An Overdue Update
The work with the shelter has been relentless and I’ve let communication fall to the wayside. Here’s the biggest news:
Transitional Shelter
We’ve been running an overnight shelter in two tents. They aren’t as bad as they sound! They are well-insulated, and we have good heaters. We are anxious for the day when we can have a new building.
Our shelter kept people cool this summer and warm this winter. We have been running the shelter as a transitional shelter where guests must be sober to stay with us. Many of the homeless are addicted, and we have watched a lot of people repeatedly relapse, but we have seen some real successes! One guy staying at our shelter recently got his one-year coin in AA. Others are on two months, 100 days, and other great milestones.
We have been doing casework with clients to the best of our ability. We have helped people get their vital documents for employment, and we’ve helped them with housing applications, job applications, and benefit applications. We’ve been struggling with short staffing recently, so our casework hasn’t met the standard we want.
Low-Barrier Shelter
The people who are still in their addictions are the ones who are most likely to freeze to death. We want everyone to be sober, but we know that addiction is difficult, and we don’t want guests who relapse to freeze to death as a result. Pray that we get an additional tent soon so that none of the homeless freeze to death.
Day Shelter
Day shelter is available to everyone. The day shelter is in the basement of our ministry partner, the Pine Ridge Reconciliation Center. At the day shelter, Iglutheca’s staff checks in clients and searches them to ensure a safe, drug and alcohol-free environment. We serve an insane amount of coffee! We estimate that we serve ~240 cups of coffee daily, or 7,200 cups per month! We offer showers and laundry services. We also distribute clothing. We give out socks, underwear, and any donated clothing we receive. For October, we gave out 398 articles of clothing!
Recovery Meetings
Last year, we had an AA meeting weekly, and having 6-8 people at a meeting was considered good attendance. Now, we are having six recovery meetings per week, including one Celebrate Recovery meeting, two Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and three Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. We require that guests at the shelter attend at least two recovery meetings per week, but some guests choose to attend more meetings than that. Normal attendance for AA was hovering around 12-18 per meeting. The most we ever had at a meeting was 29!
What’s Next?
I’ll only talk about what is certain. We estimate we have enough funds to continue operating for a year between the Reconciliation Center and us! We must put much more effort into fundraising, especially getting more monthly donors. Please consider supporting us financially! Monthly support is especially powerful because it allows us to hire and retain staff with confidence that there is a support base to keep them going long-term.
We are also looking for a space to run the shelter long-term. The tents are not a great long-term solution. We are attempting to move into the old jail for the long term. That is difficult politically, but we are trying to navigate the Bureau of Indian Affairs bureaucracy to get into that building. We are also looking at other options to get a permanent shelter up and running.