Serving the homeless, one person at a time

Zeynep Portway knows the issue of “homelessness” won’t be solved in a day, a month or a year. There are too many obstacles to success, too many people in need.

But as the CEO of the Samaritan Resource Center, a drop-in facility in east Orlando, Portway is making sure that each needy person she encounters is treated like an individual, not a number.

That mission — treating those less fortunate with dignity, giving them what they need day-to-day and making sure they have a bright future — makes Portway a worthy finalist for the Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year honor.

When Portway joined the center in 2020, “we were serving 30, 40 people a day with one staff member and a few volunteers,” she said. “The staff and volunteers knew who all the clients were. We know their names, we know their stories, we know their quirks. It’s still at the core of what we do. It sets us apart, because we will see their stories through to the end, see that they get help.”

Today, the location in the Union Park area serves an often-neglected segment of Orange County, as the only homeless resource center of its kind between Bithlo and downtown Orlando. Its 13 staff members and dozens of volunteers see about 100 people a day, and for those who visit, the center provides all the basic necessities for day-to-day living — food, showers and laundry, but also mental-health counseling, employment specialists, housing placements and community outreach. All told, more than 75,000 services were performed last year, including 15,000 meals served. If they don’t have what’s needed, Portway said, they’ll partner with another organization that does. And often they will know what a client needs even before the client does.

“When someone walks in the door, we (know their name) and go, ‘Hi, how are you today? What’s going on?’” Portway said. “If I see you every day and I know your story, I know what you’ve been through, it’s a lot harder to think of you as the crazy drug addict on the side of the road, right? So even if I see you panhandling, I know what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Helping the needy has always been a passion for Portway, a Turkish immigrant who moved to the U.S. as a teenager. She came up through the corporate world, but when the Great Recession left her job-hunting in the late 2000s, she decided to turn her passion into a career.

“Just reflecting on my whole life and what I’ve done, I was thinking I was happiest when I was doing good works for different organizations,” Portway said. “I started volunteering with Pathways to Home, a program in Seminole County that worked with homeless families. They offered me a part-time position, then a full-time position, and the rest is history. I think I’ve always been the advocate for the underdog, so it kind of fits my personality.”

Alissa Kraman, then the program manager and program director for Pathways to Home, said she was a quick study on the nonprofit world and let her personality shine through in her work.

“This was not her area of expertise, but Zeynep was so committed to wanting to learn,” said Kraman. “She always wanted to understand the whys: Why are we helping people? What is the best way to help? She views people as individuals – all people.”

Sandi Vidal, now a vice-president of the Central Florida Foundation, was in the founding group of Samaritan Resource Center and said Portway changed workers’ mindset from the beginning.

“At the beginning, our volunteers were largely part-time, making sure our clients had the stuff they needed. It was fine for what it was,” Vidal said. “When Zeynep came, right away, it was transformational. She goes above and beyond — if someone needs to go to the doctor, she won’t just give them a bus pass, she’ll put them in her car. If one of her clients is arrested, she’ll call the jail and make sure they have their meds.”

Other area leaders fighting homelessness have similar views of Portway’s personal touch.

“She has an incredible heart for the people she works with and the people she serves,” said Mary Downey, founder and CEO of Hope Partnership, which provides homeless services in Osceola County. “She’s always sharing the stories of her clients. She understands the human element of what we do.”

Besides its facility-based care, the Samaritan Resource Center also sends teams to where the homeless are sleeping, to offer kindness and services. That was made more difficult last fall when Florida banned the homeless from camping or sleeping on public property, a move that angered Portway.

“I guess there’s a mindset that if we force people to move, that they’re going to get housing,” Portway said. “Well, if you couldn’t afford housing today, unless a miracle happens, you’re not going to afford housing tomorrow. … ‘Let’s push people outwards and make them hide so we don’t have to see them.’ It’s dehumanizing. And we don’t have shelter beds either. So, what are we offering people when we say you have to move along? That’s the roughest part.”

Portway sees the impact of the homelessness emergency every day, knowing there are only small ways she can help. But she can also see the broad strokes of what can be done to address the problem in the long term: Patience, diligence, but above all, more affordable housing.

“We’re talking basic economics 101,” Portway said. “When you have a shortage and you have a ton of people moving to Florida, and you’re not building to it, and what you build is something most people can’t afford, then this is where you end up. … Everybody wants an instant fix. Well, if you’re talking about generational homelessness, you’re talking about generational poverty. You’re not going to fix that in three months. You have to invest in other fundamental solutions to truly make an impact and change things.”

Recently, Portway has taken her message more directly to the community with monthly town hall meetings, to answer questions about the homelessness crisis, gauge interest in neighborhood shelters and get concerned citizens in touch with local leaders who can help.

“SRC can’t fight this alone. We don’t have the resources,” Portway said. “The government is not going to tackle it alone because they can’t. So everybody in the community has to come together … because, you know, these folks are part of our community. And if we don’t improve our community, lifting everybody up — if you’re leaving people behind, you don’t have a community that you should want to live in.”

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