ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando City Commissioners voted to approve funding for two buses that will be used as shelters. The people allowed to use the buses will already be part of a program that helps the homeless.
“When people get on the bus, and the bus has been moved to whatever location it’s parked in, they have to stay on the bus, or they lose their space.” Eric Gray of the Christian Service Center for Central Florida talks about how two 45-foot Greyhound buses will be used once they are repurposed with 20 bunk beds each.
The Shelter on Wheels is known as Dignity Buses, and some residents voiced their concerns.
Randy Ross of Stop SODO told the council, “The dignity buses are not dignity. That isn’t the way I want to sleep tonight. There are some people that really want to be homeless.
I invite you to table this and put together a task force we can all buy into. " Another resident said, “Postpone the dignity bus spending. Adding more beds only exasperates the problem.”
After hearing both sides, the city approved around 1.3 million dollars for operation and housing costs for the first year, which comes to around 78 dollars a bed per night.
Funding was also approved for a total of three years, totaling 3.4 million dollars. “Roughly about $700,000 a year and another $300,000 of the budget is set aside to get people into permanent housing.”
Commissioner Bakari Burns also questioned the cost of staffing the buses: “Having 60 percent of the budget going to personnel is kind of concerning.” We asked Gray why he spends a million dollars a year on a bus and just buys a building. He replied, “In part because nobody can agree on where to put it, and that’s one of the reasons why we pursued this project because if anyone has challenges of where it’s gonna be, we can always move it.”
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