After two years of trying to find a home for a permanent men’s homeless shelter, city and county leaders are aiming to make it a reality in 2024.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced today they are investing a combined $9 million to build a new shelter.
Dane County had already allocated $3 million dollars for the project. That funding was approved by the Dane County Board.
But today, Executive Parisi announced another $6 million toward the project. He says it’s the largest expenditure in the coming 2023 capital budget. But, that budget has yet to be fully released – or approved by the Dane County Board.
“Addressing homelessness requires a holistic approach, and a continuation of services, and above all, a partnership and cooperation between all levels of government and the community. Be it outreach to those in need, volunteering at one of our shelters, administering case-management services, or providing rental assistance, our community is focused on addressing and preventing homelessness, with more resources going to those in need than every before,” Parisi says.
The site of the new shelter was approved by the Madison council in April, after several stalled and failed searches to find a space. The new 40,000 square foot shelter on Bartillion Drive is projected to house 200 people.
It’s the first permanent men’s shelter in Madison. Before the pandemic, a temporary shelter was housed out of the basement of Grace Episcopal Church in downtown Madison for three decades. But the pandemic forced that shelter to close due to its tight, confined spaces.
At an outdoor press conference earlier today, Mayor Rhodes-Conway acknowledged that a permanent men’s shelter has been a long time coming.
“For too long, we have avoided our responsibility to provide adequate resources for homeless men. For decades, men were housed in church basements, but space and resource limitations made it difficult to provide more than a warm place to sleep at night, a meal, before people were turned back out onto the streets. We must do better,” Rhodes-Conway says.
Rhodes-Conway says it will be built with a focus on dignity.
“This new shelter facility is expected to include trauma-informed design, offering safe and dignified accommodations complete with restrooms, showers, a kitchen, and laundry facilities, space for isolation and quarantine beds, and other design elements to improve air quality and overall guest health and safety, a focus on a welcoming space with natural light and other design features to enhance sustainability and reduce operating costs, and space to accommodate support services to help connect shelter users to stable housing in the long term,” Rhodes-Conway says.
On top of the $9 million provided by the county, the city of Madison has committed $10 million to the project, and a $2 million federal grant brings the total amount currently allocated for the project to $21 million.
Parisi says that the new shelter is important, because it will allow the county to continue the work they’ve done to address homelessness since 2020.
“Since the pandemic, we have found permanent housing for more than 250 households that were previously experiencing homelessness. We’ve been able to prevent countless evictions and new cases of homelessness through our initiatives using federal dollars to provide rental assistance, security deposits, and a broad array of services to help people stay in their homes. We will continue to partner on a vast array of services designed to help those who are without housing, or in danger of losing their housing, find and keep their homes,” Parisi says.
Construction on the shelter is expected to begin in 2024. The mayor adds the temporary shelter on Zeier Road is not slated to be closed until construction on the permanent shelter is complete.
Photo courtesy: Nate Wegehaupt / WORT News Team
