Nonprofits and Volunteers Shelter Dozens on Frigid Nights

More than 70 homeless people in St. Charles County were able to sleep safely on bitterly cold nights in December thanks to a network of volunteers running the Emergency Weather Response (EWR) program, an effort providing overnight shelter when the temperature is 20 degrees or below.

With half-a-dozen activations already this season, EWR is preventing deaths among some of the most vulnerable people in our community, says Kathy Thompson, one of the program organizers.

"We have moms living in cars with their kiddos. Our outreach teams have met moms who live in a storage unit, just trying to keep some sort of shelter for her and her children," Thompson says. "Unsheltered folks are not what you would see in a movie or TV. They're real people-real moms and dads with their kiddos, or people who are veterans. We've met college students sleeping in their cars at local colleges because they got their scholarship for academics, but couldn't afford housing in the area."

County Government pledges support

To help in that effort, County Executive Steve Ehlmann is calling on the County Council to approve $30,000 for emergency weather sheltering, pending a final vote Jan. 12.

Ehlmann says it's important to recognize this community need, and is challenging other local governments to contribute to the effort.

"We had severe cold weather earlier than normal, and it's put a lot of people at risk sooner than they thought they would be," Ehlmann says. "These organizations have a budget that they hope will last the entire winter. We're in a situation where they could run out of money a lot sooner than they were planning.

"We want to do what we can as County Government, and we're challenging the municipalities to help as well," Ehlmann adds. "We need the whole community, the entire county, to respond to this need with urgency."

The struggle: Volunteers and funding

When the EWR program activates, a network of volunteers in St. Charles, Lincoln, and Warren counties go into action responding to calls, arranging transportation, and staffing overnight shelters at churches and other community organizations that rotate each week. There are about 10 shelter locations currently on the rotation, Thompson says.

Volunteer recruitment is consistently one of the biggest needs, she says. Each shelter needs at least three staffers overnight-preferably five. Many of them have normal day jobs they're working around.

"Consecutive nights are really tough. When it's extremely cold four days in a row, that's a lot," says Thompson. "We're truly grateful for everyone who has stepped up to volunteer over the years."

The other big challenge for EWR is funding. The program pays for Uber rides ferrying the homeless to and from shelter, but also motel rooms when the shelters are over capacity or can't open. At minimum, the program needs to fundraise at least $27,000 this winter, but would need $77,000 to be fully funded.

Thompson says it's a big relief when that funding buffer is there as a last resort for when there's not enough shelter space or volunteers.

January and February tend to be the busier months for EWR, which typically activates 25-30 times each season, Thompson says.

Over the next two months, volunteers will ramp up their efforts on EWR nights, aiming to have two shelters open at a time in St. Charles County and one each in Lincoln County (Troy) and Warren County (Wright City). The local shelters would rotate between locations in the cities of St. Charles and St. Peters, and possibly Wentzville.

For individuals who want to support efforts to shelter the homeless this winter and beyond, a coalition of area nonprofits is inviting potential volunteers and donors to get in touch by going online to http://tinyurl.com/cocnoshelter.