Desert Hot Springs’ new homeless shelter gives people ‘a safe place to start over’

Mario Mejia lost his home two months ago. He is an auto painter but business had been slow.

He was walking down Palm Drive one day when someone pulled over and told him about Desert Hot Springs’ new homeless shelter that opened in October. It was hard to believe, Mejia said. He’s been staying at the shelter ever since.

“This place has been really, really good to me,” he said, adding that he plans to stay there until things pick up again at work and he can get his own home.

The shelter, referred to as an "access hub," opened on Oct. 19, according to Anne Eiring, who is a supervisor there. It offers a solution to the growing number of people without housing in Desert Hot Springs, which more than doubled from 58 people in 2018 to 122 in 2023, according to a city staff report.

Desert Hot Springs has an agreement with Martha's Village and Kitchen to have the organization run the shelter from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, which the city council approved in September. The council approved purchasing 66-753 Hacienda Avenue, where the shelter is located, in a May closed session.

City Manager Frank Luckino said the city is accepting proposals from organizations to continue operating the shelter. This means Martha's Village and Kitchen could keep managing it, or a different group may next year.

The shelter allows people to stay overnight, but also has a cooling and warming center, showers, and case management and employment services, some of which are offered during the day only. It serves people who stay overnight breakfast and dinner, but distributes lunch to anyone who comes to the cooling center in the afternoon. One of the staff members writes affirmations like "You must believe it to see it!" on the brown lunch bags to help people stay positive.

Eiring said the shelter's capacity is 26 people overnight but it has had an average of 14 to 20 so far. Numbers have been steadily increasing since opening, she added.

Those who stay overnight are required to be Desert Hot Springs residents, which Eiring said can be a challenge since people without housing don't always have documentation about where they live. But there is a screening process the shelter uses to find out that information, such as questions about where they go see a doctor.

Martha's Village and Kitchen wants to provide a place for homeless people to be comfortable without a lot of barriers in the way, Eiring said.

"We're not trying to force them into anything, but we want to provide a safe place for them to be at night, so that they can maybe starting rebuilding their life if that's something they want to do," she said. "We can help them get a job. Provide them a place for when they are working, they can save money and things like that. So we just want to help, because there's a lot of people out there."

A place to sleep and more

The shelter is freshly renovated, and includes a shower room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and offices. There aren't any windows throughout much of the building, but the walls are a bright white. Eiring said it used to be a duplex.

Several rooms along the hallway at the front are filled with varying numbers of bunk beds with gray sheets. These rooms are small and just used for sleeping. The bunks are made in varying styles inside the bedrooms, which are empty of people's belongings during the day.

There is a shower room by the bedrooms with four stalls, and restrooms for men and women.

Martha's currently has no limit to how many nights in a row someone can stay, but will make decisions about that once it gets closer to full capacity, Eiring said.

Because more men than women come in, Eiring said, eight of the beds are for women and the other 18 for men. If that mix changes, Martha's could find more room for women so it can help as many people as possible, Eiring said.

She said the shelter isn't serving children, but would consider that if there's a need. She said the organization does try to connect families with the family shelter in Indio.

The organization also tries to encourage people who stay overnight to practice basic life skills such as making their bed and cleaning up after eating.

People eat breakfast and dinner in the dining room, which is set up by the kitchen with foldable tables and chairs that are moved out of the way during the day. Martha's put up a Christmas tree in the corner for the holidays.

People are given plastic storage boxes for their belongings that they can temporarily keep underneath the bunks. There are also chain-link metal storage units outside. Martha's covered the lockers in use with a blue tarp, likely to keep items from getting damaged in the sun.

Martha's also allows pets to stay overnight in kennels outside, and in the cooling center during the day if they are well-behaved, leashed and accompanied. Eiring said the shelter is going to get a roof over where the dogs stay overnight, and will need to figure something out during the hotter months of the year.

“We know that a lot of people here have pets and it is a big deterrent for people to come in a shelter if they can’t have their pet on site, so we’re trying to provide that for them as well," Eiring said.

The shelter has a small room without any windows that's filled with desks available for confidential conversations, such as connecting people with mental health or substance abuse treatment. Its case management office is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and helps people sign up for things like benefits, identification cards and bus passes. There are also several computers lined up against the wall in the office, which people can use for things like making resumes and applying for jobs.

Staff at the shelter make rounds every 30 minutes to check on everything and there are also security officers, according to Eiring. Police also regularly patrol the area, according to the city staff report.

Eiring said Martha's Village and Kitchen has an outreach team that is in the area weekly but people have mainly been hearing about the shelter through word of mouth.

"I would say a lot of times, it's the clients themselves that (to) their friends or acquaintances they’ll say ‘You know, there’s a place you can come,'" she said.

A good starting point

The cooling center allows people to charge their phones, use the shelter's phone, meet with case managers, drink water, shower and use restrooms, according to Eiring. It is primarily filled with rows of gray plastic chairs pointed toward a television. It has a separate entrance from the rest of the shelter.

At the corner of the room there is a desk where staff sit. A table lined up below a window has a digital clock and chargers. A small white board has a welcome sign, the date, what dinner will be that night, and a quote from Winston Churchill that reads "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Mejia, JD Delaney and Mary Grimes were among several people sitting inside the cooling center last Friday. They were watching "New Amsterdam," a medical drama series.

Delaney said she’s been staying at the shelter for about two months. She's been focusing on her mental health and getting better. It's calm and safe staying there overnight, she said.

“Honestly, I like to joke and tell people I’m allergic to the sun. The heat is fierce," Delaney said. "But I’m glad that there’s a place to be able to cool down and not have to be out there.”

Mary Grimes said she was displaced at 65 years old from the home she lived in for nearly three years. She said the shelter is a good starting point and she is working on getting permanent housing.

“It gives me a safe place to start over again,” Grimes said.

Ani Gasparyan covers the western Coachella Valley cities of Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City. Reach her at ani.gasparyan@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: A look inside Desert Hot Springs’ new homeless shelter