photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Community Building at 115 W. 11th St. is pictured on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021.

Updated at 1:34 p.m. Wednesday

As overnight temperatures fell below freezing Tuesday night, 28 people showed up at the doors of the Community Building, looking for a warm place to stay the night. With volunteers to help staff the city-run winter emergency shelter in short supply, the next time people show up, they may be met with locked doors.

To keep the free, temporary shelter at the Community Building, 115 W. 11th St., running, the City of Lawrence is in need of dozens of volunteers, and city officials say the city may have to close the shelter if more volunteers do not come forward.

“It’s not just that we need volunteers,” said Roger Steinbrock, who oversees the Parks and Recreation marketing division. “We desperately need volunteers.”

Dozens of people experiencing homelessness are living unsheltered outdoors. Many have been staying in encampments near the Kansas River and other areas around the city. The city or volunteers have taken on the responsibility of emergency winter shelter services following reductions in capacity at the Lawrence Community Shelter in 2019.

The LCS has the capacity to serve 125 people most of the time and 140 people during the winter, but it has been housing only a maximum of 40 people at its building in eastern Lawrence during the coronavirus pandemic so that it could space out guests and have room to quarantine guests as necessary. This fall, the Lawrence City Commission voted to suspend certain city codes to enable the city to use the Community Building and the East Lawrence Recreation Center, 1245 E. 15th St., to provide overnight shelter during the winter for up to 150 people experiencing homelessness.

The Community Building is the main shelter site and can serve up to 75 people, and the East Lawrence center is available for overflow if needed. The program began operation Nov. 1 and is open from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. the following day when the daily overnight temperature posted on the Lawrence Journal-World is listed below 35 degrees.

Stephen Mason, the city’s volunteer coordinator for the winter emergency shelter program, said as weather has started to turn colder the past two weeks, the city went from seeing only a few people some nights to about 20 people every evening. He said the arrival of 28 people on Tuesday night was the record so far this season. The city maintains a ratio of one volunteer to 10 guests, and Mason said as colder nights bring more people to the shelter, the city needs more volunteers than before.

“The need is there; it’s coming back,” Mason said. “Our numbers are going up; the nights are getting colder. Even these days that stay warm, the nights are getting colder.”

Each night it is open, the shelter needs at least three volunteers per shift to work with staff for evening check-in, overnight supervision and morning cleanup, according to a city news release. The night is broken into three shifts, so that means the city needs at least nine volunteers per evening to work the shelter with the current numbers. Mason estimated the city needs dozens of volunteers to meet the need.

Steinbrock said to compensate for the low number of volunteers, the city’s two part-time volunteer coordinators have had to work multiple shifts, multiple days. He said that type of stress on the system is not good for the program, and in addition to looking for additional volunteers the city is also hiring for another part-time position to help with the program.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Community Building at 115 W. 11th St. is pictured on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021. The emergency winter shelter entrance is on the south side of the building.

“To me, if we have stress in the system, it does nobody any good, both our volunteers and the visitors that come in to stay,” Steinbrock said.

As far as why the city is struggling to find volunteers, Mason said the main feedback he’s heard is uncertainty about what the duties entail and what support is in place. He said that all volunteers receive training and will never work solo, and while he recognized it was certainly a step further than the typical drop-off donation, he said people have found volunteering for the program to be a great experience.

“And I think that that’s what we want to get across to people, is the growth and the enjoyment that you can get from working at the shelter, working with this population and working with the other volunteers,” Mason said.

Mason also said another factor working against the city was the warmer-than-normal weather when the shelter was first operating. He said some people showed interest in volunteering but were not ultimately needed, and he thinks those who needed volunteer hours moved on to other programs. So far, he said he didn’t think the increase of COVID-19 cases had been a factor, and he added that all volunteers are masked and guests must also be masked whenever they are not in their identified sleeping area.

The city states in the release that if the minimum number of volunteers needed to run the shelter isn’t secured by 24 hours of its daily opening, the shelter will not open for the next day’s operation. Volunteer shifts needed for coverage are:

• 7-11 p.m. Evening Check-in

• 11 p.m. – 5 a.m. Overnight Supervision

• 5-8 a.m. Morning Checkout and Cleanup

Check-in duties include set-up and general intake duties of shelter guests – checking temperatures and bags, plus reviewing the code of conduct and expectations for staying overnight. Overnight supervision duties include monitoring guests while sleeping and ensuring the code of conduct is being followed. Morning checkout and cleanup includes waking up guests, making coffee, collecting bedding and checking out guests.

Those interested in signing up for a volunteer shift can fill out a volunteer inquiry at lawrenceks.org/winter-emergency-shelter/volunteer. More information about the part-time city position to assist with the winter emergency shelter program, which is advertised at a rate of $18 per hour, is available at lprd.org/jobs.