Teresa Boles waits patiently among other homeless for delivery of food at Lake Eola. She has been on the streets of Orlando for 10 years. [Orlando] Food Not Bombs continues to feed the homeless at the blue picnic tables of Lake Eola.
Homeless find meals harder to come by
April Hunt | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 12, 2006
It's nearly quitting time in downtown Orlando and Regina Randell is sitting quietly at Lake Eola waiting for her first meal of the day.
The city was a different place when Randell, 49, grew up in what she remembers as a small town. There were no condo high-rises, no wine bars and no problems if you ate in the park.
"It's a nice little park to enjoy a meal," Randell said while waiting at the blue picnic tables where charities and church groups have been feeding other people without homes, steady jobs or enough to eat.
"This is the safest place to be," she said. "You don't feel homeless here."
Last month, Orlando banned groups from serving meals in the park and other city property downtown, saying that serving the meals led to increased crime, litter and panhandling.
Instead, leaders urged advocates to join existing programs or to use the vacant parking lot about a mile from the park that the city has designated.
But the homeless people who seek out the free meals say that they prefer Lake Eola for the same reasons that other citizens like it. It's a busy, safe and clean place to be. There, they say, they feel like they are part of the community.
"Anything that's offered is in a drug-infested neighborhood," said Dwayne, a 42-year-old electrician who became homeless two months ago, when a back injury prevented him from working and making enough money for his $900-a-month rent. "For anybody who works, how are you going to accept that?"
The Christian Service Center, Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida and Salvation Army all offer afternoon and evening meals, though not daily, to anyone who shows up.
To supplement those meals, church groups and social activists began bringing homemade meals and cold drinks to homeless and working poor people who can't, or won't, go to those sites.
Alternative sites for meals
The existing formal serving of meals takes place away from the gentrifying city center, in the Parramore neighborhood.
The service center's Daily Bread serves lunch every day except Sunday. Soup and bread are available at 3:45 weekday afternoons at the "Sally," while the coalition serves a full dinner at 7 p.m.
Homeless people and their advocates report seeing drug dealing near all of those meal-serving sites. Even large, healthy men say they are vulnerable to attack, either for sport or the little bit of cash they must carry on them when they have it.
The working poor -- which agencies say is the fastest-growing segment of the homeless as housing costs rise -- don't feel safe there.
Like Dwayne, who doesn't want his last name used because he doesn't want his employer to know he's living on the streets, they go to the west side of town only for meals.
Once they've eaten, they return to the east side of I-4, to Lake Eola and the busier downtown streets.
"We can feed here and an hour later drive over to the park, and there they are," said Pam Adams, an organizer with Tailgating for Jesus.
The group, Seventh Day Adventists from across the region, agreed to leave Lake Eola and take its Saturday afternoon meals nearby to what's known as Sylvia Lane.
There, four picnic tables sit in a parking lot surrounded by razor wire but no streetlights. Just south of the State Road 408 overpass, the site is part of a maze of one-way streets in a mostly industrial area with few pedestrians. The city recently installed portable toilets, but there is no place to wash up, either for those eating or those serving.
Still, 100-plus people show up for meals in the lot. For a population accustomed to "stretch foods" at the main serving agencies -- lots of pasta, rice and stews -- the menu of fresh salad, cold juice and chunks of watermelon and other fruit is a lure in itself.
"We're committed to doing this, but we're hoping something will change," said Ron Adams, another volunteer and Pam's husband. "This is just not as safe or clean like where we were before."
Chances to exit street life
Leaders at the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, the region's largest homeless-service agency, believe their program is the safe alternative.
The coalition is the only large charity to publicly support the new law, saying it will bring more volunteers, and more homeless people, to its operation on Terry Street.
"The best thing they can do is guide that person where they not only get something in their stomach but get their lives back," interim director Dave Birmingham said.
The agency's dinner fed nearly 650 people on July 31 -- a sign that even some nearby residents had run out of money for food at the end of the month -- and less than half that number two nights later.
Everyone is offered an opportunity to meet with case managers, to talk about rehab, job training or other services.
Plenty of homeless people take them up on the services. The Men's Pavilion, which can host 375 men, is nearly full every night.
Food Not Bombs
Ben Rudolph said he can offer some of the same help, just on a smaller scale. He is a volunteer with [Orlando] Food Not Bombs, an advocacy group that has defied the ordinance by continuing to offer meals at 4:30 [actually 5:00] Wednesday afternoons at Lake Eola.
The mostly young volunteers mingle with those who come for meals , which is how Rudolph connected with a heroin addict. In recovery himself, Rudolph invited the man to his next Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
"He's in a nine-month rehab program now. We're here to feed people, and we also show there's still hope that some people want to help them," Rudolph said.
That's how Orlando used to be, Randell said as she waited for a Food Not Bombs vegan meal that contained the luxury of a cold fresh-fruit cup.
Now, she said, Orlando is a city of strangers, people from all over who have landed here. Randell, who just learned she has diabetes, ekes out a living helping those people enjoy their new home.
She has been hired to pull weeds in downtown flowerbeds. She also cleans construction debris from one of the new condos towering over the downtown skyline.
"Some of the homeless do make a mess. They are messing it up for people like me," Randell said. "This is my home, and they're trying to run me away."
April Hunt can be reached at ahunt@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6269.
Teresa Boles waits patiently among other homeless for delivery of food at Lake Eola. She has been on the streets of Orlando for 10 years. [Orlando] Food Not Bombs continues to feed the homeless at the blue picnic tables of Lake Eola.
Bill Funai,55, eats a meal of danish, soup, bread and Mountain Dew at the Salvation Army on West Colonial Drive. Funai has been homeless for about 8 years and has lived in Orlando for 21 years.He used to own a home in Winter Park with his wife.The Salvation Army will serve about 100 to 150 a day for dinner. The Salvation Army on West Colonial Dr., where homeless and low income people gather for a meal between 3:45 and 4:45 p.m.
John Hollings, 65, enjoys a fresh watermelon Wednesday provided by the [Orlando] Food Not Bombs organization helping to feed the homeless. Hollings is retired and on a fixed income but has been living on the street s for three years. "I try to work to supplement income and I try to survive, but I can't afford any place. Thank God for access of free meals." said Hollings Food Not Bombs continues to feed the homeless at the blue picnic tables of Lake Eola. As the Orlando Police Department arrives in the area, the organization decides to take all of the homeless off Osceola Ave. and Pine Street
Calvin Sutton eats his soup at the The Christian Service Center Daily Bread in West Central Blvd., during lunchtime, noon, where homeless and and low income people gather for a meal. On an average day the center will feed between 300 and 350 people.