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Cold weather is approaching for the winter season in Flagstaff and homeless shelters all over the city are working together to rise to the occasion. 

Sunshine Rescue Mission celebrated 51 years of community service in September. Palmer Williams, one of the shelter’s three full-time coordinators, has been working for the shelter for seven years. Sunshine Rescue Mission provides overnight lodging, meals and food boxes for the Flagstaff community. 

The shelter serves breakfast at 6:30 a.m., lunch at noon and dinner at 7 p.m. 

“Our evening meals seem to pick up a little bit more to scale during the winter,” Williams said. “It’s very hard to be homeless in Flagstaff, especially in the winter time.” 

The shelter’s food box program runs Monday through Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. People can come in and request a box to be filled from a list of available food options. Volunteers help assemble the food boxes and provide them during the designated hours. 

A homeless man is asked for identification by police officers, after eating his dinner behind McDonalds Friday night. He has been homeless in Flagstaff for over a year and a half, and although thinks this winter will be even colder than last, he said he has nowhere else to go. - Jesse Kasten/ The Lumberjack

“At Thanksgiving time, we do a special Thanksgiving food box where we give out everything needed for a full Thanksgiving dinner for families,” Williams said. “We do about three to four hundred of those every year.” 

Sunshine Rescue Mission does the same program during Christmas, with the addition of presents for children and families. The shelter has someone present 24 hours every day.

“During the winter time, we have someone that actually sleeps downstairs so there’s no one banging on the door freezing to death,” Williams said. “Even if we are not able to take them in for whatever reason, we’ll make sure they get taken care of.” 

Sunshine Rescue Mission is a Christian Gospel Mission. Their shelter services are provided solely through donations.

Debbie Wallace became the bookkeeper at Sunshine Rescue Mission after graduating from NAU with her accounting degree in 2007. She had been working with Hope Cottage, a faith-based women’s shelter in Flagstaff, since 2002. 

Wallace arrived at Hope Cottage in 2001 after many years of patient rehab for alcoholism. 

“I knew this was my last chance, and God took it,” Wallace said. “He healed me of it in this program here.” 

After working through the program for a year, she became a part-time coordinator in 2002. Like Wallace, other members of the Hope Cottage staff have been homeless before. 

“We’ve been turning away an average of 70 to 80 women a month and this past year it gets bigger and bigger every month,” Wallace said. “We don’t like turning people away, especially those of us who have been homeless.”

If the shelter cannot provide someone with the services needed, they will send them to the appropriate location to get help.

“If somebody really needs a detox program, I’ll send them to The Guidance Center,” Wallace said. “They know what they’re doing, and we do what we do.” 

Flagstaff Shelter Services was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in May 2006 and works together with other shelters. They opened a permanent location for day services on Sept. 29, 2008, and began overnight services Oct 18. The overnight services are available from mid-October to mid-April for the winter.  

Todd Sherman, the director of the shelter, previously worked for Central Arizona Shelter Services, operating overflow facilities as a shelter supervisor. He said the night of Nov. 9 was the first time they had to turn people away from their shelter. 

“Unfortunately, we have 30 beds,” Sherman said. “Last night was the first snow of the winter year, and we had approximately 36 to 38 people come in here seeking shelter that night.” 

They worked with the detoxification unit to refer people who had been drinking. Others were referred to the Sunshine Rescue Mission. 

“Luckily, for the last month we have really been working well together,” Sherman said. “There is steady collaboration going on.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.