In the impoverished area of Bithlo, about 15 minutes from the Orange/Brevard County line, Ashley Reese was in the midst of something she’s become all too familiar with: gathering her belongings from one campsite and relocating to a new one.
The 31-year-old lifelong Bithlo resident grew up between homes and has spent most of her adult life experiencing poverty and homelessness.
“My family basically disowned me. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for my husband,” she said.
On this day, with the help of housing activists, the couple, who met at a homeless center in East Orlando, put some of their stuff in storage, only taking the essentials, including their eight cats. They moved into a concrete structure in the woods. Ashley said the door falls down but it has a roof and four walls.
The structure is behind a fence with a visible “NO TRESPASSING” sign. Ashley acknowledged they weren’t allowed in there but said they had no other choice.
“It’s all very stressful,” Ashley said.
Nowhere to go in Bithlo
The latest federal Point-In-Time Count — which gives a snapshot of the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Orange-Seminole-Osceola tri-county area on a single night in January each year — showed that Central Florida’s had a 137% increase in unsheltered homelessness over the last five years.
Orange County has one of the highest unsheltered populations in the state, largely driven by Orlando. Still, people looking for respite are hard pressed to find shelters outside the downtown Orlando area, where there aren’t enough beds and service centers are regularly at capacity.
Like in other parts of the county, East Orange County has no emergency, drop-in homeless shelters. The nearest is about 20 miles away. For people like Ashley, that means scheduling and waiting for the NeighborLink 821 bus that provides limited access to Bithlo, and switching buses in East Orlando to get downtown, or walking about seven hours.
Advocates have said the lack of overnight emergency shelters leaves some of the most vulnerable people with nowhere to sleep but the streets, in violation of the state’s public camping ban.
Out here, in the fringes of the county, one of the only local places offering some kind of relief to the homeless population is a community day center called Transformation Village, founded by local organizer Tim McKinney.
“I make the case that we have the highest population of unsheltered homeless in Orange County, maybe even more than downtown Orlando. They're just not as visible because they're in the woods,” he said.
McKinney’s nonprofit United Global Outreach serves what he calls “forgotten communities,” and for the last decade and a half, he’s focused his attention on the unincorporated region of Bithlo.
Just off State Road 50, or East Colonial Drive, the place once known as the “Gateway to Orange County” now has the signs of an underdeveloped community. There are a lot of mobile homes, old gas stations, and junkyards.
In Bithlo, poverty is high for Central Florida – about 26%. The population is majority white and about half of working age residents are unemployed.
“We're trying to solve poverty, that’s our mission,” McKinney said. “We don't want to make it Avalon Park or Baldwin Park, but you ought to be able to go to the doctor in your neighborhood. You’ve got to be able to get food in your neighborhood, to catch transportation in your neighborhood.”
McKinney’s Transformation Village offers people in Bithlo an alternative and a place to get resources, learn, volunteer, and grow their community -- and he’s not done yet -- but ultimately, the center doesn’t offer housing.
For close to 15 years, McKinney has been calling for a homeless shelter on the east side of the county, but amid Florida’s new law banning unauthorized sleeping and camping in public or private places, he’s become even more unapologetic.
“You can’t be on private property that you don’t own, and you can’t be on public property.. And all of that, I’m kind of okay with, If we had adequate shelter space, but in East Orange County there’s zero options for shelter. And so, when your only option is no option, that’s not okay. I mean, where do you go?” McKinney said.
The mission to transform Bithlo
The town’s story is too long and too complicated to get into in full, but according to history books, “it never had a chance at prosperity.
“There's a lot of things that have to be working right in the community to undo all of the things that went wrong, to create a circumstance where being born here maybe doesn’t set your destiny in a negative direction through no fault of your own,” McKinney said. “So, that’s what we’re doing. The goal would be that one day you could be born in Bithlo and not need a program or a nonprofit to get ahead.”
In 2009, McKinney and his partners built and now operate Bithlo’s only community center.
Everything is communal in Transformation Village -- a garden, library, the kitchen stocked with drinks and snacks, computers, clothes and hygiene items. The space also houses an early education center and a playground for children, as well as a medical clinic.
While Transformation Village is a place for everyone who lives in Bithlo, the center has become a haven of respite for those seeking shelter during the day, and as unsheltered homelessness has more than doubled in Orange County. McKinney said the needs are outgrowing what he and the village can provide.
“We're not a shelter. People need somewhere they can stay right now, and really — the county, state, federal government, public, private partners, philanthropy — all of us have to come together. I know none of them are okay with this, so I believe we are in the perfect time for us to come up with a real, tangible solution quickly. We must,” McKinney said.
Until they can get more help, McKinney and a team of volunteers, many of whom were formerly unhoused or battling substance use, work with other local organizations spending most of their days doing outreach work and offering services to unsheltered people in the area.
What has the county done?
According to its website, Orange County Government is “the single largest funder of public services for the homeless in Central Florida,” spending more than $5 million a year.
Late last year, the county’s Division for Mental Health and Homelessness was awarded an additional $10 million in federal funds to expand homeless services — $1 million of which went to the Service & Love Together nonprofit to extend its mobile showers and laundry services at Transformation Village.
The county division’s manager, Lisa Klier-Graham, has been at the helm for just under two years. She said her team is focusing on solutions but is facing challenges.
“While we're really wanting to expand shelter services in east, west Orange County, the Apopka area, wherever those spots are, where shelters are needed, those things take time,” she said.
According to Klier-Graham, the county has been prioritizing prevention measures. Meaning, rental assistance and other financial aid for extremely low-income households on the verge of homelessness. Among other things, she said, the county is actively looking for community partners to expand housing and for “properly trained” professionals for more effective outreach and case management.
Ultimately, she said she knows that high rents and the rise in the cost of living are the main culprits and that the need for affordable housing and shelters has become an emergency.
But the county’s biggest problem when it comes to implementing solutions, she said, is the lack of community education and support. She said locals don’t understand the “multi-faceted” causes of homelessness and oppose tax dollars and land going to necessary resources.
“There are a lot of myths and stereotyping about homeless shelters out there, the name alone has such a negative connotation, and so I don't blame the residents either, but I think that we need to make an active effort to educate the community and to inform them so they see that not every situation is the same. Not every unhoused, unsheltered person is the same,” she said
Whatever was keeping authorities and people in power from working together against homelessness, Klier-Graham said, it’s over, now that Florida’s camping ban is in place.
“It has definitely sped things up,” she said. “We work closely with all the law enforcement agencies, and they have made it clear that they want to help the situation rather than make it worse. So, if anything, I think this new law has brought people closer together and has enhanced creativity, which I think is desperately necessary in order to solve the problem.”
Back at Transformation Village, Ashley isn't worrying about the night ahead she's facing in the woods. She’s used to it.
She was helping me make coffee, and we talked about Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds, a fragrance that both our maternal figures used to wear.
Showing me around Transformation Village she left her favorite room for last: it’s a playroom – full of toys, kids’ books, and jungle animals painted on the walls. She found an all-time childhood favorite.
“Oh, my goodness! I haven’t seen these in a long time — Barrel of Monkeys! I used to use these when I was a little kid,” she exclaimed.
As she plays, it becomes clear that Ashley likes picking up where she left off, where she says she last felt safest, as a child, when she last had a home.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report For America corps member.
