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Two more Charlotte-area shelters announced Monday that they're sharing facilities and staff to deal with a growing homeless population.
Starting today, Charlotte's Salvation Army Center of Hope will begin staffing and co-managing Hope House in Huntersville, with the emphasis on taking in 13 homeless women and some children.
Both groups will benefit, with the Salvation Army gaining desperately needed bed space, and the much smaller Hope House finding the staff it currently can't afford.
The Center of Hope will begin transferring the first group of six single women to Hope House today, with a second group of about four women with children to follow Dec. 2.
In most cases, the women sent to Hope House will have their own transportation, and are considered likely to transition into their own homes within the coming year. They can stay no longer than 18 months.
"Thirteen people may not sound like a lot, but it's significant when you think of it as 13 fewer people that we'll have to turn away," says Deronda Metz, director of the Center of Hope. "And when we turn away people, it's a hard thing, because there is no place else to go. We are the last resort."
The center now houses 248 women and children, with another 49 women temporarily placed at area houses of faith. The latter is a solution the Salvation Army came up with when the center ran out of beds months ago.
"I think community leaders expect the Salvation Army to exhibit leadership in helping women and children who are homeless," said Maj. Todd Hawks, area commander for the Salvation Army.
"That includes exploring every possible collaboration and option. This partnership (with Hope House) gives us a chance to do that with a part of the community that has a heart for homeless women and children."
Hope House has largely been a volunteer-driven effort, with a goal to care for homeless women and children in the Lake Norman area. It dates back to 2004, but the 4,000-square-foot house didn't receive a certificate of occupancy until last February. Two homeless women moved in on Aug. 10 and are currently its only tenants.
Officials with Hope House reached out to the Salvation Army first, after reading a Sept. 5 Observer story that the Salvation Army needed to vacate a building being used to house an overflow of 100 homeless women. Temporary shelter had been found for most, but not all, the article pointed out.
"They had to close a shelter and put people on the street, and here we had a house," said Lee Beth Linquist, co-founder of Hope House. "It had always been our plan to make use of existing services out there. We didn't want to re-invent the wheel."
The partnership comes at a time when experts and donors are encouraging charities to consider collaborations and mergers to save donor dollars in the recession. Two other shelters, Charlotte's Uptown Shelter Inc. and Emergency Winter Shelter, announced in July that they were merging staffs and governing boards as the first step in creating a Transitional Homeless Center.
Such collaborations are also being encouraged by the Community Catalyst Fund. That effort, managed by the Foundation for the Carolinas, offers grants to local charities studying ways to deal with increased demands and shrinking donations.
The Salvation Army is studying whether to pursue a catalyst fund grant, which it hopes might help with the estimated $200,000 to $300,000 annual cost of operating Hope House.
Metz notes that the next three months are considered a study period for the project, as the agencies look for ways to reduce costs.
