Open Door Mission is expanding into a fourth building downtown. The added beds will reach different groups of homeless people than were placed — then pulled — this week from a Motel 6 in Gates.
All are part of a population overlooked in the nation’s housing crisis.
“There's just a lot of gaps here (and) we're seeing this — now we're seeing the results of some pretty bad funding policies,” said Anna Valeria-Iseman, chief executive at Open Door Mission.
Those decisions are at the federal and state levels, she said, directing funding primarily to supportive housing for chronically homeless single adults.
That’s left local governments and private operators to assist everyone else. And there are differing approaches on the best and most efficient ways to do that.
The nonprofit Open Door Mission’s multi-year expansion is focused around North Plymouth Avenue and West Main Street. It plans to double the size of its residential recovery program for men and open more emergency shelter beds for single men and women.
Theirs is a congregate model, with between 15 and 30 people in any one setting.
A few blocks away on South Plymouth Avenue, Monroe County wants to open a 76-room emergency housing facility in a former hotel. The county plans to hire a service provider to operate it, and Deputy County Executive Jeff McCann is optimistic that the facility could open by year’s end.
"We're looking at a proposal that will bring online almost as many beds as we're using at Motel 6, that again, will be under our control,” McCann said. “That will be our facility, that we would have a long-term lease with a service provider that would actually do that.”
Repurposing hotels for use as homeless shelters is not a new idea, but it is increasingly popular from New York to L.A. The approach came into more widespread use during the pandemic as a way to relieve pressure on shelters and is now being used to accommodate a swelling migrant population."
But there is unease with this approach. Worries about concentrating a population of people in need of significant assistance in one place. Also of concern: The outcomes of a non-congregate model when taken to this scale.
"It's a little bit concerning to say we're just going to overhaul our systems to go into this model,” Valeria-Iseman said, “when the only way we've really seen it happen has not been terribly successful."
The issue is how to provide structure and support in a setting with such a high degree of built-in privacy, she said. And how to meet a shortage of beds available for people dealing with untreated mental illness or addiction, for couples, and for families — a population she said has been underserved and is increasing.
There were dozens of families staying at the Motel 6, records show, including more than 100 children.
Open Door already opened a clothing donation and distribution room on the first floor of what’s known as the Wegman Building, near the northeast corner of Plymouth and West Main.
The plan is to expand that into a full community resource center open to everyone, including those not staying at the Open Door Mission, to provide computer access, classroom and meeting space, and even shower and laundry facilities.
That work should be done by spring. By the end of next year, the organization hopes to begin transforming the remaining three floors so it can relocate administrative offices and the residential recovery program in the Wegman Building. Doing so frees up Open Door’s building for emergency housing a couple of blocks away on North Plymouth.
Read more: How 'confusion' and 'miscommunication' forced homeless families from Motel 6
