one of those ways of being creative and innovative at the same time.”
But a majority of local residents at the meeting did not share that same enthusiasm. All but three of the people who gave public comments spoke against the proposal and the city’s decision-making process, saying council members were rushing the decision and leaving community members out of the conversation.
Some people from the South Downtown area, known as SoDo, who recently pushed for the city to drop plans for a 300-bed shelter in their neighborhood, showed up asking council members to postpone the so-called “dignity buses.”
Resident Randy Ross, who unsuccessfully ran for Orlando’s District 4 in 2023, said he doesn’t know “what the right answer is” but that sleeping in buses is “not dignity.”
“That is not a way I would want to sleep every night,” he said. “I invite you to table this and create a task force, where it’s not just this community but putting the communities together, and let them help you come up with a solution that we can all buy into.”
Other residents, like those from the Parramore community, said that Downtown Orlando has already done more than its fair share of providing homeless services, and they don’t want any more shelters.
Resident Luwanna Gelzer, who also ran for city council last year, said homeless services are not working and are only attracting more unhoused people into her neighborhood.
“The voice of Parramore has not been heard,” she said. “We’re not bitter. We’re just fed up with the process and how we’ve been treated over the years.”
Originally pitched as a low-barrier access shelter, meaning it could serve just about any client who signed up, the program will now require eligibility. People interested will have to sign up —it won’t be first-come, first-served— meet income and work restrictions, as well as pass a background check.
Christian Service Center for the Homeless Executive Director Eric Gray said that people in active drug use, with a past of sexual offenses, exhibiting violent behavior, or breaking the rules will not be eligible. The program will prioritize working individuals and people with income, as they are more likely to become housed successfully, and it will triage the most vulnerable candidates, like children and older adults.
“The goal is to make sure that we’re getting as many people off the streets as we can,” Gray said. “But safety is No. 1.”
Some critics didn’t oppose the bus shelters but instead said it doesn’t go far enough, especially after dropping the plans for the Kaley Street, 300-bed shelter in SoDo, and demanded the city do more for the population of people experiencing homelessness.
From the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, COO Brian Postlewait said the lack of support from the community was tough to witness.
“It’s very hard to sit up here and hear misinformation about homelessness, to listen to people talk about what we’re not doing because I know we’re all working hard,” he said. “People are literally dying on our streets, we have twice as many unsheltered people as we did five years ago, and any place you go and try to talk about another shelter being added in, the neighborhood is up in arms.”
District 4 Commissioner Bakari Burns said the project serves to provide immediate protection for the unhoused community but recognized the city still has a lot more to do.
“We have to look at true solutions to homelessness because nothing ends homelessness but housing,” Burns said. “I think that we have to be more aggressive as a council in our approach in leading those permanent housing solutions.”
Gray said the dignity bus shelters should be up and running no later than July.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report for America corps member.
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