For more than 20 years, an Orange County nonprofit has helped the homeless using a 15-passenger van, a trailer full of cots and a network of welcoming churches.
Family Promise of Greater Orlando’s efforts reduce strain on the region’s limited number of homeless shelters — and represent the smaller-scale, creative options Central Florida needs to help a growing number of people without homes, homeless advocates say.
The nonprofit’s work, they add, also helps the church congregants see that in many ways the homeless are “just like us.”
Family Promise uses a network of nine Orange churches and its own Winter Park offices to host four families, or up to 14 individuals, at a time. They are provided meals and a safe place to sleep, staying a week at each place.
Every Sunday, those needing shelter board the van, with the cots in tow, and move to another host site, limiting the burden or disruptions at any one of the churches.
The nonprofit also works to help the families secure permanent housing.