Beginning Wednesday, the city of Orlando and the nonprofit Christian Service Center will be providing overnight shelter and accommodations to a rotating group of homeless people through a city-funded program involving retrofitted Greyhound buses.
Modeled after a “Dignity Bus” program in Vero Beach, the city’s new bus program will offer no-cost shelter for up to 42 people per night on two Greyhound buses the city purchased and rehabbed for $175,000 each. The buses offer individual sleeping pods with a mattress, sheets, a light, a charging outlet and a curtain for privacy. They also contain a restroom and have air conditioning.
According to Eric Gray, CEO of the Christian Service Center, each bed costs the program about $33 per person, per night — just a fraction of what it would cost to jail a person for sleeping on public property instead. According to ClickOrlando, the cost of detaining a person in the local jail is about $140 per night.
“No veteran, no family, no child, no person should be sleeping on the streets tonight, or sleeping in a car,” said Gray, speaking at a press conference at City Hall Wednesday morning. “We just started the second quarter of the 21st Century, and I think we can do better.”
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The bus program first got a green light for funding in March. It’s the latest innovative approach the city has taken to addressing homelessness in Orlando, a city with an estimated housing shortage of nearly 9,400 units and at least a couple hundred people left without shelter each night. Although this bus model is only a drop in the bucket, city and nonprofit leaders remain optimistic.
“This project is not just about buses,” said Gray, who’s running for a seat on the Orange County Commission next year. “It’s about imagination, dignity, compassion and, most importantly, conviction that every single person in Orlando deserves a safe place to sleep and a chance to rebuild their lives.”
Gray said nine out of 10 of those who are homeless in our community are local, and had a home here before they were forced onto the streets. “They’re not hitchhiking to Florida to be homeless,” said Gray. “They’re from here. They’re our neighbors, and we need to have their backs one way or the other.”
The program, costing an estimated $3 million over three years, is being funded through the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency for the downtown Orlando district. It will be managed by the Christian Service Center, which has a day center for unsheltered people just west of downtown that offers social services such as laundry, mail boxes, clothing and food. The city recently committed a $6 million grant for the nonprofit to renovate its day center, so it can offer more and improved comprehensive services.
How does the bus program work?
The two rehabbed Greyhound buses will load people up from the Christian Service Center location on West Central Boulevard for overnight accommodation, and will be parked at a “secure” place nearby. “We’re not talking too much about the parking of it, because we wanted to make sure it’s a secure space that nobody’s really hassling,” Gray explained.
The two buses together have the capacity to fit 42 people per night. The buses will also have an onboard attendant who will stay awake to ensure there’s no trouble. The buses are air-conditioned and have a restroom. Importantly, unlike most homeless shelters, people with pets will be allowed to board, too.
Pets, such as dogs, can serve as a lifeline for homeless people — as protection against harm on the streets, and as comfort. Gray confirmed to Orlando Weekly that people will be able to leave their pets with Christian Service Center staff for the night, where they will be held in crates in an air-conditioned room at the nonprofit’s intake building.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who’s in the running for Orlando mayor, was part of a group of locals who tested out the bus sleeping pods Tuesday night. At the program’s launch Wednesday morning, she told Orlando Weekly that the pods felt private and snug enough, if slightly claustrophobic and perhaps “not for everyone.” She also brought her own pillow and a blanket to use on top of the bus bunk’s fitted sheets.
According to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Gray, the goal is to connect people who board the bus with other long-term social and housing assistance services, including permanent supportive housing for those who need it. They call it their 407 Connect plan.
“It won’t be the same 42 people over the next three years; we expect more than 600 of our neighbors will find refuge here, and more than 407 of them will be connected to permanent housing, and that’s why we call it 407 Connect.
“Through the city’s partnership with the Christian Service Center, we hope to get more than 400 people into housing over the next three years, and it takes one step at a time,” said Dyer. “We hope this also inspires other communities within our regions to look for solutions.”
Orlando and Orange County are two municipalities that have borne the brunt of concerns and complaints about rising homelessness, even though it’s an issue that affects other cities and neighboring counties such as Osceola and Seminole as well.
An annual count of homeless people in the tri-county Central Florida region found 2,781 people on a single night this past January who were living in shelters, transitional housing, in their cars or on the streets — just a slight increase from the year prior. More than 40 percent were children under 18 and adults 55 and older.
“Heartbreakingly, more than half are sleeping outside at a time in their lives when they’re more likely to have serious health problems — including chronic heart disease, diabetes and respiratory conditions — made worse by their lack of housing,” said Martha Are, CEO of the nonprofit Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, which facilitated the count.
The city of Orlando dedicated $58 million in federal pandemic relief funds the city received under the Biden administration to address housing and homelessness issues. Not all (and perhaps no) neighboring cities have been able to say the same.
“Orlando cannot solve homelessness alone,” Gray argued. “Every county in Central Florida, every community in Central Florida, has adults and children without a place to call home.”
Under federal directives from Trump administration officials for states to pass laws criminalizing homelessness, the problem could grow worse. Florida already has a law in place, effective Jan. 1 of this year, that forbids sleeping on public property.
According to the White House, more than 200 municipalities in the U.S. (including Orange County and Orlando) have similarly passed ordinances against people sleeping outdoors. The Trump administration is also looking to cut funding for and further restrict housing assistance programs that trickle down to the local level here in Central Florida, such as housing voucher programs for low-income families.
A budget proposal from the White House also calls for the consolidation of the federal Continuum of Care program, a $3.6 billion program that aims to help coordinate longer-term solutions for homelessness, with another grant program that focuses on emergency and short-term strategies. Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner has criticized Continuum of Care, calling it “a tool by the left to push a woke agenda at the expense of people in need.”
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This article appears in Best of Orlando (R) 2025.
