As the spring weather starts to warm things up, it might be easy to forget just how bitter-cold January was. But the people who volunteered for the Logan County Emergency Warming Shelter remember. Mostly they remember how essential it was in establishing something more useful to the community in the years ahead.
“I’m grateful for the crazy January we had,” Matthew Lazar said at an impact meeting on Thursday, May 8. “It was the push we needed to get this going.”
Wanting to make sure people had a warm place to go whenever temperatures dropped below 20 degrees, a small group led by Kathy Zeller, Logan County Recovery Zone director, set up the shelter in the Bellefontaine First Church of God basement on east Brown Avenue.
Though they only needed to be open two days in December 2024 and three this past February, January’s 31 days boasted 22 hitting below the 20-degree threshold.
No one expected that. Today, however, they can see it as a blessing in disguise. It’s led to new collaborations and some community development grants to help them take the shelter to another level.
In fact, they have $250,000 coming in. The grant requires they raise $75,000, so the team is looking for ways to get that.
According to Zeller, they have all the pieces together.
“We showed we can do this pretty cost effectively,” she concluded.
But, in the long run, the shelter is really about people coming together to help the homeless through a rough winter. More than two dozen volunteers gave almost 400 hours of their time to meet their needs.
“Going forward,” volunteer Dustin Ragland said, “this will be a staple in our community. People came out of the shadows because they found a place that didn’t judge them.”
In fact, one visitor they ministered to was dumbfounded, admitting to Ragland he’d “never seen a community like this.”
Volunteer Dougie Boggs also saw how it drew everyone involved together, adding, “I’m gonna give God the glory for that.”
Besides the volunteers, donations from individuals, businesses and churches were key to everything working out, from cots donated by the Red Cross to all the food that filled their kitchen on the nights they were open.
Those donations came from Firehouse Pizza, Donatos, Otterbein Green Hills, Fat Boys Pizza (multiple times), Buckeye Gospel Barn and Kim Summers with Kelley’s Designer Loft, plus survival gear and gas cards from a United Way grant as well as $2,000 for warming gear from Bellefontaine First Christian Church.
“A lot of people have a lot of trauma. They’re alone with no resources and no support,” Lazar explained. “Then they experience something like this, and they know there is help.”
To learn how you can be involved in the warming shelter next winter, you are welcome to attend the next housing innovation meeting at noon Wednesday, May 14, at the First Church of God in Bellefontaine.
You can also call the Recovery Zone peer line at (937) 210-9003 and leave a call-back message.
