Seventeen years ago, the community day center Transformation Village was launched with a mission to improve the quality of life for residents of Bithlo, a rural, historically underserved part of east Orange County where 26 percent of the population lives in poverty.
Described by historians as the “Gateway to Orange County,” locals have grimly referred to it as the “Nightmare Before Christmas” — a reference to the village of Christmas located just a few miles east.
Initially, Bithlo’s Transformation Village received little government support. But founder Tim McKinney, a community advocate, told Orlando Weekly that the government’s cold shoulder toward them has changed. “I would say that we have basically universal support from all levels of government — federal, state and local,” he said.
He added that it’s a welcome change. “Literally, we were fighting like hell to raise awareness to this community that had been ignored and overlooked for decades.”
Located about a half-hour east of downtown Orlando, Transformation Village serves as the most comprehensive resource hub for Bithlo’s homeless population, many of whom camp out in the woods, outside of the public eye.
Founded in 1912, the town of Bithlo “flourished in its early days,” according to historians, but by 1926, its prosperity “began to take a downward spiral.” In 1977, the state legislature revoked its charter, leaving it an unincorporated part of Orange County.
“There is relatively little there today as far as businesses are concerned,” historians Tana Mosier Porter and Cassandra Fyotek wrote about the community in 2009, “and Bithlo is just another small community that has been swallowed up by the ever-widening Orlando metropolitan area.”
But McKinney and others haven’t allowed the community to remain neglected. Today, the Transformation Village campus features a primary school for children, a playground, a community garden, and a home-style cooling center — based out of a small, red residential building — stocked with snacks, coffee, computers, and a relaxed setting to sit down and escape Florida’s stifling heat. Through a partnership with the nonprofit SALT, the campus also offers free laundry services and mobile showers five days a week.
“I think we’ve created the most comprehensive continuum of care anywhere in Central Florida, out here in Bithlo, serving all of East Orange County and even parts of Seminole,” McKinney said.
As of the last year or so, the campus also houses a small treatment clinic for people with opioid addiction, offering medication-assisted treatment — the most effective treatment for the condition — two days a week, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, free of charge.
It’s a meaningful effort in a community with few resources to address a deadly surge in local opioid overdose deaths, a struggle that’s hit many communities across the U.S. over the last couple of decades.
Dr. Thomas Hall, a substance abuse specialist and director of the Orange County Drug-Free Coalition, said that although drug overdose deaths have been declining over the last couple of years — after spiking during the COVID-19 pandemic — that dropoff hasn’t been as prominent in lower-income communities like Bithlo. “If we want to save people’s lives, you know, this is where you do it,” Hall told Orlando Weekly in an interview.
According to the county, data from Transformation Village show that more than 1,000 east Orange County residents are facing housing instability or “limited access to essential care.” Studies have found that homeless people who use drugs are up to nine times more likely to overdose compared to people with secure housing, underscoring the need to fill gaps in access to resources.
Research has found that medication-assisted treatment — utilizing methadone or buprenorphine — can cut the risk of death overdose in half, in part by reducing drug cravings and helping people with addiction manage highly uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms that might otherwise lead them to relapse.
Meeting people where they’re at
Hall and other local nonprofit leaders spoke toOrlando Weekly at Transformation Village, boosting a new investment from Orange County that will allow the day center to expand its medication-assisted treatment offerings from two days to four days a week.
On Mondays and Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., this will be offered through a county-operated mobile treatment clinic, dubbed Better Access to Treatment, or the “BATmobile.”
It’s funded by money the county has received through national settlements with opioid distributors and manufacturers to address the opioid overdose crisis, including treatment and prevention projects. The county expects to receive $50 to $60 million in funds through 2040. A sliver of that first began pouring in in 2023.
Hall, a treatment provider of more than 20 years, is leading the newly expanded BATmobile initiative at Transformation Village, in partnership with the nonprofit STEPS, which will also offer mental health counseling, health screenings and free HIV/hepatitis testing through its own mobile clinic onsite.
“It’s the very simple concept of meeting people where they are at, right?” said Cheryl Bello, CEO of STEPS. “We know that our citizens are wary, so we will make every effort to meet people where they are at and go to them and educate them as to the services that are available.”
That includes joining local peer outreach specialists like Kala Bruning who go into Bithlo’s woods to connect local homeless folks with resources, including free doses of naloxone (a life-saving medicine capable of reversing an opioid overdose).
