Plan to open overnight warming room for the homeless at Wilson Park Senior Center stirs debate

A plan to use a south side senior center as an overnight warming room for people who are homeless has prompted questions and the scheduling of two public meetings  Monday.

Milwaukee County offered the Wilson Park Senior Center as a location for the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County Continuum of Care to use as a warming room on the south side. The continuum's goal is to end homelessness in Milwaukee.

Connie Wilson said she learned about the plan in the course of her part-time job at the senior center and expressed concern about it in Facebook posts.

She told the Journal Sentinel that she wants the homeless to be cared for but feels that there are different buildings that could be used as a warming room.

Wilson, who is also chairperson of the Garden District Neighborhood Association, said her only concern is for the seniors' health.

She contended that there are questions that have not been answered. And she said she didn't feel like she had gotten a lot of answers from a meeting for the seniors on last Monday.

"I still feel like that they should find a different place," she said. "They shouldn't be mixing the seniors with this at all. ... There's so many empty buildings around here, it's like, c'mon guys. It's almost like they picked this place and that's it."

The Garden District Neighborhood Association is hosting two public meetings Monday at Wilson Park Senior Center, 2601 W. Howard Ave. in Milwaukee, at 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. 

Ald. Scott Spiker, whose district includes Wilson Park Senior Center, contends that he and the public weren't sufficiently informed or consulted.

He said he found out about the plan through happenstance. 

"We need to have questions answered, we need to have a meeting where the people who are going to be impacted have a chance to weigh in with their concerns and just get information about how this would work," Spiker said.

The Wilson Center was chosen primarily because it's a county building, said James Mathy, housing administrator at Milwaukee County. He said they were trying to find a location on the south side that wasn't owned by a landlord.

"We just wanted to make sure before the weather got too bad to see what we could do on the county end, so we thought this might be an option," he said.

The warming room wouldn't operate during the day, so there wouldn't be interaction between the people using the warming room and the attendees of the senior center, officials said.

It would be open as a warming room from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. with a capacity of 40 to 50 single men and women, said Rafael Acevedo, the City of Milwaukee's grant compliance manager.

The center is normally open from 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

"I think at the end of the day what we’re trying to do is serve a really vulnerable population," said Acevedo, who oversees the Continuum of Care fund and other funds the city provides to support and fund homelessness services. "These are individuals who are either homeless or they could have recently been evicted. There's a lot of different scenarios that come into play when people utilize these spaces."

They don't want to stay outside, he said, so the goal is that there be space for people to go when it gets cold outside. 

The plan is provide transportation to the senior center for people staying overnight. There are outreach workers within the Continuum of Care who will help get people there, Acevedo said, and there will be a plan to provide transportation and bus passes in the morning.

He said he hopes everything will come together for the warming room in the coming weeks. They are anticipating the warming room could be open into mid-March, depending on weather, he said.

There is currently only one nighttime warming room on the south side, at Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church, he said.

"There has been a population that has been staying on the near and far south side of Milwaukee, and this has been happening for the past couple years or maybe even longer than that," Acevedo said.

He said the aim is to provide space in that part of town so people staying in that area have easier access.

County Supervisor Jason Haas said he met with about 15 senior center attendees on Friday and found the majority were tentatively OK with the plan.

They also had questions about how the program would work and concerns about cleanliness, safety and what would happen to the cots laid out for people to sleep on, he said.

Haas said it was reassuring to the people he talked to that those staying overnight would arrive after the center closes and leave before it opens.

He said he was glad for the chance to look at and discuss the plan and that he hoped senior center attendees would get their questions answered at Monday's meetings.

Regarding concerns for seniors' health, Mathy said the county doesn't see that as an issue.

"The warming rooms don't operate during the day there, so there won't be actually any interaction between folks at the warming room and the seniors," he said.

He said it is also important to note that the warming rooms are professionally staffed and part of the staffing pattern is to clean the area that's used.

Mathy said they're responding to the needs of people who are homeless, based on what they're hearing from outreach groups.

"There’s issues of homelessness throughout our city, so to be able to be of service to people in their own neighborhood is something that should be important to the community," Mathy said.

Contact Alison Dirr at 414-224-2383 or adirr@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonDirr.