Oshkosh warming shelter turns away a record number of people this season as it continues efforts to build a year-round facility
OSHKOSH – At Day By Day Warming Shelter, St. Nicholas Day is a big deal.
Guests staying at the overnight shelter on Monday, Dec. 6, received a welcome St. Nick's gift: a warm pair of socks, a fitting present as outdoor temperatures dropped to single digits.
A volunteer walked around with a bin filled with thick, multicolored socks for guests to select their chosen pair.
It could be easy for those staying at homeless shelters to become nothing more than numbers, but Molly Yatso Butz and the shelter's staff and volunteers don't let that happen.
"Those socks match your personality perfectly," Yatso Butz, the shelter's executive director, told the guest she was eating dinner with that evening.
Amanda Hammond, operations director, thinks the connection stems from developing programs to help the homeless make progress. One example is the Gateways to Goals program that encourages folks to set goals, such as for housing, a job, education, financial stability, and then take specific steps to achieve them.
"We're a cohesive team, and we look at the whole person, not just their situation," Hammond said. "We know names and relate to them; we become a family."
But this family is growing, fast, and it has far outgrown its 25-person capacity limit in the basement of Most Blessed Sacrament Parish's St. Peter's site, 449 High Ave. : The shelter's board is looking to build a new, year-round shelter at the northwest corner of Ceape Avenue and Broad Street.
Council on Tuesday will vote on a specific implementation plan for that building. Shelter staff and residents say a more spacious, updated facility is desperately needed.
Its 11th season opened Oct. 15, and staff have already had to turn more people away than it did its entire last season. Through Nov. 30, they had to turn way homeless looking for overnight shelter 153 times, compared with 72 last season, which ran from Oct. 15, 2020, to April 15, 2021.
"It's been insane," Yatso Butz said.
Yatso Butz said the number of new guests — those not seen before this season — is also higher than usual. There were two new guests alone on Dec. 6.
Space constraints limit other shelter services
The space not only limits the number of beds but also storage and efficiency. Laundry is piled in a small room to the side of the shelter, with just one washer and dryer that runs constantly through the night. There are just two showers, one for men and one for women that doubles as an overflow shower for men, which make up the majority of shelter guests.
RELATED: Day By Day Warming Shelter's plans for year-round homeless shelter in downtown Oshkosh move forward
Volunteers make food at home and bring it in to serve, as the kitchen doesn't have enough space for meal prep. On Monday, St. Mary's Catholic Church in Winneconne volunteers brought in spaghetti and meatballs with sandwiches, salad, carrots and cookies.
In the large room where mats are spaced out, there is one outlet. Guests with ankle bracelets (which judges order to monitor people in the court system) receive outlet priority in bed placement — there were five on Monday.
"We just cannot keep going like this," Yatso Butz said.
That became even more evident with the COVID-19 pandemic, when the cramped space forced staff to pit safety against people sleeping in the cold.
"It's difficult to space out 25 mattresses in that space as it is," Yatso Butz said after a COVID-19 outbreak forced the shelter to close for 10 days over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Efforts for new site progress despite opposition
A shelter committee selected a site at the northwest corner of Ceape Avenue and Broad Street this summer after working three years on feasibility at five different sites. They recently got city council's approval for rezoning that site and the proposed new shelter's general development plan, which would operate year-round and serve 50 to 65 people a night.
"At this point, we would have already filled a 50-bed shelter most nights this season," Yatso Butz said.
The Oshkosh Plan Commission on Tuesday voted 7-0 to approve Day By Day Warming Shelter's specific implementation plan, which Planning Services Manager Mark Lyons said is the last piece of land use approval the shelter would need for its proposed permanent, year-round location. Specific building plans would still need to be approved.
Day By Day still needs to finalize funding to purchase the property, which Oshkosh Housing Authority owns. City staff had planned to use $150,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to acquire the property, However, the city Redevelopment Authority voted to delay purchasing the property in November.
Several RDA and community members at that meeting expressed concerns about finding the best use for that property, which has sat empty for years.
But guests inside Day By Day feel differently. Several expressed frustration at not finding a permanent home with more updated resources, including the gentleman eating dinner with Yatso Butz Monday.
If and when shelter plans become a reality, though, he's sure of one thing: "Even if we were in a larger shelter, we'd still be eating dinner together like this," he told the executive director. "That won't change."
Contact Katy Macek at kmacek@thenorthwestern.com or 920-426-6658. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMacek.
This article originally appeared on Oshkosh Northwestern: Warming shelter in Oshkosh has to turn away homeless as winter sets in
