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Lynchburg updates warming-center operations as unsheltered homelessness rises; Salvation Army reopens gym
Summary
City staff and partners reported December/January warming-center activations, CDBG-funded temporary shelter operations and a planned low-barrier shelter phased opening in February that will add roughly 15 beds; council has previously approved CDBG allocations and a zoning petition for shelter operations.
Kent White, a city staffer leading the briefing on sheltering, told the City Council that unsheltered homelessness in the Central Virginia area has increased sharply since 2019, and that the city and community partners have stood up temporary warming centers during extreme cold.
“Since 2019, unsheltered homelessness has increased 410%,” White said, citing point-in-time measures and local continuum-of-care reporting. He said that unsheltered instances have increased even as overall homelessness has declined in some measures.
White said the city and partner organizations — including the Salvation Army, Miriam’s House and Interfaith Outreach — stood up warming centers on 19 occasions last winter and that volunteers and staff have coordinated daily during weather events to staff shelters and sign volunteers up. He told the council that one recent shelter operation used the Salvation Army chapel and accommodated roughly 15 people nightly; reopening the Salvation Army gym expanded capacity to about 40 cots, with nightly averages near 20 as people learned the center was operating nightly.
White described three council actions taken last year that he said were key to recent operations: approval of community development block grant (CDBG) funding for a homeless intake/access service, allocation of direct funding for Miriam’s House and the continuum of care to solicit a nonprofit to operate a warming center, and approval of a zoning petition that allows a community partner to operate a low-barrier shelter in a vacant church on Memorial Avenue (the “Refuge at Memorial”). White said the Refuge at Memorial has experienced winter construction delays but staff were told the project’s first phase aims to open in February and would add roughly 15 beds.
White said shelters have been operating on a temperature threshold (32°F) for ongoing nightly operation and on lower emergency thresholds for severe cold, and that about one-third of warming-center guests were not previously engaged with the homeless response system. City staff and partners are monitoring volunteer capacity, donations and transportation impacts during cold weather.
Council members thanked staff and volunteered additional facility support (Jubilee Gym and showers) and commended Salvation Army and volunteers. Several council members asked for continued monitoring and data on client outcomes and onlonger-term capacity.
