At a west Orlando Walmart, Natilee Hamilton carefully considers the cost of each item she places in her cart as she struggles to adhere to a budget outpaced by inflation.<\/p>\n
It is a balancing act that extends beyond the grocery store. In the past few years, she\u2019s had to defer dental work, eye exams and home repairs because she didn\u2019t have the money.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to make sacrifices. Huge sacrifices,\u201d said Hamilton, 59, who worked at an Osceola County jail for 28 years but after an injury now gets by on disability payments. \u201cYou have to figure out, \u2018Do I want to eat, pay my light bill or my water bill?\u2019 Stuff that you really need you have to put on hold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across Central Florida, where the median wage is among the lowest in the country for large metro areas, higher prices for groceries, housing and now gas have left many working-class residents straining to cover the basics. Food banks report a surge in demand, and those with jobs are among those seeking help.<\/p>\n
Inflation spiked during the 2020 pandemic, driving up the cost of food, housing and other essential goods and services. Though inflation has since slowed, prices have not gone down. In 2024, the United Way reported that more than 44% of Central Florida households, while living above the poverty line, struggled to cover all their basic expenses, from childcare to transportation.<\/p>\n
And now the war with Iran is driving price hikes at the gas pump \u2014 up more than a dollar a gallon in Florida. The higher oil prices impact the cost of other products, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I go to the supermarket, there\u2019s always something going up,\u201d said Charles Grey, an 82-year-old Orlando resident who lives off his Social Security. \u201cYou buy something today and tomorrow you go back and it\u2019s a different price.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida\u2019s Institute of Economic Forecasting, was hopeful earlier this year that the country\u2019s economy was slowly moving in the right direction. But the war now has him doubtful prices will come down anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were making progress in that wages and salaries were growing. They were growing faster than the cost of living,\u201d Snaith said. \u201cAnd then now here we are, under the fog of war and dealing with certainly a surge in some areas of the cost of living.\u201d<\/p>\n
Already, the Orlando area\u2019s rental costs, which spiked 39% between 2019 and 2023, leave many lower-income residents paying far more for housing than their incomes comfortably allow, according to the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n
More than 112,000 people in Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties are \u201ccost burdened\u201d renters, the center\u2019s 2025 annual report.<\/p>\n
The average rental cost in Orange County for a two-bedroom apartment is now more than $1,700 a month, according to Zillow.<\/p>\n
For Glenda Rigby, paying so much in rent, though she wants a home for her children in a safe neighborhood, seems out of reach, with each stop to get gas now further eroding that dream.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems like, when I think I have a budget plan and have everything figured out, everything costs more money,\u201d Rigby said. \u201cLike I just spent fifty dollars to fill up the gas tank the other day. Fifty dollars and they still wanted me to put more gas in. It wasn\u2019t even completely full.\u201d<\/p>\n
After ending a marriage in which she was the victim of domestic violence, Rigby went to a drug rehabilitation program and now lives in transitional housing in the Orlando area in a space that accommodates only her. Her children, ages 13 and 16, are staying with their grandfather in Cocoa, and she doesn\u2019t like the neighborhood or the local schools. She wants better for them, she said, \u201cbut I just can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She works full-time at One Heart for Women and Children, a food bank in College Park, and is trying to save enough for an apartment where her family can live together. But when she looks at rent prices, and knows she\u2019ll need first and last month\u2019s rent plus a security deposit to move in, she feels dejected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems like more money\u2019s going out, rather than in my savings,\u201d she said. \u201cEven just going to get yogurt and a couple of frozen meals, I feel like I\u2019m spending like seventy dollars on nothing, and it keeps going up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials at One Heart said that since the pandemic the demographics of those seeking help has changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last few years, what we\u2019re seeing is people who are employed need more help than previously,\u201d said Cindy Underwood, the nonprofit\u2019s grant writer. \u201cThey\u2019re not coming close to meeting their needs. And what happens is they have to choose between, \u2018Am I going to pay for food or am I going to pay for my kid to go to the doctor?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, which supplies food to One Heart and to about 400 other food pantries, said demand has increased across the region. Last year at this time, the agency was passing out enough food to supply about 300,000 meals a day. This year, that number has increased to 330,000 meals a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to hear from our partners that if they had more food available, they could feed more people, because they\u2019re seeing more people,\u201d said Greg Higgerson, the agency\u2019s chief development officer.<\/p>\n
Some residents don\u2019t need free food but say higher prices have led them to alter their shopping lists when they go to the store.<\/p>\n
Maxine Fergusen, a cook at a restaurant at Orlando International Airport, said she can no longer afford what she once considered staples.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got to be careful what you buy. You got to count it when you pick it up,\u201d Fergusen said. \u201cI can\u2019t even buy water. I boil my water and drink it now.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the pandemic hit, Shanaya Mims, 36, was renting a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom condo in Altamonte Springs, near Cranes Roost Park, for $1,250 a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have one worry in the world where my kids were because that\u2019s how safe my neighborhood was, and that\u2019s how close-knitted the community was,\u201d said Mims, a single mother with four children.<\/p>\n
She was laid off from her job cleaning houses and offices during the pandemic and relied on credit cards to get by for a time.<\/p>\n
She returned to work eventually, but in 2022, when she went to renew her lease, her landlord raised her rent to $1,650 a month. She couldn\u2019t keep up with that payment, and her family was evicted. They lived for a while with relatives and even slept in their car some nights.<\/p>\n
Now Mims rents a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment near Camping World Stadium for $1,050 a month. At about 600 square feet, it is half the size of their place in Altamonte Springs, and doesn\u2019t have central heat or air.<\/p>\n
Her younger sister lives with her, sleeping in a room with Mims\u2019 four children, which is barely large enough to fit the two sets of bunk beds and a bassinet.<\/p>\n
Mims worries about crime in the neighborhood and for her children\u2019s safety when they go outside to play.<\/p>\n
But with limited income, bad credit and an eviction on her record, it is the best she can do.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s now working two cleaning jobs, an average of 60 hours a week, to try and get her family in a better position. But the rising costs have her feeling stuck.<\/p>\n
Many nights, her children eat ramen noodles or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner because it\u2019s all she can afford.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we can\u2019t get the groceries we need. Sometimes I\u2019m literally riding around on \u2018E\u2019 to get to work and get the kids to school,\u201d Mims said. \u201cThere are nights that we don\u2019t have lights on, I\u2019m ashamed to say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a west Orlando Walmart, Natilee Hamilton carefully considers the cost of each item she places in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[147,105523,105522,11412,139,141,140,105521,2103],"class_list":["post-237464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-central-florida","tag-glenda-rigby","tag-natilee-hamilton","tag-oil-prices","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-shanaya-mims","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}