By JEANETTE WOLFBERG
HUDSON–A warming center with beds and meals opened in Hudson, October 17, as the Blanche Hotaling Memorial Mission. Located in the First Reformed Church of Hudson on Green Street and staffed 24/7, it will welcome anybody with no other shelter who comes to it at any time of the day or night.
The number of people in Columbia County classified as homeless is growing. For example, the number of individuals the Department of Social Services (DSS) recorded lodging while it worked with them to find them permanent stable housing rose from 97 in July 2022 to 124 in July 2023 to 151 in July 2024.
Now, the DSS reports, it has run out of hotel rooms to house them in.
By 2023, the DSS was exploring options for a warming center, DSS Director Bob Gibson explained at the mission’s opening ceremony October 17. Then in May that year, Reverend Dan Herrick, pastor at the First Reformed Church, came to him and proposed using his church. Several people worked together on preparing the church for overnight occupancy, and in March and April this year they gave the warming center there a trial run.
During its month of operation, the preliminary warming center lodged four to 10 people every night, an average of 6.2 people a night. Of these 11% to 29% were women, and the rest were men.
Now in its established form, Mr. Gibson said he hopes the mission will be able to sleep up to 16 people a night in bunk rooms. Two rooms in the church have been outfitted with bunk beds. Each bed has two tiers. On October 17, the beds were still being set up, but each room is to have four bunk beds and sleep eight. Some beds, Mr. Gibson said, will be designed to accommodate people with disabilities.
Each room is on a different floor. But on each floor near the room is a large bathroom with one toilet and a shower stall. Under each bed are containers for the guests to put their belongings in. The guests will also have a “day room,” a small ante room with a couch, next to the church sanctuary. And the mission will prepare and provide food for them on site.
If there are more guests than sleeping space in the bunk rooms, the overflow will be able to sleep in the church’s large dining room, Mr. Gibson said. On October 17, some rooms had stacks of mattresses, more than will be needed for the beds in the bunk rooms.
Ideally, Mr. Gibson said, women and men will sleep in separate rooms, and the mission currently is not intended to lodge families with children. But both of these rules can be loosened, depending on the time an emergency occurs and what guests are already there.
After a person’s first night in the mission, DSS will meet with them, as soon as possible, to discuss finding stable shelter. At the opening ceremony, somebody foresaw possible shifting of clients between hotel rooms and the mission, depending on the circumstances.
The mission will always be staffed: in daytime, by the church; at night, by the Mental Health Association of Columbia and Greene Counties (MHA). Lining up enough MHA staff to do this at night was the last thing needed to be done before opening the mission, Mr. Gibson said. He also told Hudson Police Chief Mishanda Franklin that DSS will keep law enforcement updated.
Originally the mission was going to start accepting new guests on November 1, but it might do so sooner, depending on weather and other circumstances.
At the opening ceremony, Mr. Gibson thanked “all the people who worked on this.” Several county supervisors, law enforcers, Joan Hunt of Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood, and other prominent local people attended.
Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson said, “Our homeless population is growing. The way to shelter is shrinking. All hotels are full. I got a call this morning; two gentlemen have no place to stay.”
A speaker said that 10 to 12 years ago if someone asked whether there was a homeless problem, she would have said, “Not really.” Now, she sees people who appear to have no home in various spots in Hudson, including “camping behind the church” and “on the steps of the church.”
Director of Emergency Management David Harrison called the mission “the first of something like this in Columbia County.”
