Elk Grove opens city-funded winter homeless shelter in Old Town district

Elk Grove opened a new winter homeless shelter on Wednesday, the first of its kind in the city. 

Officially called the Enhanced Winter Sanctuary, the 24/7 facility is located on Elk Grove Boulevard at Waterman Road in the city’s Old Town district. It will operate through March. 

Officials say the shelter will offer both an escape from the cold and services to connect people with housing and substance use treatment. 

CapRadio’s Chris Nichols spoke with Sarah Bontrager, Elk Grove’s housing and public services manager, about the new shelter. 

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

What exactly will the Enhanced Winter Sanctuary offer? And why is this resource needed in your city? 

The Enhanced Winter Sanctuary is the first time that the city of Elk Grove has funded a shelter option for people experiencing homelessness. It grew out of an effort that a nonprofit started a few years ago. And we realized that we really needed something longer-term and more consistent and we heard a lot from our residents about needing to address homelessness. 

So this year we are working with the Gathering Inn, which is a Roseville-based nonprofit to offer a 24-hour shelter serving up to 30 adults at a time.

It will have really robust services: case management, substance use treatment and mental health treatment all on-site. They have a mental health professional on-site, employment connections and referrals to different social services.

People don’t typically think about Elk Grove as having a severe problem with homelessness. Has the city witnessed an increase in its unhoused population? 

We've had a fairly consistent population of folks at any given time. We estimate that we have between 100 and 150  people experiencing homelessness. And that's a mix of folks who are living outdoors and those who are living in vehicles. 

We do recognize of course that winter is a really hard time. The cold winter months are very difficult to be outdoors or in a vehicle. And so the goal of this shelter was to offer a consistent place for folks to stay during those months and offer some services that will hopefully help to connect them with housing while they're in the shelter.

Can anyone who is unhoused use the winter sanctuary? Are there rules people need to keep in mind? 

The shelter is referral-only and so folks who are interested in accessing the shelter have to work with our homeless services navigator or another outreach professional in the community in order to get that referral. We expect that all 30 beds will be taken and so we will be maintaining a wait list for individuals who meet the criteria to go in. We are looking to serve our community. So, Elk Grove residents, people who live and work in our community, we’re looking to ensure that those folks are getting access first.

Do guests need to maintain sobriety if they're at the shelter?

The shelter is a low-barrier shelter. There is no drug or alcohol use allowed on-site and no drug paraphernalia. No weapons are allowed in the facility. However, what folks choose to do while they're out of the shelter is kind of up to them. And as long as they are not creating a safety issue or behavioral health challenges while they're in the sanctuary site, they would be allowed.

Is this the first time Elk Grove has opened a shelter like this one? 

Yes. Previously, a group called Elk Grove HART ran a winter shelter that rotated amongst different churches each week. It was only a nightly shelter. So there weren’t many services available for folks other than them getting a meal. 

One of the things that we realized is that this model creates some challenges in ‘What do people do during the day?’ So, one of the goals of having the 24-hour model was to make sure that folks have an option to be indoors during the day and they aren't all leaving at the same time and they aren't all coming back at the same time which reduces the impact on the neighborhood that the facility is in.

What efforts will be made to connect people with treatment or housing while they're at the shelter?

One of the great things about the Gathering Inn as a service partner is they came with a really robust staffing plan. So for the 30 folks who are staying in the shelter, there are two case managers. There's one substance abuse specialist. There is a mental health clinician who’s there along with a program director and many shelter monitors. So, at least two people will be onsite at all times and often more. 

But the case managers and the other staff work together to try and figure out what people's barriers to housing are and how they can take steps to resolve those barriers and then also to connect them to housing resources that they might qualify for, including affordable housing or room and boards.

Can you provide some detail about where the shelter is located and how people in need can find it? 

The shelter is located in the Old Town Elk Grove area in a former Rite Aid building which will be the future home of the Elk Grove Library. So this is really a one-time use. The site will go to construction in mid-2024 for use as the future library. But it is really important to stress that this is a referral-only shelter. If someone shows up there hoping to get in, they will not get in. You have to have that referral in order to access the shelter.

You mentioned this will be the site of a future library. So is the city thinking about a different location for the shelter next winter?

We recognize that this location won't be possible to use in the future. And so one of the things that we're really hoping is that this year's effort will give us some good data that we can use to decide what is needed in the future and help us to figure out where that would be best be located, whether we need a winter shelter, whether we need something that's year-round, whether we need to plan for 30 people or fewer people or more people. 

We really hope to get a lot of good data out of this effort to show what capacity needs we have and what facility needs we have long-term.

Once the shelter opens, does it stay open continuously or will it close sporadically?

It’s open 24 hours a day from Nov. 1 until March 31.

How is the shelter funded? 

The funding for the shelter came from Measure E, which is the sales tax measure that our residents approved last November. In talking with residents about the sales tax measure, one of the highest priorities that they had was addressing homelessness. So we held a series of community meetings around resident priorities. The meeting around homelessness was the best attended of those and the feedback that we got from that meeting helped us to determine how we wanted to spend some of the Measure E funds. Offering a winter shelter for folks to have during the coldest and rainiest months was something that a lot of folks requested at that meeting.

For more information, visit Elk Grove’s Enhanced Winter Sanctuary website. 

Contact CapRadio reporter Chris Nichols at [email protected]