ORLANDO, Fla. — While in Orlando Monday, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge awarded the Central Florida region several federal grants to fight homelessness. It was a total of more than $8.4 million.

Most of that funding was $8.3 million to help end youth homelessness, awarded to the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, the lead agency overseeing homeless services for Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties. 

Upon receiving the award at a press event Monday morning, the agency’s executive director Martha Are said she was proud of the young people who’d been helping apply for this funding for several years.

“We’ve had homeless youth intimately involved in the process,” Martha Are said at the event. “With this investment, we are going to truly be able to make a significant difference… if we can stop the homelessness of our youth, we will reduce the number of chronically homeless people.”

Addressing audience members at First United Methodist Church in Downtown Orlando, Secretary Fudge said Central Florida has the state’s largest population of unhoused young people. 

The $8.3 million award comes from HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP), which awarded a total of $84 million to 17 U.S. communities. 

Addressing the press Monday morning, Secretary Fudge described the grant as one “to help coordinate all the services that are available.” Although the Central Florida region already has great housing resources in place, Secretary Fudge said, the young people who helped apply for the grant needed better “coordination” between those resources. 

“I don’t know where it exactly starts. But the young people already have an idea of where they want it to go,” Secretary Fudge said of the grant’s specifics. “So I’m excited to see where it’s going to go.”

Later on Monday, Secretary Fudge announced Orlando would be one of the first communities to receive funding from HUD’s new Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) program, a disaster response initiative targeting people who are homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless.

Orlando will receive nearly $667,000 in RUSH funding, according to HUD’s press release. Elsewhere in Central Florida, Seminole County was allocated close to $387,000, and about $391,000 was allocated to Volusia County.

Collectively, Florida communities will receive more than $6.7 million in RUSH funding, between local allocations and a $3 million amount set aside for the state.

Speaking one-on-one with Spectrum News Monday, Secretary Fudge stressed the importance of an fair recovery process after natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, the Category-4 storm that ravaged Florida last month.

“What normally happens is people who are most in need get the least out of these resources. So we want to be sure that every single community is treated fairly,” Secretary Fudge said.

“We know that a lot of people don’t need our help because they have insurance. They can easily rebuild their homes,” Secretary Fudge said. “It is the people who are in moderate and low-income housing that have the most challenges in these kinds of storms.”

She added that the Inflation Reduction Act includes $1 billion to make homes more resilient and energy-efficient.

The awards to Central Florida come after HUD announced earlier this summer that it would make $2.8 billion available for homeless services across the country. HUD said it would prioritize agencies that “engage people with lived experience of homelessness in decision-making.”