The council’s executive director John Dorward said the new shelter will help homeless men move toward independent living.
“We just need to raise the last of the money and get started,” Dorward said. “We’re pretty excited about that. All of the regulatory pieces are done and we have a request for qualification now for interested builders.”
Right now, homeless men can stay at the shelter on the corner of Rosemary and North Columbia streets but only temporarily. The new shelter at 1315 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. will offer 52 transitional beds and 17 emergency beds for inclement weather or other temporary services .
Dorward said the shelter will be completed by early spring of 2015. The council has raised more than $5 million of the $5.76 million to complete the project .
Elizabeth Waugh-Duford , temporary homeless programs coordinator for the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, said she thinks the groundbreaking is a big step for the community.
“It’s a pretty historic day for the community for the IFC to have its own building,” she said. “The current men’s shelter is leased from the town of Chapel Hill and to have a new building with state-of-the-art facilities for our homeless folks is a great thing.”
The new focus on transitional housing will fill the void for men’s homeless housing, she said. The county currently only has transitional housing for women and children.
“Men with children don’t really have a place to be right now so that is really important to be able to provide that space,” Waugh-Duford said. “The emergency shelter is really just a Band-Aid.”
