MORGANTOWN — Catholic Charities West Virginia Chief Executive Officer Mark Phillips said activity at Grace Shelter — the former Bartlett House triage shelter in Hazel’s House of Hope — has continued to increase since CCWV reopened the facility about a month ago.
The community can see for itself during an open house to be held at the shelter from 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Oct. 17.
“We have slowly increased the capacity of the shelter. We’re getting up to around 20 folks now,” Phillips told The Dominion Post. “We’ll continue to bump up as individuals who are a good fit to be guests there are referred; to the point where we’ll get close to around 30 individuals, I’m guessing, in the next couple weeks. There’s not a hard timeline on that right now.”
He said the shelter is not intended to be a long-term solution, but short-term aid while a plan of action can be put together for its guests.
Right now, its primary method of intake is through referrals from partnering agencies.
“Individuals who have, say, a long history of mental illness, addiction or trauma might not be a great fit for the shelter if there’s not a pathway we can connect them to,” Phillips said. “We don’t want to just let anybody come in and sleep if we don’t think that there’s a way that we’ll be able to help them. Obviously, we’re flexible about that. If somebody is in really a dire circumstance, we’re a Christian organization and we feel it’s our duty to help as much as we can.”
While details have not been finalized, Phillips said CCWV is in the process of evaluating space within Hazel’s House of Hope that it could operate as additional winter weather shelter space. He said the agency will “likely” respond to the city of Morgantown’s call for agencies capable of running an emergency warming space.
Shelter aside, CCWV operates a number of programs out of the HHH facility, including the agency’s Child Care Resource Center, WV Birth to Three, Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services, and Emergency Financial Assistance program.
As the state’s largest private provider of social services, Phillips said the agency is willing to expand that partnership.
Morgantown Community Resources, the nonprofit board that serves as facilitator and landlord of the HHH property, recently reached out to Mills Group, which donated a preliminary site plan envisioning up to 30 tiny warming shelters on the 10.5-acre campus.
MCR President Mark Nesselroad has said the board would be willing to provide the necessary acreage to the city at virtually no cost.
Phillips said CCWV has been involved in those conversations and is ready to help make it happen.
“If it seems like something that the city is interested in doing, there are other Catholic Charities agencies across the country who are managing properties that like,” he said. “We would leverage that expertise to see how we could assist in building something in Morgantown that might work for people.”
