The Collapse of Orlando: How a city built on tourism fares under Coronavirus.
photographed for Stern Magazine
The Daily Bread Food Bank
Across from the shuttered Exploria stadium, the Daily Bread Bank opens the doors at 10 a.m. to a rapidly lengthening line of mouths to feed.
Before COVID, most of the huddled masses were unhoused or transient, but since the theme parks closed they have seen a larger and larger population of recently unemployed, housed individuals.
We talked to bartenders, servers, theme park workers and other tourism-adjacent workers displaced by the pandemic. They walked a fine line on the margins of stability, and with no relief from the state they wait for their daily bread.
“We’re seeing a lot of new faces around here,” said Dameon Dixon as he directed an ever-crowding line, stopping people from cutting or going for seconds before everyone had their first. “That’s never a good thing. Every new face comes with another sad story.”
The England Family and the Banyan Motel.
The England’s were evicted from their apartment when Barbara and her and her husband, Victor Cruz, lost their jobs in the restaurant industry. Their only respite from homelessness was a weekly rental at the Banyan Hotel, which now threatens to evict them despite anti-eviction orders from the state. Four children and two adults crowd into a single motel room, with a fresh eviction notice taped to the drywall.
Their main escape from the room, cluttered with two beds and all of the belongings they could muster, is a nearby shuttered theme park. They ride their scooters to the park and talk about what they would buy if they were rich and the stores were open.
