After a couple of months navigating the state bureaucracy, officials now say a 12-family homeless shelter at the University of Rhode Island is expected to open on Tuesday.
“It’s a go, we’re excited and overwhelmed,” says Russ Partridge, executive director of Westerly’s WARM Center, which will manage the facility.
The shelter will finally open after more than two months of delays, attributed to inspections and converting the former temporary shelter for developmentally disabled individuals who were recovering from COVID during the Pandemic, into the family shelter.
It comes at a time, Partridge says, when all shelters statewide are full.
“Everybody is full,” says Partridge, with a lack of affordable housing statewide. In Westerly, several individuals and families are housed in motels during the off-season, which is where half the families will come from for the new shelter.
The others, Partridge says, are on a waiting list and have been “couch surfacing,” moving among family and friends houses and apartments, awaiting available housing.
This temporary shelter is just that, expected to revert to use for developmentally disabled individuals in April, although Partridge is hopeful they can extend its use for homeless families.
He says the facility is set up in pods of four bedrooms, each housing a family, and a common area. There’s also kitchen facilities, and residents will receive various support from social service agencies.
While it will house a dozen families, Patridge says, it’s likely those families include 30 individuals.
The opening comes just a couple of weeks after agencies around the country completed the annual point in time homeless count for the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
While those numbers will not be released until the end of the year, it is expected it will follow the trend over the last several years of dramatic increases in homelessness nationally and statewide. The 2023 count found more than 650,000 individuals homeless nationwide, with Rhode Island’s numbers exceeding 1,800.
During this recent count, Partridge says, in Westerly they found eight to 10 individuals literally living on the street. In the past couple of years, he says, they had not found anyone living on the streets in Westerly, with all homeless in a variety of shelters.
But the strain is statewide, and Partridge says there’s simply no room at shelters in Rhode Island.
“You put a lot of irons in the fire” trying to find places to use for shelters, he says.
In Burrillville, the Zamborano Hospital is housing 10-families at its facility. In Providence, Amos House and the YWCA is housing nearly 60 homeless families and veterans on the second floor of the former Charlesgate Nursing Home. Last fall the Rhode Island Department of Housing announced plans to buy the building and convert the facility to house 100 homeless individuals. Partridge also says officials are looking at the former Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket as a potential shelter location.
The WARM Center has also bought a house next to its main shelter in Westerly, which Partridge says will be converted to housing for two families.
Hi this Jennie
Me and my husband are homeless we desperately need housing.
Is there any more openings for homeless at URI or any other RI colleges ?