Community group creates fast-food jobs for the homeless

Comment: These jobs and the 25 housing units that this community group created are a drop in the bucket compared to the need in the community. It shouldn't be overlooked that Central Florida has a homeless population estimated to number 9,000 individuals. Also, low-wage fast food jobs hardly seem like the key to self-sufficiency for the homeless. An abundance of low-wage jobs that don't pay enough to make housing affordable are part of the reason that so many people in this community are homeless. What's really necessary are systemic changes to the local economy not private charity (as commendable and well-intentioned as that may be) and Band-Aid efforts. This project seems like a way for the City of Orlando to try to whitewash its image when it comes to its policies towards the homeless. Notice that Mayor Dyer was only too eager to get a photo opportunity out of this.


Homeless are feeding the rest of us at Orlando sub shop

Mark Schlueb |Sentinel Staff Writer
(published) November 8, 2007

A year after Orlando enacted a law to stop people from feeding the homeless, the city is trying it the other way around.

Using federal money and help from the city, a nonprofit community group opened a Sobik's Subs shop last week and staffed it with workers who until recently were living on the streets or in homeless camps in the woods.

"Sobik's was the only one that had any interest in talking to us," said Helaine Blum, president of Grand Avenue Economic Community Development Corp. "This is basically the first opportunity some of these people have been given."

The project represents a shift away from the traditional method of warehousing the homeless in crowded shelters with few services. Providing training and job placement for the homeless isn't new, but launching a business that relies solely on a work force struggling with the addictions, disabilities and other problems underlying homelessness is still rare.

The Ben & Jerry's ice cream empire waived its franchise fee for shops in Harlem, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., that are run by homeless charities. There's also a pet-sitting business -- Virginia Woof Dog Daycare -- in Portland.

In Orlando, the new Sobik's at 4049 S. Orange Blossom Trail bears no outward sign that it is any different from any of the Heathrow-based chain's other sub shops. But the owner of the franchise is the Grand Avenue nonprofit, and its workers live in a former motel behind the restaurant that has been converted into housing units for people with extremely low incomes and no other place to live.

Darrell Frazier, 47, was briefly homeless before moving to the housing complex, known as Maxwell Gardens, about four months ago. He is one of the first half-dozen people to take jobs at the Sobik's.

"I was laid off from my job with a construction company and couldn't find any work. I fell behind on my rent and ended up on the street," Frazier said Wednesday. "I just want to be able to work."

The city and the Homeless Services Network helped Grand Avenue obtain $885,000 in federal funding to add 25 units at Maxwell Gardens for those with mental illness or physical disabilities. It's this population -- a particularly hard one to serve -- that Blum thinks can learn job skills through training at the sandwich shop.

Orlando gave another $200,000 from its allotment of federal community-improvement money to add the Sobik's, and the company drastically reduced its usual franchise fee.

"We felt this was a wonderful opportunity to do a good deed for the community," Sobik's president Jodi Kobrin said.

The city is a key funding source for shelters and homeless-service agencies, but Orlando has gained a national reputation as an unfriendly place for the homeless. That image has been fueled by an anti-panhandling law and last year's restrictions on feeding the homeless in city parks.

"We want to look at comprehensive approaches to ending homelessness. Whether it's working here or getting job skills somewhere else, it's lifting them up and helping them to get past homelessness," said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who ordered a sub during the shop's official opening Wednesday.

The same day, national housing officials cited the type of transitional and permanent housing offered at Maxwell Gardens as a reason for a drop in the number of long-term homeless people across the country.

A national report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed an 11.5 percent decline in the number of people who had been homeless for a year or more in the United States, from 175,914 in 2005 to 155,623 in 2006.

The greater Orlando area, including the city, unincorporated Orange County, Osceola and Seminole counties, saw a slight reduction in chronic homelessness. It reported 1,189 long-term homeless individuals in 2006, a decrease of 70 people from the year before.

Agency spokesman Brian Sullivan attributed the decline to a shift from emergency shelters that house the homeless for a night to transitional and permanent housing. President Bush's budget would increase funding for such housing from $286 million to $1.6 billion in 2008.

The funding is meant to help people such as Sandra Parvu start the long road back to normalcy. The 48-year-old amputee, a recovering alcoholic who suffers from bipolar disorder and liver problems, moved into one of the new units at Maxwell Gardens on Tuesday after living in the woods of east Orange County for six years.

"They're going to give me support and a place to live while I get my life back together," she said. "I just want my family and life back."

Victor Ramos of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.