Homeless shelter garners approval
Toolbox
By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: December 12, 2009
BELLOWS FALLS – The proposed Greater Falls Warming Shelter got its town permit Friday.
The shelter will open hopefully by the end of next week, said the Rev. Kaye Hult of the United Church of Bellows Falls, one of six area churches along with several social service agencies, which are sponsoring the shelter.
Hult said the group could not wait for the permit's 30-day appeal period to run before opening the shelter on Canal Street, just off the Bellows Falls Square.
"We have to, it's cold out," Hult said Friday. "There are people who are outside who would benefit from having a place to sleep."
The Rockingham Planning Commission approved the warming shelter after a hearing Wednesday evening. The group behind the warming shelter has been meeting and working on the proposal since September.
Only the Bellows Falls Village Trustees can appeal the permit, and the trustees were the only person or group to speak against the shelter at the hearing Wednesday evening.
Village President Roger Riccio said the trustees wouldn't be meeting for about two weeks and he said he didn't know if the trustees would appeal the permit.
Riccio, who said he had personal experience with a family member being homeless, said he believed the proposed shelter would create more problems than it would solve.
At the hearing, Bellows Falls Village Trustee Stefan Golec said the shelter, which would open at 7 p.m. every day and close at 7 a.m., was inadequate, and would draw homeless people to Bellows Falls.
Riccio said he believed that the shelter would put a big burden on village services, specifically the village police department.
And Riccio, saying he was putting on his hat as director of the Great Falls Chamber of Commerce, said that closing the shelter at 7 a.m., would force the homeless into area businesses.
"Hanging out in the businesses is not helping these people at all. They need to have a full-service shelter, they need counseling, they need job counseling, they need contact with agencies. A lot of thought needed to go into this," Riccio said, adding that no one from the Greater Falls Warming Shelter group had ever come before the Bellows Falls village trustees.
Riccio, who runs a bed and breakfast inn in Bellows Falls, said he once housed a homeless person at the request of the town's service officer, and he ended up with a flooded bathroom and a room ruined by tobacco smoke.
Homeless people are coming to Bellows Falls from Brattleboro, and are brought here by area churches, Riccio said.
Hult said that simply wasn't true, and she questioned where Riccio had gotten his information since he has never talked to the group.
Riccio said the building on Canal Street didn't have a bathroom or fire sprinklers, something Hult said wasn't true, either.
One person applauded the opening of the shelter, Deb Luce, the executive director of the Springfield Family Center, which is one of three state-funded day shelters in the state. Springfield doesn't have a place for people to spend the night, she said.
Luce estimated that there were 35 to 40 homeless families in the Springfield area that used her center during the day. But she said most of the homeless she worked with weren't sleeping in their cars or out in tents in the winter. She said she knew of one couple living in a car, and she said she recently sent a young man down to the Brattleboro shelter.
Most people are staying with friends or family, "couch-surfing" and living in chaotic situations, she said.
"They've doubled up with other households," she said, noting that such a situation was very hard on children, leading to a host of problems from hunger and malnutrition to attention deficit disorder or mental health issues.
The biggest problem, Luce said, is the economy. There are no jobs, and as a result, people are homeless, she said.
Hult said the group met Friday afternoon to plan the next step. Two dates have been set for training for volunteers, she said, Dec. 17 and Dec. 22, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., at the United Church at Bellows Falls.
Hult said donations have been received to get the shelter up and running, but financial donations were needed. They can be sent to Southeastern Vermont Community Action, in Westminster, earmarked for the warming shelter, she said.
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
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