FEBRUARY 7, 2025 HOMELESSNESS Surviving seven degrees At the time of this writing, January 21, 2025, the outside temperature is seven degrees fahrenheit. People who have been sleeping outside are now seeking emergency shelter in the same way a drowning person would seek a life preserver. Sometimes that life preserver is a motel stay. Motels provide shelter for especially vulnerable people — elderly, differently-abled, ill, marginalized people or families. During seven degree weather, motels and overnight sheltering programs are critical to saving lives. Something people experience when unsheltered is being constantly in “fight or flight” mode because sleeping outside or in a homeless shelter is simply dangerous. Also the panic of not knowing where you’re going to sleep keeps you in a “highalert” state which can persist even after finding safe shelter. In order for “shelter” to be effective it must include safety and solitude so a person can enter “rest and digest” mode. Further, people experiencing homelessness who are using the sheltering system have very little solitude. This wears people down psychologically, making the collective homeless community environment stressful, hostile and physically unsafe. Spending money on alleviating the need for solitude translates to a higher survival rate beyond just shelter from the cold. In the coldest of winter months, members of Washtenaw Camp Outreach, the non-profit Mission, and other homeless solidarity organizations operate a program called Weather Amnesty, located in a house of hospitality in Ann Arbor. Because of the dangerously cold weather, people who had been sleeping in tents, in abandoned buildings or on the street started showing up in droves. Overcrowding in the county shelter, the Delonis Center, had been an issue for a few weeks now and the safety of the shelter system is failing. Furthermore, the Housing Access of Washtenaw County (HAWC) was Manager, who was able to secure ten more rooms for the next day. Hall said this about her role: “It is my JIM CLARK Groundcover vendor No. 139 going to close on Tuesday the 21st and Wednesday the 22nd due to the extreme cold. HAWC is the organization that is charged with referring our unsheltered citizens to the agencies and information that can help. Vocal members of the Continuum of Care were able to overturn the decision and HAWC opened back up on Wednesday. Fortunately, amidst the weather emergency, a few people were in the right place, at the right time, and had the same idea. At about 3 p.m. on Monday Jan. 20, I was asked by the WCO team to reach out to Washtenaw County Commissioner Annie Sommerville to see if there was help available from the county. As she checked with her team, she mentioned that Dan Kelly, director of the Delonis Center, could help with sheltering as well. The Shelter Association did not have an option for immediate motel shelter, but Kelly was able to lift trespass notices so that people could access Delonis’s emergency overnight shelter services. (Clients at the Delonis Center who commit egregious violations of the rules are banned for a certain amount of time. Kelly temporarily exempted them from trespass in order to accommodate their survival.) Shortly after that, Commissioner Sommerville replied. With Washtenaw County funds, she secured ten motel rooms. She then put me in touch with Ashley Hall, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners Operations and Communications responsibility to help with Commissioner properties, and the top priority for the Board of Commissioners is housing and homelessness. Commissioner Somerville believes it is critical that the most vulnerable members of our community have a safe, warm and secure place to stay throughout the year, but especially during weather emergencies. I am glad that I was able to work with you to help identify options for emergency sheltering.” In the late afternoon of the 20th, WCO and Weather Amnesty teams began picking people up from the daytime warming centers and from their tents and taking them to safety. To the county officials Commissioner Sommerville, Mr. Kelly and Manager Hall — thank you for stepping up! To the WCO/Weather Amnesty teams — make no mistake, you are heroes. Not just to me, but to all of us housed and unhoused members of our street community. Props to you all. Special thanks to KJ, Dax and CP for transportation support and food provision, to Sienna and Eric of Weather Amnesty who held down the fort at Purple House while we shuttled people to safety and to CL and AG for keeping track of it all! Also thank you to the staff at the Extended Stay America and Days Inn for their considerate and professional service. Barabara Laster-Bell, concierge at the Days Inn, mentioned that it was “heartening and encouraging to see a community of people come together to save their neighbors from the cold.” Finally a shout-out to the allied activist communities of Shelter Now and the Washtenaw General Defense Committee. Thank you for your continued work in housing and social justice and championing the mission to end homelessness at its source. GROUNDCOVER NEWS 5 WATER ST from last page quickly. This time there was more community support; activists spoke and waited the long two hours through other items on the agenda. After disappointing repetition of the information shared at the January 21 and January 31 meetings, to the surprise of the attendees, Councilmember Patrick McClean moved to allocate $7,500 from unspent staff salaries for relocation assistance costs for the homeless residents of Water Street — and the motion unanimously passed after clarifying discussion. Funds will be spent at discretion of the City Manager, informed by the needs of the current residents of Water Street. Examples of possible relocation costs would be replacement camping supplies, hotel stays or storage fees. What remains unsettled can be summarized in the title of the previous Groundcover report on this story: “Go where?” It is illegal to camp without permission on private property, and it is illegal to sleep overnight in public parks and other public land. Especially during the spring, summer and fall seasons, when there are no shelter options in Ypsilanti — homeless residents have nowhere to go. The $7,500 is an emergency allocation. Considering the January 7 resolution towards establishing a permanent shelter in the City, and the February 4 motion tasking the planning commission to research public land for safe tenting, Council seems to be shifting its priorities towards housing and shelter and the well-being of its constituents.
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