Temporary Iowa City homeless shelter closes, deemed a success

IOWA CITY - The temporary homeless shelter that had been offering those in need a warm place to stay since the beginning of the year has closed.

Now that warm weather appears to be here to stay for a while, the shelter no longer is needed and served its final group of homeless people Saturday night, said Crissy Canganelli, executive director of Shelter House.

Looking back on the more than two months the temporary shelter operated, Canganelli said staff and volunteers were surprised by just how many people - most of those who did not meet the requirements to stay at Shelter House - stayed at the temporary site.

From Jan. 5 through March 10, the most recent numbers available, the temporary shelter, located in the former Aldi grocery store at 1534 S. Gilbert St., averaged 26 visitors a night and served 120 different individuals.

About three months ago, before the shelter opened, Canganelli estimated about 45 unique visitors would use the service.

'I was surprised by” the final totals, she said. 'It's clearly an indication that there's a need for this service in the winter months ...

That definitely is making us step back and look at how we can replicate this next year.”

APPREHENSION AND REACTION

In December, the Iowa City Council unanimously approved allocating up to $20,000 to help fund the temporary shelter. The venue opened less than a month later as temperatures dropped and snow began to fall.

While the council was discussing the matter, more than 30 area business owners filed a petition that asked the council to reconsider. Concerns stemmed back to the growing apprehension over concentrating such services to that area and the effect it has on businesses and property values, said Jim Rogers, who has owned PlexiCraft, a plastics fabrication business, at 1910 S. Gilbert St., since 2002.

'I don't want to see my property keep going downhill because we have another shelter down here,” Rogers said, adding that he isn't opposed to helping the homeless and, in hindsight, he hasn't had many issues with the temporary shelter.

'As far as anybody getting out and raising hell in the neighborhood, I haven't heard of anything like that,” he said.

The discussion on how to recreate efforts next year is expected to begin soon, but officials say it's highly unlikely a temporary shelter will be in the same location.

Iowa City Council member Rick Dobyns said the last thing he wants to see is a return to the events of the 2013-2014 winter, when dozens of homeless people spent nights sleeping in the City Hall lobby to escape the frigid temperatures.

'The city still feels a genuine obligation to this population of folks,” Dobyns said. 'The former Aldi building worked out very nicely, but I'm going to encourage city staff to look at other options.”

Council member Terry Dickens, who said he was very pleased with the success of the temporary shelter, said concerns raised by some business owners near the Aldi location weren't focused so much on the shelter, but the ongoing trend of centralizing such services in that part of town.

'We've just got so much of that service down in that area that it needs to spread around town a little better,” he said.

CALLS FOR SERVICE

Using limited information based on visitors' last permanent address, Shelter House's Canganelli said 62 percent of those who stayed in the shelter were from Johnson County, with 56 percent of total visitors from Iowa City proper.

The remaining 38 percent of visitors listed another Iowa community or some location outside the state as their last permanent address. But Canganelli noted such figures are consistent with Shelter House data.

Between Jan. 5 and March 8, the Iowa City Police Department conducted 399 community police visits to the shelter.

Only 41 calls for service were recorded for the shelter, with 11 being medical calls and the remaining 30 involving legal intervention. Of those visits, only seven resulted in an arrest, while the remainder were handled at the scene.

Calls for service around the community for vagrancy issues dropped by 95 percent in the temporary shelter's first weeks. That number drops when looking at the entire duration - but Officer David Schwindt said that's because police had repeated issues with a few of the same individuals.