The city of Aurora is considering a new location for its temporary warming shelter, currently proposed for the same building as its Financial Empowerment Center, along with a new organization to operate it.
The proposal, which will go before the Aurora City Council for potential final approval on Tuesday evening, would have the shelter operated by Becoming Oswego Church at a cost of around $135,000. The temporary warming shelter would be open overnight when temperatures are at or below 32 degrees for at least six hours within a 24-hour period, a change from past years’ threshold temperature of 15 degrees.
The shelter is not trying to duplicate the efforts of Hesed House, a local homeless shelter, Aurora Chief Community Services Officer Nicole Mullins said at a meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee last week. This shelter will only be for people who cannot go to Hesed House, she said, either because it is at capacity or because the person was turned away for some other reason.
“Not everybody is going to bring themselves to utilize this service,” Mullins said at the meeting on Oct. 30. “However, if it’s not there, then they really have no choice for overnight services.”
A 25-year Aurora resident who was homeless died several years ago in the cold, and others have lost fingers and toes, according to Mullins. And beyond just being a humane thing to provide, she said, a temporary overnight warming shelter also saves the city money since people without a place to stay might otherwise use city or public resources like hospitals and ambulances to get out of the elements.
The temporary warming shelter has over the past three years opened an average of 30 nights per winter, but this year with the expanded temperature threshold, the city is expecting it to be open for around 100 days, according to a staff report about the proposal included with the Tuesday City Council meeting’s agenda. A $50,000 contingency fund was set up in case it needs to be open for additional nights, to provide hotel vouchers for families or to address overflow needs, staff said in the report.
Currently, the city is proposing the shelter be located at 712 S. River St., the staff report shows, which is the same location as the city’s Financial Empowerment Center and is next to South River Street Park. The building has a maximum capacity of 49 people and is close to the downtown library that will continue to serve as a daytime warming shelter, the report said.
But that location wasn’t the city’s first choice. At the Finance Committee meeting last week, Mullins proposed the shelter be at 35 N. Broadway in downtown Aurora, which led to pushback from nearby businesses.
Aurora city staff reviewed all city-owned property, as well as rental options and local churches, and the options were “pretty grim,” according to Mullins. She said the downtown location was not ideal, but its the only one that was able to be brought up to code in time.
Wesley United Methodist Church, which provided the warming center last year, didn’t apply again this year, Mullins said. Before it contracted with Wesley, the city operated its warming center at the Aurora Transportation Center
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starting in 2014.Some downtown business owners came to speak at the Finance Committee meeting last week against the proposed 35 N. Broadway location, saying it would drive away customers. Many noted their compassion for homeless people but urged the city to find another location for the shelter.
Ald. Carl Franco, 5th Ward, said at the meeting that he also wasn’t in favor of the downtown location. The business community has to do well to generate revenue for the city to put into projects like this, he said.
After a meeting with downtown business owners about the proposal on Friday, the location appears to have been changed to 712 S. River St. – what is now shown in the staff report about the proposal.
The Aurora City Council’s Finance Committee did not vote on the proposal — it was presented for information only since it was not included on the meeting’s agenda. It is set to go without recommendation before the Aurora City Council’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday.
Then, it will immediately move to the City Council for potential final approval that same night.
Typically, City Council meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month. But, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day, so the meeting was moved up a week to be just after the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday.