Crystal Thomas
The State Journal-Register
Springfield’s Winter Warming Center, the emergency shelter open to the homeless between November and April, will begin offering mental health and case management services this year. The city contracts with the all-men shelter Helping Hands to run the center, 1015 E. Madison St. An ordinance to solidify the contract for this winter is in front of the Springfield City Council for final approval next week.
The biggest change between last year and this year is the level of services Helping Hands will provide, according to executive director Erica Smith.
The warming center will have a mental health specialist through Memorial Behavioral Health’s P.A.T.H. program visit three to four nights a week, Smith said. An addiction counselor also will be available as needed. A little less than 40 percent of those in the shelter last winter had mental health needs and physical disabilities.
In years past, the center — which last season served 336 different people, 20 percent of them women — has been considered a “meal and mat” operation, with the main goal to keep people out of the extreme cold, Smith said.
The shelter received a grant from the state that will help it cover 65 percent of the costs to run the center, which will help pay for the expanded services this winter. It’s asking the city to cover the other 35 percent with $25,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds.
New way
Unlike most shelters in town, the Winter Warming Center has a low barrier for entry. Smith said transforming the emergency shelter is just one piece of an emergency crisis response system model the local shelters and providers voted to adopt in early August.
With the additional services, Helping Hands hopes to move as many clients into permanent affordable housing as possible, Smith said.
Smith anticipated at least 160 people will have one meeting with a case manager, and half that number will have advanced case management.
She said she expected 20 percent who come into the shelter with some kind of income will leave with permanent housing. And at least 20 percent of those who enter the shelter without income will leave with a source of income or be in the process of finding a source, Smith said.
Current needs
At Tuesday’s city council Committee of the Whole meeting, council members were enthusiastic about the Winter Warming Center’s new strategy, but they wondered what could be done for the homeless people congregating outside of the city’s public library before the center opens in November.
Over the summer, the number of homeless people sleeping under the awnings of the library has increased, leading city council members to voice concern about inappropriate behavior. This spurred Mayor Jim Langfelder to introduce an ordinance banning overnight camping on the library grounds. The measure failed on a 5-5 vote of the council.
On Tuesday, Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin said he saw about dozen homeless people congregating around the library Sunday. He was upset to see one of the people urinating on a Lincoln Library pillar “in broad daylight.”
“We got a deplorable situation,” McMenamin said. “From my observations, it’s getting worse.”
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City attorney Jim Zerkle pointed out police do hand out tickets when they see illegal activity, though fines are hard to collect. He added most judges will not jail homeless people even if a prosecutor pursued charges.
Smith cautioned against having a year-round, low-barrier shelter that didn’t have wraparound services.
“The worst thing we could do is keep the Winter Warming Center open as-is year-round,” Smith said. “Next year at this time, we would have more people who were chronically homeless and probably more people at the library.”
Smith said the best way forward was to “deliberately and responsibly” transform the current center.
“Realistically, no city has zero percent homelessness,” Smith said. “But you’ve seen cities that, when you do this correctly, drastically reduce the number of people that are homeless and the number of days that people do spend homeless.”
Smith said she expected this year to be the last for the shelter in its current building, which is owned by the city. Next year, it will be torn down, as expected, as part of the railroad improvement project.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 