Overflow Shelters Save Lives
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United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County

Overflow Shelters Save Lives

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Each year when temperatures drop in Milwaukee, the issue of homelessness gets brought to the forefront. Those of us who work to end homelessness and provide safety net services year round know the number of people who live without homes does not increase or decrease because of weather. People become homeless because, simply put, they lack the resources needed to be able to maintain safe living places. 

During extreme weather, the urgency for safe sleeping places become elevated, making overflow shelters critical to our community.

Those without homes have to not only figure out where to eat a good meal, change their clothes, shower, brush their teeth, sleep and how to avoid becoming a victim of crime…. They now have to worry about how to avoid frost bite…and how to avoid death…. Because they don’t have a home.

Overflow shelters - quite simply - save lives. We at Cathedral Center, provide food, restrooms and someplace safe, out of the weather, for people to sleep and as one of our guest’s states; hope “What I like about the overflow is they make sure you come in a decent time, try to have something to eat at breakfast time and when I come in at 7:00 p.m. I am so thankful for their help and I pray so that I can have my own (place).”

Add to that a compassionate staff that understands and has experience serving those who might need shelter and can work with them to try to get them connected to services to end their homelessness.

Thank goodness resources such as United Way get it – because while the process to save lives this way is not complicated, it’s costly and we couldn’t do it without their support. 

- Donna Rongholt-Migan
Executive Director
Cathedral Center