ORLANDO, Fla. — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic fund has donated $5 million to the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, which will use the money to expand its existing shelter and support its family outreach program.

This is the second time Bezos’ Day One Fund has supported the coalition. In 2021, the nonprofit received a $2.5 million grant.

“With the increase in individuals and families struggling with homelessness, specifically because of this affordable housing crisis, being able to utilize this grant to help those families who are unsheltered is huge for us,” said Trinette Nation, director of development for the coalition.

The Bezos Day One Fund is a $2 billion fund started in 2018 by the Amazon billionaire and his then wife, MacKenzie Scott, to support homeless families.

In 2024, it awarded more than $110 million in grants to organizations that demonstrated “compassionate, needle-moving work.”

Along with the Coalition for the Homeless, 29 other organizations received grants this year. The Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust got $5 million, too.

Currently, the coalition can provide shelter to more than 500 people at its facility in downtown Orlando.

The coalition plans on opening a larger facility adjacent to the current building on Terry Avenue, which will expand its capacity by about 100 beds. Part of the grant funds will go towards the new building, which the nonprofit hopes to have opened by 2027.

The grant funds will also be used to support the coalition’s efforts to help homeless families with children.

“This very well-deserved grant will help all of us: the families in need, the advocates doing this work, and our community as a whole. We are a healthier, more compassionate place to live when we can help people avoid the trauma of homelessness. ” said Martha Are, CEO of the Homeless Services Network, in an email.

In 2019, Are’s organization got a $5.25 million grant from the Bezos fund.

“That grant helped us to house hundreds of families who otherwise would have been homeless, and it came at a critical time — 2019, just before the closures of the COVID-19 pandemic that left many working parents temporarily out of a job,” Are wrote.

Since 2019, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Orlando has jumped from $1,264 to $2,011 per month, according to RentData.org, an increase of 59%.

The number of homeless people in the area has also soared. According to the 2024 point-in-time count, there were 2,883 homeless people in Central Florida, about a 21% increase from 2023.

The coalition used its 2021 Bezos funds to purchase a 10-passenger van, which delivers supplies to the area’s homeless families, including clean clothes, hygiene products and food. The nonprofit also uses the vehicle, which it calls the “care-a-van,” to dispatch caseworkers who work with families to help find them permanent housing.

“A good portion of these families, they’re employed and maybe an emergency happened, a crisis happened, somebody got sick, somebody had an accident, and it snowballed and the next thing you know, you’ve lost the place that you were staying,” Nation said.

The first grant also helped the coalition build four dorms at its shelter in downtown Orlando where families in crisis can stay together as caseworkers search for a more permanent housing solution.

“If a family has no alternative, we will pack them up in our care-a-van and bring them to our campus to stay in one of those dorms until we can get them through our intake process,” Nation said.

In 2023, the family outreach program started with the Bezos money helped more than 1,800 individuals, 809 of whom were minors. As of August of 2024, the program has helped more than 1,200 individuals.

“At the end of the day, we want no child sleeping unsheltered,” she said.

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