WHAT IS A COMPREHENSIVE DAY SERVICES CENTER?
$6 Million Campus Renovation Now in Progress (2025)
After years of planning, a key part of the City of Orlando's Accelerate Orlando project is currently underway and will transform our Downtown Campus with improved amenities to better provide day services to those experiencing homelessness and the working poor. We are posting video and photo updates on our social media.
How Can you Help?
Please contact Executive Director Eric Gray if you are interested in learning how you or your organization can help see this project to fruition. With the City of Orlando contributing $5.1 Million in reimbursable funding towards this project, we need the community's support to fully realize this incredible evolution.
Several years ago, Orlando was identified as the largest American city without a Comprehensive Day Services Center for adults experiencing homelessness. Why does that matter today?
As homelessness continues to rise and affordable housing remains scarce across Central Florida, dealing with the “homeless problem” is quickly becoming a tier 1 emergency that requires solutions-based services. Imagine a three-legged stool. As it relates to addressing homelessness, a comprehensive day services facility is the third, vital leg along with the other two: shelter and outreach.
About ten years ago, the City of Orlando made the creation of a day services center a priority and approached our board of directors with the request to adapt our campus and fill this role due to the CSC’s longtime presence in the Downtown corridor where there is a high concentration of homeless population, as there is in every major metropolitan area.
Beginning in the Fall of 2020, we began the process of getting estimates, consulting with vendors, and completing necessary paperwork with the City. Rather than wait around for funding, we started inviting other agencies to our campus that actually do services like showers and laundry, or a dinner program.
“Orlando was also the largest city to not have a place where people can walk in and say, ‘I’m homeless and don’t know what to do,’” according to Executive Director Eric Gray. “We are now the robust front door for newly homeless and long-term homeless alike to enter into the system of care or update their status.”
View Our Comprehensive Day Services Plan
Click to learn about stats on homelessness, our history, onsite partners & programs, capital renovation vision, operation plan & more.
Day Services Case Statement
We are getting unsheltered adults off the public streets in the thousands, reducing loitering, blight and scam artists and dealers who work to take advantage of them. We are a low-barrier campus with solutions-based programs. The campus isn't a hangout, but an entry point to lift adults & children out of homelessness- over 3,655 rescued since 2021.