The number of homeless people identified in Central Florida earlier this year through an annual survey remained relatively stable, compared to last year, but local advocates warn that these limited counts may not provide the full picture.

During this year’s point-in-time count, an annual census of the region’s homeless population conducted in January, 300 volunteers through the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida identified 2,724 homeless people in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, the nonprofit announced Tuesday. This includes 1,731 people who had some form of shelter and 993 people who were sleeping on the streets, in their cars or in the woods.

The overall total, conducted through a three-day survey, is roughly the same number of homeless people identified in January 2025. Over 40 percent of those identified as homeless were children under 18 and older adults aged 55 and older. “Do we think we found everyone who’s homeless? We’re not that naive,” admitted Martha Are, CEO of the Homeless Services Network, speaking at a press conference Tuesday in downtown Orlando.

An annual census identified 2,724 homeless people in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties in early 2026

Last month, Are said, local homeless service organizations in Orlando fielded requests for housing assistance from more than 1,300 people who were newly homeless for the first time — demonstrating a stark surge in need, despite seemingly stable numbers.

Since 2022, the number of people counted in Central Florida without any form of shelter has increased 133 percent, according to annual point-in-time count data. The vast majority of the region’s unsheltered population — 67 percent — are concentrated in Orange County.

“During this count, back in January, we saw that more than a quarter of the people who are unsheltered, who are outside, are women,” Are pointed out. “Those women were more likely to be sleeping in their cars compared to their male counterparts. More than one in five of these unsheltered women reported being victims of domestic violence.”

“Just think about that,” she noted. “Being in an abusive relationship should not lead to you sleeping outside.”

Rethinking solutions

The city of Orlando and Orange County governments have poured millions of local and federal tax dollars into addressing affordable housing shortages and homelessness in recent years — investing in projects such as hotel conversions, comprehensive day services and mobile bus shelters that offer case management and try to connect people with temporary or permanent housing options.

Still, the Orlando metropolitan area, broadly, is still reeling from double-digit rent hikes that hit the region post-pandemic, in addition to higher homeowner costs, higher condo fees from statewide condominium reform laws and, more recently, higher grocery and gas prices thanks to the Trump administration’s tariffs and U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

Dale Brill, chief policy officer for Habitat for Humanity in the greater Orlando region, said the issue of homelessness is “solvable” but argues it’s “fundamentally driven by a housing system that fails.” He also believes the public perception of the homeless population fails to capture the full reality.

“We know that they don’t see the folks that are in the rapids that aren’t necessarily tied to mental illness or drug addiction,” he said at Tuesday’s press conference.

“When you look at the individual vulnerabilities that people experience, that certainly does determine who falls through the cracks,” he admitted. “But if you think about this, until we address at the same time the upstream housing system problems, the crack will become wider and wider and wider, and more and more people will fall into the depths of homelessness.”

One of these upstream problems is a national shortage of affordable housing that’s particularly pronounced in the Orlando metro. A recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, for instance, found the Orlando metro has the second-worst affordable housing shortage for extremely low income renters in the nation, behind only Las Vegas. The Orlando-Sanford-Kissimmee metro has just 13 available and affordable housing units available for every 100 renter households, the report states.

“Extremely low income,” in the report, is defined as any household earning 0 to 30 percent of the average median income, which is equal to a maximum annual income of $22,150 in Orange County. “That alone, it’s just a bad thing,” Are said. “There’s not enough units. When there’s not enough units, people end up living outside.”

Slim options

But Florida law has also limited a person or family’s options for doing even that. Under a state law approved by the Florida Legislature and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024, sleeping on public property, including public sidewalks, is strictly prohibited. After that law fully took effect in January 2025, Orlando police quickly made a wave of arrests in and on the edges of downtown.

Homeless advocates, including Are, have said the new Florida law — modeled after a policy proposal from the right-wing, Texas-based Cicero Institute — is pushing people outside the downtown Orlando core and into more rural and suburban parts of Central Florida — areas that are more difficult for volunteers to search during annual point-in-time counts.

“We really think that this anti-camping legislation has had a huge effect,” Are told Orlando Weekly after Tuesday’s press conference. While the visible presence of homeless people downtown Orlando declined this year — based on volunteers’ January count — there was an increased presence identified in surrounding rural areas such as Winter Garden, Bithlo and St. Cloud.

