A homeless shelter is up and running in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Laura Falcon is the volunteer coordinator with the Morgan County Homeless Coalition — a coalition of churches that came together to create the shelter.
“The coalition was created to provide a temporary cold-weather shelter to anyone who needs it,” Falcon told Russell Mokhiber of This Week in Morgan County. “We’re open in December, January and February from 6 pm to 7 am the following morning. We take people in. We feed them. And we give them a place to stay.
The shelter’s first day was December 2, 2017. It was created by clergy in response to a real need to house people from the bitter cold.
Pastors Phil King, Dick Voorhaar, Lloyd McCanna and Pastor Doug Hoffman came together to create the coalition.
“The clergy were getting the phone calls from people who were desperately in need of shelter in these really cold times,” Falcon said. “They were able to put them up for a night or two, but they couldn’t take care of them on any extended basis. They just didn’t have the funds for it.”
Falcon said that three to five people show up every night in the shelter — “but it could be that there are people who need shelter who don’t know about it.”
The shelter is not a permanent structure. Instead, each church takes one week and houses the homeless for that week in the church or neighboring buildings.
What’s causing the homeless problem in Morgan County?
“Sometimes it’s due to addiction,” Falcon said. “Sometimes people just don’t have the resources to provide for themselves. A lot of people live one paycheck away from becoming homeless. Somebody ends up in the hospital and you have all of these medical bills. We have seen different scenarios like that where people come home and they are kicked out of their place and they have no place to live. Sometimes they need to find temporary housing in the shelter, rather than living in their car or on the streets for that matter.”
“I would venture to say that in this cold weather, the shelter has saved lives, yes,” Falcon said. “Any of us who has walked out in this cold for five minutes wonder how any person or animal can survive without shelter.”
There was some opposition to the shelter in Morgan County.
“The opposition was worried about people coming into Morgan County from different areas and then panhandling on the streets,” Falcon said. “We are really such a small town. We didn’t foresee that happening. And it hasn’t happened. If that did happen, we would certainly address it.”
To get in touch with the coalition, you can write to morgancountyhc@gmail.com or visit the web site morgancountyhc.weebly.com.