News 6 only found two arrests in other Orange County municipalities – one in Apopka in February and one in Winter Park in May.

Vickers said many camping cases are resolved during the person’s initial appearance, which means a public defender is never assigned. But not all.

Her office has handled 38 of the cases in the past six months, and the big thing her staff is noticing: they’re spending more time in jail.

“It could be anywhere from two weeks to 30 days,” Vickers said.

Through our search of court records, News 6 found one person who was arrested for camping on April 23 and was not released from Orange County Jail until late June. Another person was arrested for camping on May 19, and at last check, they are still in jail.

The cost to house one inmate at the county jail is around $144 a day.

Then there are the additional costs.

“They have mental health that’s not being treated, they have medical needs that aren’t being met,” said Rebecca Bacal, manager of Social Services and Investigative Unit for the public defender’s office.

She works to help clients get IDs and connect to resources, but there is only so much she can do.

Vickers said more people with mental illnesses seem to be getting caught in the camping arrests, whereas other people might just get a warning or a civil citation.

“Especially if the person starts getting agitated or exhibits signs of mental illness, unfortunately, we’re seeing arrests in those types of cases,” Vickers said.

On Tuesday, the Orange County Commission accepted a report by the Mayor’s Jail Oversight Commission, looking for ways to reduce the jail’s population. The report is available on the Orange County government website.

The report noted that treating inmates in the jail who are homeless and have a severe, persistent mental illness was costing the county over $4,552,303. These inmates are usually in jail for “nonviolent, low-level offenses.”

“The jail has long been a de facto behavioral health facility, absorbing the downstream consequences of systemic gaps in housing and mental health services,” the report read. “While this challenge lies outside the formal scope of our Subcommittee, we must acknowledge it as the elephant outside the room. These aren’t correctional issues — they are community health failures that Orange County Corrections deal with admirably every day. And there are issues that must be addressed by the government, business and community leaders if they are to change.”

Vickers said her office is doing what it can for homeless clients. In the short term, they are working with the state attorney’s office to get more of these cases expedited.

Long-term, Vickers is hoping to set up a homeless court, similar to a veterans court, to get people to a case manager who can help connect the person to any resources they need and divert them from the courts and the jails.

“I will be actively pursuing this with the rest of the court system,” Vickers said.

Her office also hopes the county does more to make sure inmates who are released get out during the day, rather than at night when shelters are closed.

“I don’t have the ability to call a shelter up and say, ‘hey, can you house this person? They’re getting out of the jail,’ because they also have their own restraints and a process,” said Bacal. “We try to give them the most accurate resources of where they can go, but it would be extremely helpful if we could have a better pipeline.”

Martha Are, the CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, sits on the Jail Oversight Commission. She said that was one of the issues the commission was trying to solve.

However, if shelters are at capacity, there isn’t a place for these people to go when they get out.

“The community has to create places for people to sleep,” Are said. “We need more housing that people can afford, and we need more sheltering opportunities so that people aren’t outside. So that they have adequate, realistic choices.”

According to the Point-In-Time count, the annual one-day Census of homeless people, 1,972 people in Orange County were considered homeless in 2025. Of those, 746 are “unsheltered,” meaning they’re on the streets.

Are said adding more housing options could be cheaper for the county as well. She said the most intensive housing program in the area costs as much as $82 a day per person.

“That’s when we’re paying most of the rent, and we have intensive case management, a lot of wraparound services. So that’s for people who have the most serious disabling conditions, who need the most help in order to remain stably housed,” Are said.

But for a person who has been to jail, getting on that path to stable housing becomes harder.

“There have been times when somebody lost a job opportunity because they had been arrested, either because they couldn’t show up for work or because now they have another arrest on their record. And so they can’t, it makes it harder to get a job,” Are said. “There have been times when we had housing available for someone. But they were arrested, and so he couldn’t get them there to sign the lease. And again, the landlords can’t wait forever, so they give the unit to somebody else.”

Vickers said even creating open spaces specifically for non-violent offenders to stay while they get back on their feet would be a better situation.

“We’re arresting a bunch of people who don’t have a home; we’re releasing them back on the street still with no home, and we’re criminalizing the fact that they don’t have a home to go to. What are we doing? We’re just gonna keep this cycle up?” Vickers said.