SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Officials have said twice that The Warming Shelter will be closing, but now they say there is chance that the shelter may be able to open again.
On Monday, the council of Sioux City gave The Warming Shelter a grant of $150,000. The downtown charity that gives homeless people a place to stay is trying to keep its doors open.
The Siouxland Recovery Fund’s program to help individuals will soon come to an end.
The grant will only be given out on February 28, 2019, if a campaign to raise money to keep the shelter running succeeds.
The Warming Shelter board has said twice that it will close on October 1 because the community is not giving enough money.
But Joe Twidwell, the treasurer of the shelter, told the city council on Monday that the drive to keep the building open has made “substantial headway.” Twidwell told the council that donors have agreed to pay half of the shelter’s yearly budget for the next five years.
“How can you make people answer for their actions and still save lives?” Twidwell told him. “So we came up with this plan, and the board agreed that if the shelter opened this winter, we would pretty much split it in half.”
The council approved the $150,000 grant by a vote of 4-1 after a long discussion and public comment.
Alex Watters, the only council member to vote “no,” said that he supports the shelter’s work but has not been told enough about the planned changes to how it works to support the grant at this time.
The mayor of Sioux City, Bob Scott, called it a disaster and said that people on both sides need to stop making enemies.
Scott said, “It is not fair to say bad things about police chiefs, mayors, and council members when we do not even have all the facts.” “It is not fair at all.
I am going to hold my nose and vote for this today because I think it is important to have a plan for the future. But today, everyone needs to stop calling each other names, and we need to move forward in a good way.
The head of the Sioux City Community School District is going to leave next year.
Twidwell said the shelter would give people in need a dry, warm place to stay. There would be extra benefits and room for people who were willing to breathe and commit to a work and residence plan.
Twidwell told KCAU 9 that he was thankful for the council’s help and was looking forward to changing the shelter’s name. However, the group is still not at its fundraising goal.
