Overnight temperatures continue to hover in the teens and 20s, but Juneau’s city-run warming shelter won’t be ready until next month.
The city has selected the blue-and-white former state Department of Public Safety building for the downtown facility.
Housing Officer Scott Ciambor said the city is still negotiating with the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, which owns the Whittier Avenue property.
“We’re still working on the final details of the lease, putting the insurance pieces in place,” Ciambor said Tuesday, “working with service providers on the personnel contract so they can provide staffing.”
The original plan was for the warming shelter to open Wednesday.
Ciambor said his office understands that there’s “interest in seeing this come online as fast as possible. So we’re hoping to do so and really think that Dec. 1 is the realistic date.”
The Glory Hole, Juneau’s downtown homeless shelter, has been running at capacity for the past week.
“I have a growing list of people who are suspended for up to a month at a time, and they will literally stand outside my door and ask when the warming center is going to open,” Kyle Hargrave, the shelter’s deputy director, said Tuesday. “Because they’re not allowed to come here and if those individuals are not allowed to come to the Glory Hole, there’s usually no other place to turn.”
The Juneau Assembly approved $75,000 last week for the facility to shelter up to 25 people overnight over the next five months.
It’s budgeted to be open for 100 nights from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. when temperatures fall below freezing.
Editor’s note: KTOO’s building sits on land leased from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. KTOO has also applied for and received occasional grants for special reporting projects from the authority. Scott Ciambor’s spouse is a CoastAlaska employee.
