New drop-in day center for homeless youth to open this month in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood

A new drop-in day center offering access to basic amenities like showers, laundry, computers, and case management for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness is set to open Wednesday, April 9, in Pine Hills, just a few miles west of downtown Orlando.

Operated by Service And Love Together (SALT) Outreach, a Christian-led social services nonprofit, the day center is one of several projects that housing advocates are pursuing in order to address the issue of homelessness in Orlando.

“We’re at the front line,” said Eric Camarillo, executive director of SALT Outreach, in an interview with Orlando Weekly. “It’s overwhelming right now,” he admitted, explaining that the scope of the issue of homelessness “is growing rapidly.”

A count of homeless people across the region last year found a 28 percent rise in homelessness, with nearly 3,000 people either unsheltered or otherwise caught up in an unstable housing situation, living in a shelter, a hotel or couch-surfing. The number of unsheltered people — people with no place to sleep at night — more than doubled.

The new drop-in center, designated for youth and young adults aged 16 to 24, is being funded primarily through a grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded under the Biden administration. Last year, the department awarded the grant to the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, a lead agency for HUD’s local Continuum of Care program. The group, as part of their “Brighter Days” initiative, subsequently earmarked funds specifically for this project.

It’s SALT’s first youth-specific program, Camarillo confirmed. Founded in 2011, the nonprofit currently runs day service programs for people of all ages, offering mobile showers and laundry services in Orlando, Sanford, Leesburg and Bithlo (just east of Orlando) on weekdays.

Most of the young people that SALT staff see without shelter have aged out of the foster care system or are survivors of abuse or human trafficking. Some are LGBTQ+ and have either been kicked out of their homes or are running away from an abusive home environment, said Camarillo.

For him, creating a program specifically to serve younger people feels like a natural next move. “I experienced homelessness when I was younger. I was about 20 years old,” Camarillo, now 37, explained. “Being able to give back in this way to other young adults experiencing homelessness, I think was kind of a full circle moment for me.”

“Being able to give back in this way to other young adults experiencing homelessness, I think was kind of a full circle moment for me”

The drop-in center, a snug (but affordable) space at just around 1,800 square feet, will offer services like laundry, mail and access to showers for young people.

Importantly, it will also help connect young people with local housing and employment resources and offer mental health counseling. While the federal government has funded most of the project, SALT has also received funds from the Dr. Phillips Foundation, the Orange County government, and in-kind donations from the community.

It’s a community effort, and they’ve built connections. “We get so many people that come to SALT,” said Camarillo. They get inquiries from their contact form online and receive referrals from the local jail, schools, colleges and universities, and other local organizations.

Camarillo said that SALT, mostly made up of younger staff, is well-positioned to help younger people with fewer resources get their basic needs met. “It’s complicated and it’s overwhelming, especially when you’re experiencing homelessness, to be able to know how to navigate that.”

Unaffordable housing and homelessness are not new issues in Orlando. But after the first year of the pandemic, following the end of COVID-19 era eviction moratoriums, the problem grew much worse.

Eviction filings in Orange County more than doubled in 2021 from 7,194 filings to nearly 14,500 filings in 2022, according to the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. Since then, the number of eviction filings has declined somewhat, dropping 1 percent the following year and another 13 percent last year.

Nearly 30 percent of renters in Orange County spent at least 40 percent of their monthly income on housing, as of last year, according to the Shimberg Center. Across the state, roughly 3 million renters — equal to 29 percent of the renter population in Florida — are similarly cost-burdened.

Although new housing developments are popping up or in the works, in the Orlando area, there’s still a shortage of tens of thousands of housing units affordable for people earning up to 80 percent area median income, equal to about $77,000 for a family of four in Orange County or $54,050 for a single-person household.

SALT just had its ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new youth drop-in center last week, located at 5511 W. Colonial Drive. This comes after city officials decided to invest in new mobile emergency shelters (aka buses) for locals living on the streets, in an attempt to soften their decision to kill a controversial new shelter project the city was planning just south of downtown.

This post has been updated to clarify the correct spelling of Eric Camarillo’s surname. His surname is Camarillo, not Caramillo.

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This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2025.