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Gloversville enters winter without Code Blue shelter – The Daily Gazette – The Daily Gazette

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Gloversville enters winter without Code Blue shelter – The Daily Gazette – The Daily Gazette

Rev. Richard Wilkinson, lead pastor of the Free Methodist Church of Gloversville, says he has no plans to reopen the Center of Hope Code Blue homeless shelter at 144 E. Fulton St. this winter, but he would reopen the shelter at the former YWCA at 33 Bleecker St. in a heartbeat if allowed to do so.

“If the lawsuit came through tomorrow, we would be ready to open,” he said on Monday.

In the meantime, there have already been 20 code blue nights as of Thursday, during which the temperature has dropped below 32 degrees, and a recent survey of homeless people conducted by the Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless (IPH) of Albany shows that, as of Nov. 1, there were 98 people in Fulton County who were either homeless or have “unstable housing,” which includes “couch surfers, squatters, or limited functioning house conditions.” The IPH survey shows 81 of those people live in Gloversville.

“Code Blue has already started, we’re already getting the reports, and there’s no shelter,” Wilkinson said. “To get shelter people have to get to the Department of Social Services [located at 4 Daily Lane, Johnstown] where they will book you a hotel for the night.”

The pastor and the Center of Hope operated the Code Blue shelter from Jan. 15 to April 30, thanks to $25,000 worth of funding from the city government. That was 11 days after the Common Council voted to change the zoning code to expressly prohibit Code Blue temporary shelters inside the “Form-based Downtown Overlay District,” which includes 33 Bleecker St. The zoning change also expressly allowed for the first time for Code Blue shelters to operate in the city’s other commercial zone.

The $25,000 in city funding paid the Center of Hope’s cost to rent 144 E. Fulton St. and for the Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless of Albany to provide four staff members at the location.

Wilkinson said he doesn’t think 144 E. Fulton St. was an effective location for a shelter and, even if it were, his church doesn’t have the money to attempt to operate it there for a second season. It would need help from the city, which it is currently suing in the Fulton County Supreme Court.

“We had nine different people that came throughout the season, never had more than three on a night,” Wilkinson said. “It’s not a viable option. For one, it was too far, everybody is downtown. The homeless population is downtown, and when there [are] feet of snow on the ground, it’s hard for them to walk, carrying all of their stuff that far. That came from them. We asked [the homeless] why …….

Source: https://dailygazette.com/2021/11/27/gloversville-enters-winter-without-code-blue-shelter/