More than 100 homeless will need to find new place to stay
Gilroy – An alarm sounded at 5am Friday morning, stirring the more than 100 men and women sleeping on the floor of the National Guard Armory winter shelter. Mats were rolled up and stored, the floors swept and mopped, and kitchen was cleaned – all before the keys were handed over for the last time of the season.
The mass of homeless who have come to call the shelter home during the winter months will have to find somewhere else to sleep during the rainy nights ahead.
“For a lot of people, this is their home,” said Lorenzo Johnson, a client at the shelter. “Some of them get so comfortable here, that when this place closes they’re going to be disoriented.”
The Armory opens the Monday after Thanksgiving and stays open until March 31 from 6pm to 6am. There, the homeless are offered a warm place to sleep, showers, and two meals.
In the past, in poor weather the shelter remained open under the Governor’s consent. However, due to budget cuts, the shelter was forced to close Friday, despite forecasts of rain throughout the weekend and into next week, said site manager Julie Roybal.
“I’m really concerned about the closing because our numbers have been so high lately,” she said.
Monday night 107 homeless rested at the facility, and the night before 122 took refuge.
Less than two hours after the shelter opened Wednesday night, 80 clients were already laying on mats on the floor, eating a hot dinner, or watching the one television.
“When this closes down, a lot of them go up to Little Orchard (shelter in San Jose), or they’ll go back to their own camps they have hidden around,” Johnson said. “Everybody’s going to miss this place and the people. With the way Julie runs this place with respect and honesty … It’s like they’re family.”
According to Roybal, the clients at the shelter are the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, the terminally ill and the blind.
“A lot of them will just be on the street and it’s sad for us,” said volunteer Judy Ledesma. “The first year I came here, I couldn’t go to sleep, thinking ‘Where are they going to go?’ But you can’t do that – make yourself sick, worrying.”
Many of the homeless will ride the bus, congregate under bridges, camp by the creeks and parks, or gather at the library or self service laundry, she said.
“Once we open in November – they’ll never have to leave again,” she said, explaining how the day after the shelter closes in March 2007, the new Sobrato Transitional Center will open.
Part of the transitional center is a 24-hour shelter with social services available on site and space to house 140 individuals. The shelter will be located at Monterey Road and Farrell Avenue and run by the nonprofit Emergency Housing Consortium.
“Everybody’s been talking about that,” Johnson said. “They’re still anticipating for it to open.”
