Good Shepherd’s day shelter is designed
more for the chronically homeless or people
with disabilities or mental illness, so they
have a place to stay during the day.
“We start where the client is; and if what
they’re comfortable with is coming in and
taking a shower every once in awhile, great,”
Knight says. “We’re going to try to learn
their name, we’re going to try to remember
them next time they come in and be really
warm and try to engage them. … Sometimes
over a period of months or years that develops
into a willingness to try overnight.”
The shelter is a wet shelter, accepting
homeless people who are under the influence
of drugs or alcohol as long as they are not
violent. But guests have to provide a birth
certificate or social security paperwork,
undergo a background check and be searched
for weapons, drugs and alcohol before being
housed in the shelter.
The shelter can sleep about 60 men and
28 women on separate sides. The family area
has four private rooms, allowing a limited
number of parents to stay with their children
as one unit.
The Sergeant Eugene Ashley Center,
located in a separate building on Colwell
Avenue, offers transitional housing to homeless
for permanent supportive housing were
21
veterans with a history of substance abuse
through an 18-month program. Six apartments
recently added to the Ashley Center.
“Good Shepherd has done so much, and
it’s changed so much, especially in the last
ten years,” White says. “It’s almost backward
of what people would think for the
average homeless shelter. … A lot of people
either think of Good Shepherd as a soup
kitchen or they think of it as a shelter, and
they don’t realize all of the other stuff that
goes on and how it all sort of fits together
to create that path to housing. Because
that’s the real goal at the end of all of the
programs we have is to a path to housing.
… The more people you can move into
housing, the people who are left are the
tougher cases.”
Good Shepherd Center’s 30th anniversary
will be formally celebrated during
a Masquerade Ball on October 26 at the
Hilton Wilmington Riverside.
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