Orlando OKs plan to house homeless people on buses

Click here for updates on this story

    ORLANDO, Florida (WESH) — The city of Orlando has approved a plan to fund a pair of “Dignity Buses” to help provide emergency mobile shelters for homeless people.

The plan, an agreement with the non-profit Christian Service Center for the Homeless, was voted on during an Orlando city council meeting on Monday.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said, “We’re going to continue doing what we do, and that’s help the least fortunate among us.”

The city is planning to spend $350,000 on the buses themselves, with a total of $3 million spent on operations over the next three years. The buses are planned to be staffed overnight with attendants and security cameras.

Homeless Services Network CEO Brian Postlewait spoke in favor of the buses during the meeting.

He said, “People are literally dying on our streets. We have more unsheltered persons in our community, twice as many as we did five years ago.”

Opponents of the concept say Orlando already has generous homeless services.

One opponent, Chelsea Chantilly, said, “We don’t want this bus. We want to put a stop to this; say we’ve done enough. We’ve done more than enough. Let someone else pick up their share.”

The Christian Service Center will operate the buses, and the buses will be capable of housing around 40 people. The buses would be parked at the Christian Service Center on West Central Boulevard in the Parramore neighborhood.

District 6 Commissioner Bakari Burns highlighted that anyone utilizing the buses as an emergency shelter has to go through the nonprofit.

He said, “To be eligible for this you have to be engaged with the Christian Service Center, have some type of income, some type of employment.”

Eric Gray, executive director of the Christian Service Center, told WESH 2 that more than a third of the funds would go toward getting individuals into permanent housing.

Postlewait said, “We really need to work on innovative solutions, this is one. This is an opportunity for 407 people to move from homelessness to housing.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.