Room at the Inn to open its doors tomorrow
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Room at the Inn winter shelter opens its doors for the season Sunday at 7 p.m.
The shelter will provide a warm and safe place to sleep and meals for those in need during the winter months between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. daily.
The shelter will open for the winter season from Sunday, December 13, 2020, to March 14, 2021. Due to COVID, the shelter will operate out of 2 different locations this year.
The Unitarian Universalist Church, 2615 Shepherd Blvd., will serve as the primary location for the shelter. This location will operate as the mass care shelter site. The second shelter site will be at The Eastwood Motel, 2518 Business Loop 70 E. This shelter site will accept those who are in quarantine, isolation or are medically at-risk.
Guests seeking to use shelter services tomorrow are asked to arrive between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at the Wilkes Blvd. Methodist Church. On the organization's website, it details, "Guests will need to appear in person at Wilkes Blvd. Methodist Church 702 Wilkes Blvd between 5 and 6:30 p.m. to be screened and then routed to one of our two locations. We do not accept reservations by phone or email. "
The Room at the Inn's president, Debby Graham, says she anticipates this year will be unlike any other the shelter has seen before. "We’ve never been able to be in a single place for the entire shelter season and we’ve never tried to operate 2 sites simultaneously, so just those 2 things alone, especially the running 2 places simultaneously would be a challenge for us but under the circumstances of COVID it’s going to be particularly challenging.”, Graham explains.
Graham says all guests must undergo a health screening to determine which facility they will be routed to. Graham saids, “We are going to be screening guests before transport to the shelters so if the guest is symptomatic or is running a temperature, they are probably going to go to the Eastwood Motel facility, but if they are not showing any symptoms and they’re not running a temp and they answer appropriately through local COVID screening questions, then we will transport them to UU, to the Unitarian Church where they’ll be in a mass care shelter setting, but even that will look different.”
The organization had trouble figuring out how they were going to run their shelter this season. Graham says they planned this out for month's and didn't think they would even be able to open their doors this year. Graham explained, “We’re happy to do it this year, there was some question about that, we’ve actually been working on this since probably April, believe it or not; trying to figure out how we would be able to offer shelter this year and what it would look like."
Monday the organization posted on their Facebook, that they are in need of volunteers for this winter's shelter season.
Those looking to help out and volunteer must be at least 18 years of age and can submit an application on the organization's website.
