OCALA, FL (352today.com) – The City of Ocala‘s Community Development Services Manager and Deputy Director Robin Ford provided the quarterly report for the Office of Homelessness Prevention at the Ocala City Council meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025.
“We had a great year for the fiscal year 2024-2025,” said Ford. “We served 939 clients, including 113 children. Our housing outcomes for our outreach, which we run with three individuals, 81 percent of the clients that were in our project that we exited, we exited to stable housing, permanent housing destinations. We provided 3,531 services to clients during the fiscal year, and that’s often more than one service per client.”
The Office of Homelessness Prevention also worked tirelessly to prevent homelessness, and a lot of the calls that come into the office were from people that still have housing, but are in need of rental or legal assistance, something other than housing at that particular moment, said Ford. The office also handled 2,771 prevention assistance calls to their office, with the majority of the calls coming in from their main line. They receive calls not only from citizens, but from shelters, other service providers, as the office tries to keep the most up to date information, so they can have those resources available.
Shelter and stability
During the last fiscal year, the office worked with Marion County and all of the service providers within Marion County, to house 235 people, who were literally homeless, living outside, in a vehicle or in an emergency shelter, said Ford…