Unhoused people go cold in between center openings
The Grapevine Center in Butler filled up Sunday, Jan. 14, when temperatures never made above the 20s, but some of the center’s clients would have to spend a few hours outdoors in the evening while waiting for another warm shelter to open.
Mike Smith spent his morning cooking up chili at the Grapevine Center, but was dreading 4:30 p.m., when the center would close and he would have to go somewhere else while waiting for Glade Run Lutheran Services’ warming center to open. Smith said he has been spending nights at the Glade Run center since November as he is in between living situations, but hopes to see a 24-hour shelter open to avoid having to go unsheltered.
“You’ve got three or four hours where you’re out in the cold,” said Smith, a client and volunteer at the center. “It’s just so hard. It takes its toll on you.”
Smith said the Glade Run warming center opens at 10 p.m. nightly, so he would have a place to go overnight.
According to Earl Suppers, a volunteer at the Grapevine Center, the drop-in center is usually more crowded in the summer months than the winter ones, but when cold weather hits, the center fills up.
He said the Grapevine Center not only provides a place to go for shelter from the elements, but people who drop in can get food and drink, as well as help from the agency and resources.
“We help them with emergencies, we’ll call someone if we need to,” Suppers said. “They can help you with a lot of things.”
While Smith was the center’s chef Sunday, he said the center has helped him over the past few months as he has been looking for a new living situation. He said although there is no 24-hour shelter in the city, he has gotten help from several other agencies and the people he has met through them.
“There is a lot to take advantage of here,” Smith said. “They have helped me out here; they have all been here to stand by me when I have needed them.”
