In their ongoing efforts to lift up homeless Quad Citians, the City of Moline and Project NOW announced that a winter shelter will open at 8 p.m. tonight in the BridgePointe 485 building on Moline’s riverfront.
The Lift Now shelter is located at 1 Montgomery Drive. It will remain open seven days a week starting Wednesday, Jan. 21, and remain open through April 15. The fully equipped location was the site of a news conference led by city leaders, Project NOW and other advocates behind the effort to find a new location for a temporary winter shelter even before the City of Rock Island closed its winter shelter there.
On Wednesday, Jan. 21, Project NOW Executive Director the Rev. Dwight Ford and others applauded the group of Quad Citians who made the Moline shelter happen. The unveiling also included a tour of the shelter. It boasts 60 fully made cots spread out over several rooms on the second floor of a former Montgomery Elevator building. That building will eventually be demolished by its current owner, the City of Moline.
Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati – who along with the city council and staff have made housing insecurity a priority – told the crowd assembled today “I’ll just get straight to the point, which is we’re here to announce that we’re opening a temporary winter shelter run by Project NOW in this space behind you in this lobby tonight.”
She also noted that the temporary shelter is the most recent addition to Moline’s efforts to find strategic solutions to housing instability. She also cited the work of the Moline House Task Force which compiled information and researched best practices to inform those efforts.
Latest puzzle piece
“So this is just the latest piece of the puzzle to fall into place for us to address the needs of this really large ecosystem around housing,” Ms. Rayapati noted.
Rev. Ford called the new winter shelter yet another advantage of the “long standing relationship that has been in existence for years between the City of Moline and Project NOW” as well as other key agencies and leaders.
Those relationships and programs including Moline’s Level Up initiative “allow us to do meaningful work with measurable outcomes,” Rev. Ford said before pointing to the new shelter a floor above the lobby area. Beginning tonight that space will serve as the first step in the shelter’s intake process.
Project NOW Community Services Director Ron Lund said the Moline winter shelter will open each night at 8 p.m. and will close in the morning at 7.
Once Lift Now closes for the day, he said “We’ll have a 15-passenger cargo van in here to take them to Moline Centre Station, where they will be provided a bus ticket and to go wherever they need within the Quad Cities to gain the services that they need.”
Typical daytime destinations during weekdays are likely to be Christian Care, Project NOW or the Third Place QC, all in Rock Island.
What happens when that Rock Island day shelter closes on the weekends, Mr. Lund asked. With the help of others including Rock Island County, “this building will become a day shelter on Saturdays and Sundays. So when we open Friday night, at 8 p.m. we are open 24 hours until 7 a.m. Monday.
Beds fill up quickly
Mr. Lund, Rev. Ford and others predicted Lift Now’s 60 beds will fill up quickly, so they’re working with area hotels and motels to help take in the overflow capacity.
The need for a backup plan is just one of the key bits of the wisdom Rev. Ford and Mr. Lund said Project NOW learned when it launched its inaugural winter emergency shelter in Rock Island last year. That effort and the services that were provided during that shelter’s 12-week run resulted in 14 homeless people remaining housed to this day.
Rev. Ford hopes the Lift Now shelter and the cooperative that made it possible will continue to grow that number. The need to do so is critical, he said, because homelessness has seen an alarming rise throughout the Quad Cities. It’s hard to say how much because those who have no permanent address are transient and hard to count.
To get better data that reflects the true scope of the problem, the shelter’s intake center will ask those who are staying the night or weekend questions such as where they are from and where they slept the night before. The information representatives of the Quad Cities Continuum of Care workers collect during those intakes also will be used to help leverage the additional federal and state dollars the community needs to attack the growing problem.
The coalition’s search for ways to attack homeless and housing instability has been going on for a long time, Rev. Ford said. Indeed, the current effort is “not because of the winter blast that is just around the corner or the one that just happened, but this is something that we’ve been working on for months, and now, finally, has come to fruition so that we can make this public announcement,” he said.
City staff essential
For example, Ms. Rayapati said Moline First Ward Alderwoman Debbie Murphy sparked the latest conversations around the issue last spring after she noted that Moline has never had a homeless shelter. That initial conversation led to today’s announcements and tonight’s Lift Now Shelters’ opening.
Speakers also thanked the city’s public works crew, the fire department, the fire marshall and Moline Police Chief Darren Gault and his officers for their contributions to creating the shelter in a space that most recently was home to the offices of Heritage Church.
Speakers Wednesday also applauded the city’s economic development department and especially KJ Whitley. Moline’s economic development manager has focused throughout her long career on the need to find housing solutions.
Matt Timion, Moline fourth ward alderman, said Ms. Whitley told him on Tuesday while they were working to get the new shelter ready that “25 years ago, the council at the time told her we would never have a shelter and we can celebrate the change of tone over the decades.” Lift Now shelter also shows that Moline has a “long history of rising to the occasion” to meet the community’s needs, the alderman said.
Supporters also sought today to address the stigma and false narratives that often surround homelessness.
“We are very hopeful that this effort is ushering in a totally new era of responsiveness to the needs and desires of folks in our community who are experiencing homelessness, and I want to drive something home,” said Amanda Erwing, the coordinator of Continuum of Care. “This is an effort to serve community members.”
Who are QC homeless?
She added “Some community members sleep indoors, some community members sleep outdoors.” The data elements being sought during with the new intake questions including “are you from the Quad Cities” and “where did you sleep last night”should help to prove that point, she said.
“Our population of community members who sleep outdoors invest in the Quad Cities,” she added. “They work here; they raise their families here; they are members of this community.
The Rev. Ford said funding for the new shelter includes more than $100,000 Project NOW already had in the pipeline as well as in-kind and dollars donated during last year’s effort. That money has allowed Project NOW to increase staff at the new shelter from seven in Rock Island last year to 10 in Moline this year.
“And then we’re still taking donations and support as we go because as you know, it’s one thing to have a budget for this. It’s another thing that once you get into a reality, you have to respond to the emergencies,” the Rev. Ford said.
Those wishing to help should follow Project NOW on Facebook to find out how. Currently, Project NOW said today, Lift Now needs blankets, monetary donations, coffee creamer and cleaning supplies.
