AKRON, Ohio — With temperatures expected to plunge into the teens the next few nights, Akron’s Overnight Emergency Shelter plans to open this Wednesday through Friday.
The overnight shelter, located at 111 E. Voris St., provides a safe place for the area’s unsheltered residents to sleep when winter temperatures become dangerously cold. It operates from about 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. on nights it's opened.
The overnight shelter is funded by the city of Akron with support from Community Support Services, and run by volunteers, with most from the Peter Maurin Center, said volunteer organizer Michelle Hopp.
The Peter Maurin Center is an all-volunteer outreach ministry in south Akron that started as a drop-in center and has grown to provide an array of services for the homeless.
The emergency overnight shelter is in need of volunteers who can sign up online to fill several positions for this week’s operating hours, she said.
Roles range from cooks and servers responsible for making and serving the hot meals provided to outtake workers who wake guests up in the morning and help them pack up their belongings.
“I think in order to stay on top of sort of peacekeeping, and just making sure everything goes smoothly, we have it set up in a highly organized fashion,” she said.
The overnight shelter screens guests upon entering, relieving them of any weapons they might carry, Hopp said, and security is available throughout the night.
Having that structure helps alleviate any hesitation potential volunteers might have in helping out in an overnight operation, she said.
“I think it helps to be really clear about what the expectations are,” she said. “And maybe it takes away some of the unknown about what it might be like, and I think that that helps us get more volunteers.”
Although the roles are spelled out, once the volunteers are gathered, everyone works together as a team, she said.
That includes CSS case workers who step in if anyone who stays at the shelter wants to find permanent housing, CSS said.
In 2021, more than 4,000 Summit County residents, 774 of them children, received services through the Continuum of Care, according to its latest annual report. The Continuum of Care comprises about 50 agencies providing services to combat homelessness.
The volunteer work is fulfilling, and guests sometimes tell volunteers they are grateful, Hopp said.
“We have heard just really sweet little unexpected comments like, ‘Oh, you guys have the best coffee in town’ or, you know, ‘you're the nicest people around,’” She said. “From my experience, people have been very grateful, and in some ways touched by volunteers and their kindness.”
This is her first full year as a volunteer organizer for the overnight shelter, said Hopp, who offers her time despite keeping up with her six children.
She was a volunteer last year when prolonged, brutally low temperatures caused the overnight shelter to open for about 45 nights, she said.
By the end of the season, she was the volunteer organizer and volunteers were starting to feel the burnout.
“But I feel like there were very, very few times when we didn't have everyone and everything that we needed,” she said.
Most of the volunteers for the overnight shelter also volunteer with the Peter Maurin Center, Hopp said, and are committed to working with this vulnerable population.
The Maurin Center’s Executive Director Jim Orenga said the emergency overnight shelter was formerly hosted at the center, located at 1096 South Main St.
But with a need to house up to 50 people overnight at times, the center didn’t have enough space for everyone who wanted relief from the frigid weather, he said.
The city opens warming centers at several community centers when temperatures drop for daytime only, he said, while most other area shelters usually are full, especially for women.
“The only game in town when the weather's bad is us, at 111 East Voris St.,” Orenga said.
The overnight shelter offers partitioned sleeping areas with thick mattresses and blankets, a hot dinner and breakfast, and bus passes, which are given to guests before they leave so they can retain warmth a little longer, he said.
Among the services offered at the Maurin Center are lunches served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.
A food pantry, offered in partnership with the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, operates from 10 a.m. to noon on the second and fourth Saturday of every month.
A new service was recently added, Orenga said, in which DoorDash picks up the groceries and delivers them to about 40 families who can’t get out to retrieve them.