As temps dip and storm nears, Elk Grove opens warming location for city’s vulnerable
It was a few minutes before 6 p.m. Thursday and Cindy French sat huddled against the wall of Elk Grove United Methodist Church in the city’s Old Town. The night was clear and cold, the mercury promising to dip into the 30s, the outstretched bright blue plastic bag at French’s side carrying her belongings matching the sky blue of her coat.
“Is it 6 o’clock yet?” she asked.
The worn wooden doors to United Methodist’s Bartholomew Hall open at 6 p.m. and with them, a roof, a hot meal, and most important to the 56-year-old French, a warm, safe place to sleep overnight.
The basement annex that is Bartholomew Hall is an Elk Grove Overnight Warming Location, or OWL, the first in a string of warming centers in the city to open when the temperature nears freezing and weather conditions become dangerous for people living outdoors or in homes without adequate heat.
As many as 12 houses of worship are in the OWL queue. The OWL program launched Dec. 1 and extends through April 30. Churches sign up to offer their sites as overnight shelter for two to four weeks if the weather threshold is met. OWL locations get 48 hours notice to prepare.
The OWL warming location at Elk Grove United Methodist Church, 8986 Elk Grove Blvd., is open 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. through Tuesday as cold weather and a powerful winter storm bear down on the Sacramento region.
Elk Grove city leaders in November announced the OWL Cooperative with its network of local churches, Elk Grove police and groups such as Elk Grove Homeless Assistance Resource Team, or HART, whose EG WINS, its free winter sanctuary program for the city’s homeless, is a blueprint for today’s OWL program.
“The EG WINS program was so successful, so we met with HART. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel,” said Jamie Hudson, Elk Grove Police Department emergency manager.
Elk Grove HART is doing the heavy lifting for the OWLs, staffing the warming centers, reaching out to Elk Grove’s homeless to find them temporary cold weather shelter, said Jamie Hudson, an Elk Grove Police Department emergency manager working with the OWL co-op.
Hudson and the city send out text, phone and email blasts to the city’s unhoused — as many as 300, say homeless advocates — through Elk Grove’s mass notification system. They also work with Sacramento Regional Transit to get free bus passes in the hands of people living on the streets.
“Most get around by bus (so) we give them bus passes to get them to where they need to go,” said Mark Hedlund of HART, at United Methodist in Old Town Elk Grove Friday night. “With our location, we have a bus stop right in front, so it’s convenient.”
Text alerts were how Mahogany Lenard and boyfriend Giovanni Bowden found the warming center. The couple were one of a handful at United Methodist on Thursday and returned on an even colder Friday night, Lenard bundled in a heavy, hooded green coat, Bowden in his own thick layers to ward off the chill, towing their suitcase behind.
The young couple have lived on the streets for nearly a year — Sacramento, West Sacramento, tense nights at a Woodland shelter.
“We went through temporary shelters, but it’s only temporary, and the shelters are all full and they won’t take couples,” Lenard said. “It’s stressful, though.”
“I still have to manage where I sleep, how I’m going to be warm,” Bowden continued. “It’s like a cycle that repeats itself over and over again. Now, it’s gotten to the point where it’s freezing cold outside. You’ve got to figure out how to get warm — one blanket that you both have to share. I try not to let it bother me, but it’s real life, it’s not a game.”
There’s hot coffee and restrooms, cots and a place to rest; rows of tables for meals and on the counter behind Hedlund, a line of large totes each with a pillow and blanket, numbered so return guests get the same set each night. Lenard and Bowden have Nos. 6 and 7 on this night, the same as Thursday.
There’s pulled pork and hot chicken stew made by one of the parishioners in the hall’s kitchen on Friday night. Bowden tucked into his plate, asked for the recipe. A volunteer called the stew’s creator and put her on speaker. The secret, she said, is the spicy sausage. Bowden nodded and shared his own gumbo recipe.
Bowden and Lenard know the OWL on a Friday night, like so much else in their lives, is a temporary thing, but were glad to have it on a cold December night.
“What’s our next move now? Surviving on the streets can be tough, especially downtown,” Lenard said, warming herself with a hot cup of coffee. “We’re glad they’re doing this. We got text alerts on where warming centers were open and they were welcoming. We were welcomed with open arms.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2021 at 3:30 PM.
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