As Howard County's permanent homeless shelter prepares to relocate this month, officials are trying to minimize confusion while preparing to launch what has become a vital adjunct: a roaming winter-weather shelter.
Both events - the temporary one-year move from Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center's old building next to Atholton High School and the start of the fourth year of the mostly church-operated cold-weather shelter - are scheduled for Monday.
The current Grassroots building is to be replaced with a larger facility.
"We are faced with a challenge," said Andrea Ingram, Grassroots' director. "I've already had a few people call me who have been in the [cold-weather] shelter before, wanting to know the details."
Jan Hansen knows the importance of the program.
A 61-year old former Ellicott City woman who has multiple medical problems, Hansen stayed in the church shelters for a couple of months two winters ago until she could get into the main Grassroots shelter.
After four more months, she qualified for disability income and now has her own one-bedroom, subsidized apartment in Columbia.
"I didn't realize how close to the edge people who are homeless get, especially if it is a new experience," she said. "The feeling is of utter hopelessness - that you're just not worth anything. It really takes you down to the absolute bottom."
Her experience in the shelters helped her to survive and to find a compassionate church, to which she now belongs.
Ingram said the cold-weather program, which shelters up to 27 people a night, has confirmed her suspicion that there are "chronic, under-the-radar" homeless people in Howard County.
Running the $40,000-a-year program will be tougher to coordinate this year, with Grassroots decamping to a cottage in Ellicott City on the old Taylor Manor Hospital campus.
Last week, contractors Frank Potepan of Catonsville Homes, Joe Lucado of Winchester Homes and Rich Thometz of Kahailey Development donated their labor, working to install two bathrooms and a kitchenette in the rented cottage, Ingram said.
Grassroots' professional staff members, including the Mobile Crisis Team, were to move Friday to a county-owned house in the 9200 block of Vollmerhausen Road in Jessup.
People using the cold-weather shelter will gather at the main Howard Transit bus stop each evening and will be taken to the host church for that night. They will be taken back to the bus stop each morning after leaving the host congregation at 7 a.m.
