On winter days when the wind is whipping, or if an icy sleet rains down, the Friendly Kitchen and the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness are used to extending their hours for people in need of a warm, safe place.
Opening for breakfast a little earlier, or staying open through the afternoon between lunch and dinner, the soup kitchen was open 90 hours beyond its usual schedule last winter, in the months of January and February alone.
“Whether that was for five people, ten people, it didn’t matter,” said Valerie Guy, executive director at the Friendly Kitchen. “I’m here, I’m not going to kick people out.”
The coalition’s resource center added expanded hours last year, opening its doors a half-hour earlier and welcoming anyone in during cold afternoons.
But there were still gaps sometimes, or the added hours stretched their existing staff thin.
This winter from December through the end of March, with additional funding from Merrimack County and the City of Concord, including an additional $20,000 from the city to the coalition, the two organizations will collaborate to provide shelter during cold, wet, or otherwise dangerous winter weather. Building on times they were already open, the added coverage ensures a round-the-clock shelter option in the city during harsh winter weather.
The added time does far more than its essential function of protection from the elements, explained Karen Jantzen, the executive director of the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness. It gives staff more time for case management work and helps them to stay in touch with clients when harsh weather might otherwise drive people without shelter to hunker down.
“With those extra hours, we saw a decrease in negative behaviors, and people just were calmer,” Jantzen siad. “We didn’t lose track of people, and people were using the shelter more.”
From the Friendly Kitchen’s weekday breakfasts to the Coalition’s overnight shelter, both organizations expand their support systems during the wintertime. Last year, with frequent stretches of harsh cold, was among the toughest in years. The overnight shelter was over capacity multiple times, Jantzen said. It renewed conversations locally about ensuring round-the-clock warming options. Unlike some other larger cities in the state, Concord does not directly provide a warming center.
Jantzen and Guy will huddle early in the week over a weather forecast and set a schedule for when the added hours will be needed. This will be communicated to city and county agencies and organizations, and the schedule will be available to people in the community experiencing homelessness via a QR code and outreach workers.
They worry these spaces will be needed more and more this year. The current government shutdown, putting meal, heat and housing support at risk, is part of that, but rising costs as a whole have local providers concerned.
Anecdotally, support agencies and Concord police have reported a rise in older residents living out of their cars. As temperatures drop, it becomes a less viable place to stay.
“For people who are already low income and working hard,” Guy said, “I just can’t even see what’s going to happen.”
While operating as a warming center isn’t necessarily core to either organization’s mission – the Coalition of connecting people with stable housing and the Friendly Kitchen of serving meals to anyone in need – the partnership has worked, the two directors said, working together to do something that neither could do alone.
