Annette Frederick folds laundry at Share the Warmth. Alessia Sandala | Collegian
The shelter is searching for a new building to house the county’s homeless year-round
Overnight shelter Share the Warmth of Hillsdale County will open for its eighth and final season at the Sozo Church Nov. 1 before moving to a new building next year.
The shelter currently has 40 beds, but Executive Director Penny Myers said organizers are looking to expand and operate year-round when they find a new building. Share the Warmth provides guests with a bed, a shower, a laundry room, and hot meals overnight during the coldest months of the year.
“It’s just that the arrangement has run its course and Share the Warmth needs its own facility,” said Samuel Negus, Hillsdale College’s director of program review and accreditation and a member of the board. “Ideally, I think we would like to grow in the direction of being a year-round shelter, rather than just the four months of the worst weather in these parts.”
Myers said the board hopes to raise $750,000 to purchase a new building in the next three months through the Hillsdale Community Foundation’s annual Great Give.
“In looking at buildings, we figure that we’re going to have to have at least $600,000 to purchase a building that would fit our criteria,” Myers said. “And then we’ll have to get an engineer and an attorney, and all of that.”
Myers said the shelter is limited in options for its new building due to city zoning regulations.
“We’ve been pretty much told that we’ll have to stay along Carleton because we can’t go into a residential area,” Myers said. “We’re not going to fight the city on that, because I have children and grandchildren, and I understand the concerns. Sometimes we do have addicts in here, and we never know who’s going to come through that door. We give everybody a chance.”
Myers said Share the Warmth does not take any type of government assistance because they want the shelter to remain independent and run according to their own rules.
“If they want to try to tell us how to run day-to-day operations, we’re not taking their money,” Myers said.
Since Share the Warmth is independent and operates out of a church, Myers said organizers have structured the shelter in a way they have found to be effective when deciding who stays at the shelter and what the rules are.
“We provide pajamas for them,” Myers said. “We launder their clothes every night, and then they put on the pajamas, and we wash their clothes. So in the morning, when they leave, they’re in clean clothes so they can go out to the community. Our hope is that they’ll get jobs and try to become productive members of society.”
Myers said she is not sure if Camp Hope’s closure will affect the number of guests Share the Warmth will have this season, but that some of Camp Hope’s guests came to Share the Warmth last year amid rumors that Camp Hope would shut down. However, they didn’t end up staying once Myers explained the shelter’s code of conduct and expectations.
Annette Frederick has volunteered at Share the Warmth for the past three years. She said she feels safe around guests and enjoys hearing to their stories.
“The main thing is just sitting and listening to them,” Frederick said. “They like to talk about their childhood, and then they get up until today. Some of them will talk about if they’re having an addiction issue that they’re trying to do better with, and what they’d like to do.”
Frederick and Myers agreed that Share the Warmth would not have grown to what it is today, or be planning an expansion, without the support of the community.
“Everything we’ve ever needed in here, this community has provided,” Myers said. “So when you hear stories of people saying that this community doesn’t care about the homeless people, that is not our experience at all.”
