Faith Works 1-27-23

Faith Works 1-27-23
Jeff Gill

It's still cold out there
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Five years ago at the end of January, a number of churches came together and did a new thing. A wide assortment of people, motivated by a variety of faith perspectives and beliefs about God, humanity, and community, pitched in to create a solution when there wasn't any obvious answer.

Our first community emergency overnight warming center was opened at the end of January, 2018, because it was about to reach ten degrees below zero even without wind chill effects, with heavy wet snow right behind something called a "polar vortex" . . . and speaking for myself, I'd never heard of such a thing before.

We all knew it could get cold in Licking County during the winter, and some nights bitterly so. Some of us knew there were people who are what's called unsheltered homeless, not in an emergency shelter of a traditional sort, who were getting by "sleeping rough," in a variety of doorways and stairwells and creek banks around the downtown area. Then and now, the total numbers are open for question, but anyone involved with people who were dealing with homelessness knew we had at least dozens who were unsheltered, in tents or under tarps or sleeping in cars, with that polar vortex on the way.

And while our formal shelters were doing the best they could, they had children and families already in residence. A few emails and calls confirmed there just was no provision in place for people who were unsheltered. So a few more phone calls and emails and social media blasts later, some churches and groups and individuals said "we're going to do it, and figure it out as we go."

Five years later, we still are. Figuring it out, that is. Such as the question of when we open up an emergency warming shelter. The threat of negative ten or worse mobilized us in 2018 (as I recall, it hit minus thirteen that first night, and windchills were frightful), and we ended up opening between two church locations for six nights that winter. A group of us working on the issue set the benchmark at 10 degrees, then bumped it up to 15 degrees forecast lows as our criteria for planning to be open last year, but we ended up providing 15 nights of shelter, which pushed our capacity to the brink, so we nudged the threshold back to 10 degrees this winter.

What we hadn't dealt with before was having our first season's warming shelter needing to open on Christmas Eve, which is what happened last month. Volunteers, which is what we all are, can be hard to pin down for Dec. 24 or 25, but they came through; church buildings are busy Christmas Eve, but our hosts this year were good innkeepers, let's say. Everything else closed, as we were opening up. But it was going to be cold outside. So we opened up, and for the first time stayed open 65 hours straight, because there was no other answer out there.

Over the last five years, people came together. Churches opened doors; some realized this program may not work at their location, but we appreciate every building that has hosted or even considered it. Volunteers have come and gone; a few keep coming back, and often they end up helping guide the effort.

Listing every church and organization that has shared in this effort would take my whole space and the rest of the page. And this isn't where we're going to recruit or announce training for volunteers: watch Newark Homeless Outreach on social media for more on that, and the Licking County Health Department helps with our outreach along with Pathways.

I just want to remind all those who read this: it's still cold out there. And when it's deadly cold, we have to do something. The emergency warming centers are not much, but they're something. Something, I have to say, that is marvelous, and even occasionally, something miraculous.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's proud to have been involved with this effort, and happy to invite others to join. Tell him where you see our community coming together at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.