Photo: Volunteers from James Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pa., gather at the Lancaster City YWCA to help with a winter shelter for women and children. Photo provided. 

On a winter shelter night, Jay and Susie Wenger leave home around 5 and drive to the local Lancaster City, Pa., YWCA. They arrive early to assist with setup as the Y closes to the public. At 6:45, they’ll be joined by around eight volunteers. They make sure sheets and pillows are available, as well as mats for sleeping on. They stack piles of bath towels and make sure a basic supply of toiletries are on hand. And beginning at 7:30, they greet the women and children coming in search of a safe place to stay overnight.

The Wengers, members of James Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, are one of many faith groups representing more than six Christian denominations and one Jewish synagogue who partner with the Lancaster County Council of Churches to provide a winter shelter from December through March.

“The winter shelter’s considered a supplement to the existing shelter systems in Lancaster City,” said Jay in a Dec. 9 phone interview. “We’re not professionals; we are volunteers. We just stick to the task of warm, safe and dry.”

Beginning in October, Jay coordinates volunteers from James Street. Their congregation is responsible for staffing the shelter for 11 winter nights for a total of 770 volunteer hours from 80-90 individuals. Blossom Hill Mennonite Church and East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, both in Lancaster, also take turns staffing the shelter.

The Wengers were involved with the effort from its beginnings and find themselves drawn back each year.

“As a woman myself, it’s very humbling to think that if my life were different, I could be in need of this shelter. It doesn’t take much,” said Susie. “A lot of women enter the shelter living paycheck to paycheck, and then something happens and they don’t have anywhere to go and no support system. If I can just do this little thing to give my time and help someone feel safe and secure tonight, that’s a gift to me, too, to be able to let God use me in that way.”

Working with the winter shelter has helped put a new face on homelessness for the Wengers and the volunteers they coordinate.

“Some of our volunteers have been there and gotten to know some of the women, and then they might run into one on the street or at the library or somewhere in town,” said Susie. “And that’s no longer just a nameless homeless person, but it’s, Oh, I know who that person is. I know her name and something about her. And we can pray specifically for her.”

Even volunteers who can’t physically make it to the shelter are able to help. During the nights when Mennonite volunteers staff the shelter, there is always another volunteer committed to praying at home for an hour.

Ongoing efforts to end homelessness

“We really want to get rid of the winter shelter,” said Pastor Stan Shantz of James Street Mennonite in a Dec. 11 interview. “We want people to have places where they can live. But unfortunately, that’s not the situation we are in the midst of, and we have to find ways to meet the needs of the community.”

The winter shelter is one of a number of efforts to help end homelessness in Lancaster County.

“The buzz word is ‘collective impact,’” said Jim Amstutz, executive director of the Lancaster County Council of Churches (LCCC), co-chair of the Lancaster City Coalition to End Homelessness and former pastor at Akron (Pa.) Mennonite Church in a Dec. 11 phone interview.  “We do all these things in a way that has a scope beyond what any one congregation could do.”

In addition to coordinating the winter shelter, LCCC operates a large food bank, provides clothing and runs a wheels-to-work program that takes donated cars and sells them to clients below retail value. They also give away bicycles.

“We want to empower people to get to work, as one way to prevent homelessness,” said Amstutz. “And we also are looking into affordable housing and ways we can help in that arena.”

Jeff Hawkes, a reporter for Lancaster Online and an attendee at Community Mennonite Church in Lancaster, followed a father and son on their journey to find stable housing. For four months in 2014, Hawkes followed Samuel May and his son, Steven, on their quest for housing. After losing employment and access to housing, May and his son lived in parks and on the street rather than going to shelters where minors were not permitted to stay with fathers.

Hawkes followed the pair until they found affordable housing through Lancaster City’s new “housing first” efforts, which seek to find stable homes for people before working at other root causes of homelessness. So far, the program seems to working. In his most recent article, Hawkes reported that the numbers of homeless people in Lancaster seemed to be dropping: “A total of 370 homeless individuals were counted on Thursday, Aug. 27, down 20 percent from a similar one-day count in August 2014.”

“The thing that struck me [while doing this reporting], is that homelessness is a problem that can be solved,” said Hawkes in a Dec. 14 phone interview. “People will always be in situations where they lose their housing, but what is different is that we are very intentional now that when people are homeless or really at risk, we intervene immediately and effectively in a way to either keep them housed or find them housing as soon as possible.”

Hawkes encourages people of faith to educate themselves about the root causes of homelessness and efforts in their own areas to intervene. Hawkes’ congregation, Community Mennonite, started an early morning child-care program that allows working parents to drop their children off when they leave for work, providing a safe, fun place to wait until a school building opens.

“What faith communities, churches and secular organizations can do is invest in a property and fix it up, rent it out to people who have low income. Help build capacity within the community so that there are places for individuals to live. Be engaged to support the social system and to provide services that wrap around families.”