Are also reiterated concerns about how many older adults are becoming newly homeless for the first time after living comfortably for most of their lives. Typically, she said, this happens as a result of a medical crisis draining a person’s savings, living on a fixed income that fails to cover rising costs, or other life shocks such as losing a spouse and losing their spouse’s income.

“They are more likely to be single households, which means they’re out there alone,” she said, referring to data compiled by this year’s point-in-time volunteers. Homelessness among people aged 55 and older in Central Florida has increased 6 percent over the last year, according to this year’s count. The data doesn’t capture the number of people or families in the region who are living in motel rooms or doubled up in a friend’s or family member’s home.

Jason, a formerly homeless man with a disability and serious mental illness, told Orlando Weekly Tuesday that it can be a long journey out of homelessness, even when you’re finally able to access resources.

Jason, who preferred to give just his first name, lives with schizoaffective disorder, a mental health disorder that can include symptoms of bipolar disorder — a mood disorder featuring severe swings between depression and mania — and schizophrenia, a mental health disorder that can cause delusions and make it difficult to stay grounded in reality and trust others’ perceptions.

Jason became homeless about a decade ago after declining to take medication for his mental illness and attempting suicide. Living with a disability that confines him to a wheelchair, he said it was “almost impossible” on the streets just to sleep — no one provides a pamphlet for how to survive homelessness. “Not being able to close your eyes because someone might rob you, someone might tell you you’re in the wrong place, someone might tell you you don’t belong there, when all you’re trying to do is survive one night at a time.”

“It’s insanely difficult, and having permanent housing literally changes our lives,” he told press.

Jason, a formerly homeless man with a disability and serious mental illness, explains how difficult it can be to live on the streets at a May 12, 2026 press conference revealing results of the 2026 annual point-in-time count in Orlando. Credit: McKenna Schueler

Today, Jason has an apartment specifically designed for a wheelchair user, with an American Disabilities Act-compliant bathroom and other appliances that allow him to live independently. “When you experience long-term homelessness, feeling like a normal person is insanely difficult,” he explained. The first thing he was able to do that made him feel normal again was being able to buy a meal out with a friend who was also homeless.

It’s the simple things that matter. Although just 22 percent of the national homeless population lives with some form of serious mental illness, according to 2024 survey data, Jason told Orlando Weekly that the most important thing for the public to know about the seriously ill who are on the streets is that most are actively seeking help, but may face barriers to care.

“We don’t want to be homeless, we don’t want to have mental health issues, but sometimes those things run together. It’s a cause and effect kind of thing.”

Making the investment

The city of Orlando in 2021 committed $58 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds to an “Accelerate Orlando” fund to finance initiatives to address the affordable housing shortage and homelessness.

Examples so far have included a $6 million investment in modernizing a comprehensive day center for homeless people in Parramore run by the nonprofit Christian Service Center and the conversion of an old, blighted hotel off Colonial Drive into Palm Garden Apartments, a 150-unit apartment complex that’s largely dedicated to low-income tenants.

“The City of Orlando remains committed to ensuring that every person, regardless of economic status, has access to quality housing that is safe and affordable and continues to work to develop short and long-term strategies to expand the city’s housing inventory for residents at all income levels,” the city shared in a news release about the project.

Orange County similarly set up an affordable housing trust fund in 2020, pledging a commitment of $160 million over the next 10 years to address housing and homelessness issues. This was initially a temporary project, until local voters approved a charter amendment in 2024 to make it permanent.

As of last September, the county has invested $58 million through the fund in more than a dozen affordable housing projects, supporting nearly 2,400 affordable units, according to a county news release.

Some projects have faced pushback, however. After city officials proposed establishing a new homeless shelter at the old Work Release Center in the SoDo district, a group of neighbors mobilized against it, quickly organizing a highly visible “Stop SODO Shelter” campaign. City officials killed the proposal in response.

Since then, a separate group of Orlando-area residents, Support Orlando Shelters (or SOS), have urged city and county officials to move ahead with plans for a new shelter — if not in SoDo, then elsewhere — in addition to other initiatives intended to improve quality of life for the local homeless, such as free transportation to cooling centers during periods of extreme heat.

“It is said that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members,” said Kathleen Fitzgerald, an Orlando resident and advocate with Support Orlando Shelters, speaking to county commissioners at a recent board meeting.

Meanwhile, county officials are currently eying a property in the Goldenrod area for a potential 150-bed shelter — a $26 million project that would take years to be fully completed. County leaders say it could be operational by 2030, according to News 6, if it gets majority approval from the board of county commissioners.