In an east Orange County neighborhood, officials grappling with complaints about a large population of homeless people – including some camped out near an elementary school – are hoping a new proposed shelter will help, even as it could invite its own controversy.
But in the meantime, a Republican lawmaker is threatening to withhold state money from the area’s lone homeless services center unless it relocates.
The sharp debate in Union Park is only the latest in a series of thorny confrontations about how best to manage homelessness in the Central Florida region, where housing costs are high, shelter space is scarce, and residents are concerned about people living in public spaces.
The encampment near the Union Park Elementary School near Colonial Drive and Dean Road had drawn the ire of students’ parents and the school’s principal in particular.
Crossing Guards wait for pedestrians cross the street at Dean Road and Flowers Avenue during dismissal at Union Park Elementary School, on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
Angie Gallo, an Orange County School Board member who is running for chair this August, said she visited the school recently and spoke with principal Donald Westley Vega, who said he’d asked the people living in the encampment to move several times because they were too close to the school during dismissal.
The encampment was recently cleared by the county, said Zeynep Portway, the executive director of the Samaritan Resource Center, who added the removal will likely will just lead to another elsewhere.
“We see it over and over,” she said. “Without a real pathway to stable housing, people just move and go to another empty lot they can find until they are asked to move again.”
Rep. Susan Plasencia, R-Orlando, who represents the area in Tallahassee, blasted the homeless situation in a letter last month, calling it “by far the single biggest source of constituent concerns in this area.”
She blamed not only the county for the problem, but also the resource center, a drop-in location providing a host of services for the homeless from meals to showers, laundry and case management.
“The county is responsible for the concentration of addicts and mentally ill individuals in the area,” she wrote in the letter dated March 28. “The mentally ill and drug addicted individuals congregate and sleep in tents within the area in order to benefit from the services of the Samaritan Center.”
But county officials and service providers contend it’s the intersection of worsening economic conditions and a severe shortage of affordable housing that’s led to the rise in homelessness. The average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in the Orlando area is $1,409, according to Rent.com. While that’s down considerably from last year it’s still far more expensive than many can afford.
Samaritan Resource Center at East Colonial Drive in Orlando, on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
Orlando is tied with Las Vegas for the most severe shortage of apartments available at rents accessible to extremely low-income people, the group most likely to fall into homelessness, according to the Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
In Plasencia’s letter, she called for the Samaritan Resource Center to be moved elsewhere and said she once offered a state appropriation to assist. But Plasencia claimed Portway, the executive director, told her she’s not interested.
The center’s current location sits in an area along a bus line, where people can easily come for help and near where they’ve gathered for years.
Plasencia said she’ll block the center from receiving state funds unless it involves moving the site. She didn’t return a phone call seeking further comment.
Portway said her outreach teams frequently visit encampments when the county forwards complaints to offer services. The center is currently seeking state money to help pay for a program to hire homeless clients to minimum wage jobs cleaning the community, hoping to give people a boost toward better-paying employment down the line.
But without available shelter beds – which are clustered 10 miles west of the neighborhood in Parramore and are full most nights – the effort usually results in scattering people elsewhere, or into more encampments.
“They’re going to be here whether we’re here or not; they’re going to be here because we don’t have enough affordable housing,” she said. “We keep telling people, ‘You have to move, you have to move,’ but the question always is, where are they supposed to go?”
A panhandler at the intersection of East Colonial Drive and Dean Road near Union Park Elementary School, on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
School Board member Gallo said that Union Park Middle School, which sits across the street from Union Park Elementary and is set to close after this school year, could be used for homeless shelters in the future, but nothing was concrete as of Friday. Orange County Public Schools isn’t “in the homeless business,” she said, but could seek outside organizations to operate shelter spaces in the future.
“We need more shelters. We need more services. We need more funding for mental health. We need more funding for substance abuse and addiction… all the things that the legislature has the authority to implement,” Gallo said.
On Monday, county officials are set to unveil conceptual drawings of the planned 150-bed Goldenrod Village nearby, which they hope could help alleviate the problem. It’s a shelter concept meant to take people from the streets on a path to sustained housing.
Commissioner Mayra Uribe, who is running for mayor, said she’s been working on finding the ideal location for such a project for more than three years. She believes she’s found it on Goldenrod Road near Colonial Drive, about three miles west of the Samaritan Resource Center.
Uribe said she envisions people staying for roughly 90 days with access to job training, counseling, skill development and housing. It’s designed for adults only, and just individuals.
People will be screened before being allowed into the facility, which she said will be new construction, with security, landscaping and fencing.
County officials say it will be designed sort of like a college campus, with classroom space, dorms and other necessities. The idea could be replicated in other districts if it’s successful, though it will likely take between three and four years to be up and running.
“The good news is there’s public transit there and there’s not immediately adjacent to residential homes,” Uribe said.
Shelter proposals are rare in Central Florida – a region with a shortage of roughly 1,000 beds to accommodate people who sleep outside. They also don’t tend to be popular with neighbors.
Recent efforts by the City of Orlando to site a location in west Orlando and at the former work-release center south of downtown were defeated by fierce neighborhood opposition.
The county is hosting a community meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. to discuss the Goldenrod Village idea with neighbors at the Goldenrod Community Center.
“I’m hoping they’ll come out and learn about it,” she said. “We’ve got to start doing something about it. It’s not going away.”