This story is part of a collaborative initiative of independent local news outlets working towards a more informed and engaged Central Florida.
Editor's Note: Central Florida Public Media is not naming the woman we interviewed for this story as she is a member of a vulnerable population and asked to remain anonymous.
I won’t disclose her name, but when homeless activists found her camp in the east Orlando woods and saw her, they worried her visibly infected leg would kill her.
It was discolored, swollen, and at 51 years old, having spent nearly seven years as a transient, unsheltered woman with substance use disorder, her health is waning. Without a car and living in the woods, without access to running water or easy access to medical treatment, a scratch from her kitten grew into a painful problem forcing her to use an old walker to get around.
She lifted her floor-length skirt a bit to show me the infection above her ankle. She needed medical attention. Housing advocates pleaded with her to let them take her to a nearby hospital for help.
“I told them yesterday I’d go to the hospital tonight, but the cops came by this morning and told us we had to move,” the woman said. “I don’t want to leave all my stuff here and have it all be gone when I get back.”
With Florida’s public camping ban in full swing, and the county recently adopting a similar ordinance of its own, local government authorities have been enforcing the measure. Orange County Sheriff’s deputies showed up last Tuesday to the encampment where she and about a dozen other residents had settled just a few weeks ago, off East Colonial Drive in East Orlando.
When I arrived, homeless service workers, equipped with two pickup trucks and a van, were busy lifting, moving and carrying big items out of the camp, like mattresses and heavy furniture, in some cases, offering to store them for the residents.
According to Tim McKinney, founder and CEO of United Global Outreach, an organization that he said helps lift “forgotten communities,” this is at least the second time this year this group has been asked to move. These residents were so new to this spot that many of them had not yet fully unpacked. McKinney said there really is nowhere for these unhoused people to go because there are no shelter or alternatives for them in this part of Orlando.
“Until we have some option of shelter capacity, it's just going to be this constant moving. And when you're already living a trauma-filled life, and you can't even make a home in the woods, and you're constantly being disrupted, it only adds to your pain and suffering and greater mental health challenges and a greater need to feel numb from life and do more drugs,” McKinney said.
The group was taking steps to comply, but the camp was a large setup —recliners, tables, big tents, makeshift walls of cardboard and wooden planks, a lot of pantry food shelved in a wire rack, clothes, and personal items— promising a few days' worth of work, moving mainly on foot.
For days, the sidewalk outside the camp in the woods was lined with shopping carts filled with blankets, boxes, rugs, and other belongings. The carts’ wheels make it easier for the residents to relocate large loads.
Then, there was the trash. The woman said they got yelled at for using a neighboring business dumpster, so as they packed up their stuff, they left the trash behind — paper, food containers, laundry detergent bottles, wrappers, boxes, old stuff and broken items, the list goes on.
“Let the county clean it up,” she said. “We weren’t bothering anybody here.”
The camp’s big, colorful tarps, as well as the residents, were clearly visible from the road, almost in plain sight to drivers and people passing by during the day. At night, a small campfire gave them away. McKinney said someone called it in and reported them to the county.
He said he expects to see camps like these change under the new law.
“When you can't be on public land and you can't be on private land, there's fewer and fewer places that you can hide out to try. The bigger the camp, the more noticeable you might be. So, I think we're going to see smaller and smaller camps as people attempt to stay under the radar,” McKinney said.
At the large, now-disbanded camp, I could see, the residents had built a community and their own routine. There was a lot of activity on Thursday, when most of them were still there.
One man was painting and displaying his artwork, while another was chopping wood for the fire, and two other men were coming back on their bikes with sandwiches for those who were left, while a few of them, McKinney said, were making headway setting up at the group’s new camp in another wooded area.
Orange County Sheriff’s Office Deputy John Allen, with a Special Projects Unit that deals closely with homeless camps, said at an east Orlando Town Hall last Thursday night that his team’s priorities are officer safety and offering resources to the unsheltered individuals but that many of them often refuse the help.
“We go in the woods and try to be respectful. The ones in there — they have nothing to lose. They have no home, sometimes they have no family, and you can see they're down on the bottom level of their life. So, why go in there and kick them while they're down?” Allen said.
According to OCSO’s public information officer, deputies have not yet made any arrests for illegally sleeping or camping on public property since the new state law went into effect. The Orlando Police Department has made 25 arrests, mainly in the downtown area.
With the move to the new location well underway, McKinney’s team finally managed to take the woman to a hospital. She was back at the camp the very next day, still wearing her patient identification bracelet. She said the hospital treated her wound, gave her a round of antibiotics to prevent sepsis, and some ibuprofen — though she said she was hoping for something a little stronger.
Sitting by the fire, warming up with a blanket and snuggling with her kitten, Maybelline, she was visibly sleepy and considering whether to get some rest before the long moving day ahead. She said she’s gotten used to it, but with age it’s getting harder.
“It wasn’t always like this,” she said. “We used to have enough to get through and still have some left over for a good time. But it’s not fun anymore.”
The state and county both mandate that local governments have five days to address public camping complaints. The residents had until Sunday to be gone.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report for America corps member.
