Fargo Housing Authority and Homeless Shelter
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About this facility
- Hours
- M-F 8:00 A.M. – 4:30 P.M.
- Service
- Temporary
Notes
Emergency shelter nearing completion
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Andrea Domaskin, Forum Communications Co.
From the outside, Fargo’s new emergency homeless shelter is an unassuming one-story building with a brown-stone face and long cinder-block sides.
Inside, though, workers are nearly finished transforming part of the city-owned building at 1519 1st Ave. S. into the Gladys Ray Shelter.
The facility may start accepting overnight guests this week, Shelter Executive Director Jan Eliassen said.
It’s designed for homeless people who cannot stay at other shelters, often because they’ve been drinking.
Walls throughout the shelter are painted shades of tan and green. A reception area awaits furniture and a phone that guests can use to make calls.
Separate bathrooms for men and women and empty dormitory-style sleeping rooms are down a hallway. There’s space for 25 men and 10 women.
The shelter is pleasant, but not luxurious.
City commissioners in October narrowly approved bids totaling $684,500 to remodel the shelter and Centre Inc., a separate city detox center that’s under construction at the back of the building. The detox center is on track for an April finish, Eliassen said.
Shelter furnishings were not included in the bids.
Eide Bailly donated used office furniture to the shelter when it moved to another location, said Dan Mahli, a Fargo senior planner who is involved with the shelter.
Churches have donated blankets, towels, pillow cases and similar items, and Churches United for the Homeless, a Moorhead shelter, offered extra supplies.
“It’s really being embraced by the community, and that’s incredibly rewarding,” said City Commissioner Linda Coates, who was driving Friday with a rocking chair in her van. She plans to donate it to the shelter.
There are no beds. Eliassen said overnight guests will sleep on mats.
“It’s a funding issue, and as the shelter itself develops, beds are certainly not out of the question,” she said.
The shelter will be open only at night at first, with six or seven total staff members, Eliassen said. She plans to transition to a 24-hour shelter.
Though the building is city owned, the shelter is expected to eventually be run by a nonprofit organization with a federal 501(c)(3) status, City Administrator Pat Zavoral said.
Operating money comes from grants and other sources, not city general fund dollars, he said.
The shelter is designed as a “front door” for chronically homeless people who cannot stay in other shelters and who have been unable to cycle out of homelessness, Mahli said.
Along with providing a safe place to stay, shelter employees will work with the Fargo Housing and Redevelopment Authority and Southeast Human Services to connect shelter users to services that might keep them off the streets, Mahli said.
Gary Groberg, executive director of Churches United, said the facility can reach people that his shelter simply can’t.
His shelter asks intoxicated people to go to Clay County’s detox center, but they often don’t want to ride there in either a police car or a taxi.
Because the Gladys Ray Shelter will be attached to Centre Inc., intoxicated people will be able to go to detox without leaving the building, he said.
If they’ve had a few drinks but don’t need detox, they can stay in a separate ward until they’re sober.
“When they walk though that shelter door, they won’t have to leave again,” Groberg said. “I think, hopefully, that will encourage people to use that shelter.”