Bruning, 22, is the young mother of a 5-year-old son and 10-month-old child. Although she hasn’t experienced substance abuse herself, her mom is now three years sober after battling addiction. So is her brother. A native Floridian, Bruning met McKinney at the memorial of her older son’s father, who died of a fentanyl overdose five years ago when their baby was just seven months old. She was just 17 herself at the time.
Giving an Orlando Weekly reporter a tour of the campus Monday, Bruning admitted that the work she does at Transformation Village wears on her sometimes — it’s a lot of emotional labor — but she ultimately finds it rewarding. “I’m so glad to be a part of this,” she said.
McKinney, for his part, is hopeful that this latest investment from the county will help save lives by allowing more people wrestling opioid dependence to get help for their struggles sooner.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever known anybody that’s been addicted to opioids — in particular fentanyl — but when you’re dopesick and you’re ready to make a decision, to make a change and get on medication, you need to do it then, you know? You can’t just wait till Wednesday, because then life happens and you might use again and you might die in the meantime,” he explained.
Opioid use disorder, also known as opioid addiction, affects millions of people in the U.S, according to federal survey data — yet only a fraction (17 percent) report receiving medication-assisted treatment. Since 1999, more than 1 million people in the U.S. have died of a drug overdose, and rural communities have been disproportionately affected.
Rural communities have been disproportionately affected by the overdose crisis
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid about 50 times more powerful than heroin, has been driving the surge in overdose deaths in recent years. The overdose crisis hasn’t just affected people with drug addiction, but also people — including teenagers — using illicit drugs recreationally. Fentanyl has been found laced into drugs such as cocaine and meth, and in counterfeit pills sold by drug dealers as prescription drugs like Xanax or Vicodin.
And if you don’t have tolerance built up for opioids, even a small amount of fentanyl — as little as a couple of milligrams — can be deadly.
Bruning, the peer outreach specialist, said she wonders today if her son’s father would still be alive if he’d been able to access the resources that Transformation Village has now five years ago.
In addition to connecting locals with treatment and signing them up for insurance coverage, the community campus also has a couple of storage buildings. This allows people who are homeless to safely store their belongings while they seek intensive treatment for a drug or mental health issue elsewhere.
“What I love is that the more people are involved, the more people are out there meeting other people in the community where they are, they have so much more of an opportunity to see what’s next in store for them in their life,” said Stephanie Bowman, founder of the College Park food pantry One Heart for Women and Children.
Bowman was homeless herself nearly 30 years ago, and credits STEPS with helping her find a new direction in life.
“It’s just people helping people,” said Bowman, who understands the feeling that all doors have been closed, and no one’s coming to actually help. “People say that they’re gonna come, some do come, but then they never come back,” she recalls hearing from people on the street.
Orange County’s BATmobile, in partnership with STEPS and Bowman’s organization, have conducted outreach and provided free mobile medical services at local parks in an effort to reach those most unlikely to access those services otherwise.
All three — Hall, Bowman and Bello — recalled one homeless man they met during one of these outreach events who was initially wary of the group. “He was very guarded and resistant,” said Bello, explaining it takes time to build the necessary rapport to earn a person’s trust. “One of the things he said, he said, ‘You can’t help us,’” Bowman recalled.
People say they’ll help, he’d told them, but they don’t come back. One thing the man needed that day, according to Bello, was a cell phone, something that STEPS was quickly able to provide.
It wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a $1,000 check to pay for food, some clean clothes or a hotel room. But it did save his life. “Unknowingly, he had an underlying medical condition,” Bello said. “Three days later, he had a heart attack, and he called us to let us know that because of that cell phone, even though he was transient in a park, he was able to call 911. 911 was able to transport him to the emergency room, where he received medical care. And I think that was the moment that he needed to see that community support really was working.”
Hall reassured that Orange County is working to “stretch every dollar” they receive through the national opioid legal settlements. They’ve established a program to provide medication-assisted treatment, referrals and case management — including health and career support — to Orange County residents free of charge, with a focus on people coming out of the local jail or hospital emergency rooms who are at higher risk of drug overdose.
They’re also using funds to try and help address other underlying health and housing issues, too, in partnership with nonprofits like STEPS in the private sector. Bello, of STEPS, estimates they’ve saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars by diverting people from jail and hospital ERs, and by preventing NICU stays for babies born to women with opioid use disorder — a target population for her organization’s partially county-funded residential treatment program.
“Everybody is a piece of the puzzle,” Bello said.
Are you or a loved one struggling with substance abuse or addiction? Find resources in Orange County through Orange County Responds here.
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