CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As temperatures drop to single digits at night, a Charleston organization has a place people in need can go to keep warm.
The Kanawha Valley Collective has been operating a warming center at the Bream Neighborhood Shop, 317 West Washington Street, every night since Friday when the weather really started to take a turn for the worst.
Kanawha Valley Collective Executive Director Traci Strickland said they’ve been welcoming in around 80 people per night since then to come and sleep or just get warm.
She said while most of the homeless population across the city seems to now know about the services they provide at the Neighborhood Shop, it isn’t just for those experiencing homelessness.
Traci Strickland
Strickland said some people come in and make use of the center for a variety of different reasons such as if their heat goes out at home or it isn’t working adequately enough, or for any other reason, it’s open to them, she said.
“We don’t ask any questions when people come in, through conversations we often kind of find out like who needs other services, who needs heat or who doesn’t have power in their house, those types of things,” Strickland said.
As temperatures are expected to drop to single digits in the next coming nights ahead, with the highest only reaching about 15 degrees, she said they are likely to be open for at least the next seven nights.
Strickland said they also provide people with a warm meal as they have a volunteer who coordinates with local churches and non-profits in the community who provide food for them.
In addition, she said they have case managers and other service providers on-site who conduct assessments for people and can handle any type of need.
“We often have people there who are familiar with providing services for individuals that may have experienced human trafficking or sexual assault,” she said.
Strickland said sometimes they even have people come in whom they have to send medical assistance for to be treated for conditions related to exposure to the elements such as frostbite.
She said they also see a lot of people coming in with pre-existing medical conditions.
Just on Wednesday night, Strickland said they had a man come in who got dinner, laid down and then ended up passing out. She said they discovered he went into AFib and immediately had to get him medical care.
“His pulse wasn’t very high, his heart was skipping beats, and you know, we ended up sending him to the hospital, and if he would have been just outside somewhere that could have been fatal for him,” she said.
Strickland said they have been operating the warming center since January of 2018.
At that time, she said it was entirely volunteer-based, but over the years, different factors have changed regarding the operational set-up.
Last winter, Strickland said they began receiving funding from the city to help supplement the cost of both staff and supplies.
Strickland said being able to have a mix of volunteers and paid staff have provided them with more balance and have allowed them to operate multiple nights in a row.
“When we were one hundred-percent volunteer based, you had people that were working, like myself, working my job all day and then staying in a warming center most if not all night and then having to go back to work the next day, and our max at that point was probably three nights in a row,” Strickland said.
She said last year, they had their record of staying open eight nights consecutively.
Strickland said their main objective– keeping people safe and warm.
“I always say that the main goal, and if we achieve this goal then we are successful, but the goal is that no one freezes to death, anything else that happens is awesome, but first and foremost, we are there as a safety net.”
The center is open from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m.
Strickland said they have a partnership with the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority where KRT picks people up from the West Side and takes them to Manna Meal downtown. She said around Manna Meal there are various services for people to go and get warm in during the day, including her agency.
She said the Neighborhood Shop also provides their own services every afternoon.
There will also be warming centers set up at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 1105 Quarrier Street; KVC – Equinox Men’s Shelter, 505 Leon Sullivan Way; the Salvation Army, 301 Tennessee Avenue; and Elizabeth Baptist Church at 405 Washington Street.
In addition, the City of Charleston states that the community centers are always open for people to come during regular business hours regardless of weather conditions.