Raw Sewage... Literally.

When Orlando City Council approved this Kaley shelter location on November 4th, our District 4 Commissioner Patty Sheehan said, "If we can do it right anywhere it would be here. I want this to be such a well run shelter that you won't even know it's there." District 5 Interim Commissioner, added, "We assure this community that we are going to do our best to make sure this is the best facility. For those that don't know I am a Paramore resident where we house 1,100 beds every single night."

With such high hopes for this Kaley shelter, I wanted to see first hand the state of the area surrounding the City's current large shelters. After all, if these commissioners want us to believe these large shelters are such a humane solution for the unhoused and offer little to no impact on the surrounding communities, I think it is only fair to expect the other shelters they approved to hold true of this high praise.

On February 4th at 1:30 I visited the Coalition For the Homeless of Central Florida building located at 18 N. Terry Ave, Orlando, FL 32801. First, I tried entering through the main gate, but since I didn't have an appointment with anyone there, I wasn't permitted to enter. The security guard did say I may be let in at intake at the rear of the building. Ok, I'll just park here and walk around the property. Walking along Ossie St. I saw another entrence. To get there I had to walk through a mud lined sidewalk, or at least I though it was mud. The door turned out to be locked, and when I turned around I notices a sewer clean out pipe with the top screwed off. I was stepping in raw sewage. I thought to myself, there is obviously a situation, and they must actively be fixing it. The thing was, there was no pumber in sight and the sewage completely covered the sidewalk and was running 100' down the street hugging the curb. I went ahead and took photos of what I saw.

On February 10th, on our way to that day's City Council meeting I went ahead and drove by there to see if it was cleaned up. To my shock it wasn't, so we went ahead and informed the commissioners about what we saw while we addressed the council. The next day, Feb 11th at 2:45 I drove by there again, and again, to my shock the the shit was still literally everywhere. This time there was a high school boy sitting on the curb next to where the mess began, and at the end of the building there was two men in wheelchairs, one of which was rolling in the sewage. There was also a man sleeping against the shelter building on a cardboard box. There were also piles to trash all along the building and 20' away, an abandoned shopping cart filled with stuff. Upon witnessing this and seeing that the city left this mess for at least a week I finally reported the incident to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, incident number 2025-1301. There are a lot of human communicable diseases such as hepatitis, giardiasis, intestinal worms that can be transmitted by the human fecal-oral route.

On February 14th, I went back yet again to check-in. This time someone finally took the time to at least hose off the sidewalk, but upon closer inspection no disinfectant agent was used the and sewage along the curb was still there all 100' down the street of it. I also noticed a camera positioned on the electric pole right above the entrance where this occurred. This means the Coalition staff and other city patrolling units either never traveled around the building for a whole week or they simply didn't care about the sewage contamination. You form your own opinion. All I know for sure, is I wouldn't trust these commissioners' grand vision for any future shelter given the state of their current shelters.

Below are unedited images of the Coalition For the Homeless of Central Florida back entrance located on Ossie St. taken on February 4th at 1:30.