Shelter House's winter shelter is now open with more space, resources for Iowa City's homeless

Shelter House's winter space is open and ready to serve Iowa City's homeless population.

The temporary shelter opened on Dec. 4 next to the GuideLink Center in south Iowa City, near the primary Shelter House location. The space provides 40 additional beds for residents hoping to escape the cold and snow.

The Southgate Avenue facility is open between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m., seven days a week through mid-March.

Individuals seeking refuge in the winter shelter can leave belongings behind when the space is not open, meaning they don't have to lug everything around with them all day. The space has showers and a very basic kitchen space as well.

The winter shelter opened in January 2015 to help combat that winter's polar vortex.

Christine Hayes, Shelter House's Director of Development and Communications, said the emergency shelter has eliminated several barriers in the past seven to eight years.

Gone are the restrictions limiting shelter guests to sobriety, for example. Now, guests must simply be well-behaved.

"The people who typically come to winter shelter are folks who are sleeping outside for much of the year," Hayes said. "They tend to use both the emergency shelter and winter shelter just when the weather's really bad."

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Winter facility can service a wide swath of the community

The capacity of the organization's emergency shelter is expanded from 70 to 100 during the winter months, aided by a conditional use permit from the fire marshal. Still, that additional space in the emergency shelter is "a last resort," Hayes said, because it means that both shelter spaces are full, and anyone who arrives will have to sleep on the floor of the lobby at Shelter House.

Two coordinators are always on-site at the winter shelter during in-service hours, extensively trained in trauma-informed care and crisis de-escalation. The winter shelter also added a behavioral health coordinator with additional training in care and de-escalation.

"Ultimately, everyone does whatever needs to get done when you are one of two [or three] people in a space where 100% of people are in crisis," Hayes said. "Everyone [here] is in a crisis in at least one way — the crisis of homelessness — but for most people, at least one crisis led to the crisis of homelessness, whether it was job loss, a domestic violence situation, a serious mental health condition."

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Community support fuels shelter's success

The winter influx generates a need for additional food and resources as well.

Much of Shelter House's food is from Table to Table, a local organization that takes food donations and redistributes it to the community. However, much of that food must be cooked and the winter shelter only has a small kitchen.

That's why, Hayes said, any donation — from ramen to mac and cheese to snacks — helps.

"People can be really intimidated by the size of the problem, but the reality is that, because of the size of the problem, everything helps," Hayes said.

The community quickly responded when the winter shelter put out a call for bedding for the 40 additional beds. Much of the remaining need is for high nutritional value snacks, bottled water and laundry detergent.

Just 35% of the shelter's services are funded by state, federal and local government contributions, while the other 65% is funded privately, Hayes said.

Funding has come from both the city and the county, with Iowa City City Council greenlighting $100,000 in November and the county finalizing a contribution of more than $40,000 this month, hoping to further the shelter’s efforts.

Shelter House will produce a monthly report to track the usage of the winter shelter, including how many unique individuals visited.

The county also pitched in nearly $75,000 for Fiscal 2024 to help Shelter House throughout the year.

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Area's homeless population has grown

The winter shelter was full on opening night for the first time, Hayes told the Press-Citizen on a visit to the space during off-hours.

"There's the optimist in me that wants to see it as a really good sign of communication (between Shelter House and the homeless)," Hayes said. "And then there's the realist in me that says we have so much more need than we've had historically.

She attributed a rise in the homeless population to measures taken by state legislators, including the abolition of protections for individuals looking to rent with Section 8 vouchers.

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That law went into effect in three communities that had already outlined protections for these renters, including Iowa City and Des Moines, on Jan. 1, 2023.

She said there are other incongruencies between the makeup of a community and the people coming to Shelter House, too. Though veterans make up 5% of the local population, Shelter House is welcoming veterans at double that rate.

Over the summer, a Shelter House waitlist that typically has between 15 and 30 names had grown to 55.

"There is an extraordinary need for sheltering services in our community," Hayes said.

Ryan Hansen covers local government and crime for the Press-Citizen. He can be reached at rhansen@press-citizen.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ryanhansen01.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Shelter House's winter facility offers additional space for homeless