Warming Shelter

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Created on Wednesday, 10 December 2014 17:44
Written by Cassandra Bernier

imagesST. JOHNSBURY- Community meetings will be held this week to help decide whether a warming shelter is right for the town of St. Johnsbuy. 

 

Northeast Kingdom Community Action and the Community Justice Center want to open up a ten person Warming Shelter for the homeless. 

 

The shelter would not be like a homeless shelter, but instead a place for people to spend the night when they have nowhere else to go. The shelter would only be open Monday through Friday from 6 p.m. at night to 6 or 7 in the morning.

Over the past few years, people that were homeless could stay a night in a hotel when weather conditions were extremely bad, but hotels in our area no longer want to provide that service.

Sue Cherry, Executive Director of the Community Justice Center, does not like that option. She thinks that the warming shelter is a better option because they can help people try to get into places of their own. The NEKCA staff will try to help with permanent places for people to stay if they are in dire need of help.

Their hope is that the people that come into the shelter are the ones in emergency situations, that way they can help the ones that are really in need. 

Sue Cherry says, "The work that we're doing really is to involve the community in this. This is a commnity project. It's not an agency coming to the rescue. It's a group of cimmunity members that say this is an urgent issue for out community and we need to see something in our community that really meets the needs of everbody and help everybody feel like they have a place."

Community meetings will be held on Thursday at noon and 6:00pm at the NEKCA office. The group will go to the selectboard on December 22nd to get the shelter approved.