Do you know how many Seminole County residents are now homeless due to the current housing crisis? I was just reading the OrlandoSentinel.com when I ran across an article entitled, “Number of homeless families grows amid foreclosure crisis“, when I saw that an estimated 600 school -aged children will be spending part of the next school year living in “tents, shelters or even in the woods,”. Additionally, there are expected to be 450 homeless children in Seminole County under the age of five. Most folks know that the national real estate scene is in a state of depression, but I was not aware of the number of families, and children, who are homeless due to foreclosures.
The main reason that some homeless folks will have to live in tents and makeshift shelters is that Seminole County does not have any homeless shelters. People like Annette Eagan, for example, have had to split up their families in order to keep them together. Eagan came to Florida looking for work and has since spent all of her savings.
Now everyday after school, Eagan drops her two sons off at a Boys Town Shelter and she herself stays at a rooming house in Sanford. When one considers that salaries in Seminole County were among the highest in the state just a few years ago, the number of those who are homeless is shocking.
Beth Davalos, a Seminole County social worker, recently spoke at a meeting of social service agencies in hopes of addressing the “housing crisis in our own back yard”. With help from The Children’s Cabinet, a volunteer group, speakers called on the entire community including government, police, nonprofit groups, churches and private businesses to help address this important issue.
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