{"id":3128,"date":"2018-01-14T18:56:16","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T23:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3128"},"modified":"2018-01-14T18:56:16","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T23:56:16","slug":"laura-falcon-on-the-morgan-county-homeless-shelter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3128","title":{"rendered":"Laura Falcon on the Morgan County Homeless Shelter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A homeless shelter is up and running in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wr9omBj3UHs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Laura Falcon is the volunteer coordinator with the Morgan County Homeless Coalition &#8212; a coalition of churches that came together to create the shelter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe coalition was created to provide a temporary cold-weather shelter to anyone who needs it,\u201d Falcon told Russell Mokhiber of This Week in Morgan County. \u201cWe\u2019re 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The shelter\u2019s first day was December 2, 2017. It was created by clergy in response to a real need to house people from the bitter cold. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pastors Phil King, Dick Voorhaar, Lloyd McCanna and Pastor Doug Hoffman came together to create the coalition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe clergy were getting the phone calls from people who were desperately in need of shelter in these really cold times,\u201d Falcon said. \u201cThey were able to put them up for a night or two, but they couldn\u2019t take care of them on any extended basis. They just didn\u2019t have the funds for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Falcon said that three to five people show up every night in the shelter &#8212; \u201cbut it could be that there are people who need shelter who don\u2019t know about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What\u2019s causing the homeless problem in Morgan County?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSometimes it\u2019s due to addiction,\u201d Falcon said. \u201cSometimes people just don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI would venture to say that in this cold weather, the shelter has saved lives, yes,\u201d Falcon said. \u201cAny of us who has walked out in this cold for five minutes wonder how any person or animal can survive without shelter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was some opposition to the shelter in Morgan County.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe opposition was worried about people coming into Morgan County from different areas and then panhandling on the streets,\u201d Falcon said. \u201cWe are really such a small town. We didn\u2019t foresee that happening. And it hasn\u2019t happened. If that did happen, we would certainly address it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To get in touch with the coalition, you can write to <\/span><a href=\"mailto:morgancountyhc@gmail.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">morgancountyhc@gmail.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or visit the web site <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyhc.weebly.com\/\">morgancountyhc.weebly.com.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A homeless shelter is up and running in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Laura Falcon is the volunteer coordinator with the Morgan County Homeless Coalition &#8212; a coalition of churches that came together to create the shelter. \u201cThe coalition was created &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3128\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3129,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions\/3129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}