New homeless shelter near completion

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Inter-Faith Council for Social Service’s men’s homeless shelter and community kitchen will soon have a new home.

While the new location at 1315 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is farther from downtown Chapel Hill, the new shelter will offer more space and services.

The new shelter is scheduled to open in mid-September. Construction is on schedule and is now about 60 percent complete, Peter Kamel, IFC’s construction manager, said.

“The exterior walls are up. All of the steel is in. The brick is going up on the outside,” he said. Construction work on the roof began last week.

With materials supplied by IFC, the total cost of the project is about $4 million.

Kamel said there has been a lot of positive feedback from the community — in terms of both word of mouth and financial support. The shelter has received donations from the State Employees’ Credit Union, which the shelter will be named after; UNC Health Care and School of Medicine; and the Kenan family.

“We’ve had very good results and good feedback from everybody in Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” Kamel said. “We don’t have anyone mad at us.”

The town will decide what to do with the Rosemary Street building that currently houses the shelter. The building was once the Town Hall but now needs a lot of work on its roof and interior, and Kamel said it will likely be preserved for its historical value.

What’s new

The first thing residents and passersby will notice about the new shelter is that it’s bigger — at 16,543 square feet, it’s roughly twice as large as the old location.

The new shelter will offer free health services on site, with four medical suites and two dental suites run by Piedmont Health Services Inc., which the Rosemary Street location did not. Kamel said this will make it easier to monitor residents’ health, rather than if they sought health services elsewhere.

The new shelter is also close to multiple churches and in a nicer area, Kamel said, for residents to go out and find jobs.

The shelter will also have a community garden where residents can grow their own vegetables.

“Right now you’ve got 40 people, and if you want to go outside, you can go outside and sit in the parking lot,” Kamel said.

“There are walking paths, facilities where they can get outside and actually have some solitude instead of mingling with the traffic.”

Location, location

But there is some concern about the new shelter being farther from downtown Chapel Hill.

For Peter, a homeless man in the downtown area who asked that his last name not be used, the change will cost him an extra half hour for every meal he visits the shelter for.

“It’s on the NS line, so weekdays it won’t be a problem for people going there for meals,” he said. “People staying there, it shouldn’t be a big deal. They’ll just take a bus to get into town.”

Charles Gear, who is also homeless, said he thinks the distance from downtown will discourage panhandling.

“Some of the people stay at the shelter, and they’re still out here asking people for money,” he said.

Gear said he was banned from the Rosemary Street location but will be allowed at the new one, which he plans to use for meals and other services.

Jan Broughton, a member of the Ethical Humanist Society of the Triangle, said the new location, while farther away, is still accessible for the people who need it.

“The clients that are going to be there are able to handle the transportation needs,” she said.

The society has a crew that has cooked and served meals at the shelter for many years, and Broughton said members are supportive of the change.

“I think it’s kind of an exciting time,” she said.

“We’re really looking forward to it.”

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