The extreme heat in Central Florida has been hard to ignore for the past couple of weeks.
While some people have the luxury of cooling off in an air-conditioned home, others have no escape.
The high temperatures are intersecting with the housing crisis and putting the unhoused at risk.
Eric Gray is the executive director of the Christian Service Center in Downtown Orlando. The organization supports the unhoused with food, drinks, laundry, and most importantly, helps them find shelter.
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He said people who do not have a home are at risk in the heat.
“It’s a real dangerous combination,” Gray said. “If you’re already unhealthy... that’s just (going to) further exacerbate your health condition.
Gray said unhoused people can’t even find cool relief at night when the humidity is high.
Barbara Frede spends her days and nights outside.
“One day, I got too overheated, and the paramedics had to come, and my temperature was like 104 degrees,” Frede said. “You try to drink a lot of water, but sometimes, that (doesn’t) even help.”
She said without the cooling rooms at the service center, a lot of people would die.
“When the temperatures start to get above 100-degree heat index for consistent days, we know we’re gonna have more visits from emergency rescue,” Gray said.
Unhoused people are often forced to walk barefoot when their shoes are stolen.
Gray said in this heat, concrete can reach up to 115 degrees, which can severely burn their feet.
He said many of the people who come to the center for help had a home in Orlando at one point, where they could escape the blazing sun and humid air.
He said that since then, the city of Orlando has hit the trifecta of housing challenges.
“We’ve had a huge increase in median rent, we have a very low number of available affordable housing vouchers, and we have an incredibly high increase in the disparity of available affordable housing,” Gray said.
As housing prices skyrocket, more people are taking shelter under overpasses and archways of buildings.
“Homelessness is a housing problem,” Gray said.
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