KISSIMMEE, Fla.,None — Workers with the Department of Children and Families and other organizations went out to a Kissimmee hotel, in an area where hundreds of homeless families are living.
It's part of a new program to help homeless families get off the streets.
Tiea Wheeler and Andrew Phares walked to Kissimmee's Budgetel Inn Wednesday to apply for public assistance. The couple is expecting their first child, but they're just days away from living on the street.
"Bus fare uses up most of our money," Phares said.
Wheeler and Phares received emergency assistance from a DCF partner participating in this new "Homeless to Home" event.
For the next six months, DCF and other social service agencies such as Community Based Care of Central Florida, Second Harvest and Workforce Central Florida are setting up shop in the parking lots of area hotels to meet the needs of families who can't reach them.
"One of these people, they're going to pay for us to stay in a hotel another week," Phares said.
DCF estimates there are some 1,500 families already receiving benefits living in hotels in Osceola, Seminole and Orange counties. But, countless others could be.
"It's a lot of people who live in the hotels, homeless, without no food, no jobs," hotel resident Elwin Ayala said.
Ayala needs a job. It will allow him to spend more time with his kids, who live with their mother. On Wednesday, he was able to visit Workforce Central Florida in the parking lot of his hotel. Soon, others will be able to do the same from their hotels.
"If we can be out here once every two weeks, we feel like we're making a difference one family at a time," said Bill D'Aiuto, DCF director for self-sufficiency.
DCF's next Homeless to Home event is scheduled for March 5 at the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel on North Oxford Road in Casselberry.
WFTV
