Residents don’t like the City of Orlando’s proposed shelter location, but will the homeless?

The two groups are considering the use of the county’s vacant Work Release Center dormitory, located at 135 West Kaley Street. However, residents of Delaney and Wadeview Parks are unhappy with this decision, many of whom are already concerned with the existing homeless presence in their neighborhood.

They voiced their disapproval at a city council meeting back in November and at a series of informal meetings last month.

The “Stop SoDo Shelter” campaign held a second informal meeting Monday night.

Read: SoDo residents question Orlando Police Chief on potential crime increase from proposed shelter

The city claims the location was chosen because of its proximity to resources like Orlando Health and other homeless service providers in the area.

The proposed shelter is only a four-minute drive or a 17-minute walk away from Orlando Health, the region’s largest care facility for its needy population.

The site was also kept in mind for its cost efficiency, as officials plan to reuse the plot’s former corrections center to minimize construction and renovation costs.

WDBO spoke with Luis Nieves-Ruiz, the director of economic development at the East Central Florida Planning Council.

Ruiz examined the surrounding area of the proposed shelter, south from West Kaley Street to West Jersey Street. He found that there were no real social service establishments by industry that would serve the homeless population within a half-mile buffer zone. These boundaries are unofficial and solely meant for WDBO research purposes.

“If you build a homeless shelter there [at Kaley], you are gonna have to create some sort of way for those people to access those services,” Ruiz said.

Just outside the buffer zone, Ruiz noted that there was one social service that the community might benefit from: Up Orlando on West Michigan Street.

The Orlando Health/Amtrak station and bus stops nearby will serve as the main form of transportation for the homeless community in this area.

“The amount of traffic that you have doesn’t lend itself for people to walk around,” Ruiz said. “Especially if you go to the west side [Kaley and Michigan], with Kaley it gets really bad because it mainly industrial uses, high-intensity commercial uses.”

Ruiz says that’s something the city has to keep in mind when planning the shelter.

Cynthia Harris is the executive director of the Carson-Chaney House, a non-profit whose goals are to reduce homelessness and minimize poverty. Harris was also the former housing program manager at Homeless Services Network.

She attended the meeting and said that there is no opportunity for homeless people to grow economically. She said the shelter would be a band-aid on the affordable housing issue in the city.

“You have a lot of homeless that do day labor. That’s how they kind of thrive and survive, but day labor only takes so many people per day,” Harris said. “So once they take those people, the ones that are left over, they can’t work.”

The success of any shelter is tied to how it is managed, Commissioner Patty Sheehan says a conditional use agreement between the City of Orlando and the future shelter provider will outline terms in order for the provider to operate. When answering a question from the crowd, Sheehan agreed that this would allow people in the neighborhood to have input.

“SoDo is a very vibrant neighborhood, there’s a lot of commercial, there’s a lot of opportunities there that could lend themselves, with the right program put in place, could lend themselves to actually be able to take care of this population...better than put them back in Parramore again,” said Ruiz.

WDBO reached out to the City of Orlando for a response. Andrea Otero, the city’s public information manager, sent out a statement.

“The City of Orlando is still evaluating the site on Kaley Street to determine if it is feasible to make necessary upgrades and renovations to ensure the facility can serve as a shelter,” Otero said. “If the assessment confirms that the facility is viable, we will begin a series of public outreach opportunities to begin the conversation of what locating a shelter in this location will mean and how we can work with residents and businesses in the area to provide this much needed service for our community’s unhoused individuals.”

The next Stop SoDo Shelter meeting will be next week, and an assessment of the work release site is expected to be completed by March 30, 2024.

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