For over a decade, the Crestview Area Shelter for the Homeless has served its community, offering support for those with nowhere to go. Now, the shelter asks for the community’s help as they face the threat of downsizing.
For 10 years, Embrace Florida Families allowed the shelter to use the property at 120 Duggan Avenue for free. But after losing millions of dollars in funding, Embrace is forced to put the building up for sale.
Angela Jones, executive director for the Crestview Area Shelter, said they must raise $350 thousand to afford to stay in the current building.
“Because [Embrace] believes in our mission and they don’t want to see us fail and have to close down and be letting down hundreds of people, they told us that they would try to work out some kind of discounted rate to be able to buy the building. So they did give us an agreement … and that is going to be for 350,000.”
If the shelter can’t raise this much money, Jones said they’d be forced to move somewhere smaller and cut services.
Currently, the shelter offers meals, shelter, showers, rent assistance, medical exams, transportation and job services to homeless individuals and families— just to name a few.
“If we go to a smaller place, we will only be able to provide lunches,” Jones said. “… We could lose showers, because if we go to a business-type office place, there’s nowhere for showers, there’s nowhere to do laundry services and there’s no rooms for overnight emergency placement.”
Jones said renting a larger building isn’t an option either, as the shelter runs entirely off of donations.
“I would have to get rid of my driver. I would have to get rid of the van, you know, get rid of my nurse. Get rid of paying for medications. Essentially, it doesn’t make much sense to go anywhere else. Rent’s very very high right now. The cheapest place you can find is $3,000, and we don’t have the money to pay that.”
To give the Crestview Area Shelter a chance at operating on its current scale, Jones and the shelter staff ask for community donations and look to other local entities for help.
“We had a book with over 300 businesses in the local area, and we sent out letters,” Jones said. “… We’ve raised $2,900 right now, which is great, but 2,000 of that was from two different people. … I plan on going to churches and trying to ask them to make a monetary monthly donation to us to help,” she said. “Because, you know, we’re helping provide a service that they’re not providing, that a lot of people feel churches should be providing.”
She emphasized that this is a cause the whole community benefits from; not just the homeless.
“Because we have a nurse and we pay for their medications, a lot less people are self-medicating,” Jones said. “… It helps not only with their mental health, but it keeps the crime down because they’re medicated.”
Jones also wants residents to understand just how easy it is to become homeless.
“Each case is so different on why somebody became homeless, but I think right now in the midst of the emergency that we just had [Hurricane Isaias], there’s proof that it could happen to anybody,” Jones said. “It’s not just that stereotype that they’re a drug addict. Some people are drug addicts, but they’re self-medicating the problem of how they became homeless. … a tree could have fallen through any of our houses during the storm, and we would have become homeless. Where would we have went? Not everybody has a job that they can afford $200 a night for a hotel.”
To donate to the Crestview Area Shelter for the Homeless, bring a check or money order to the shelter at 120 Duggan Avenue.
