Elk Grove overnight warming locations open for homeless as temps dip below freezing
Elk Grove is opening two overnight warming locations for the city’s homeless and vulnerable through Thursday night as nighttime temperatures are expected to plunge below freezing.
The warming site at The Center at District 56, 8230 Civic Center Drive, is open 6 p.m. Monday to 8 a.m. Tuesday. A second site at Wackford Community and Aquatic Complex, 9014 Bruceville Road, is open at 6 p.m. Wednesday and again at 6 p.m. Thursday. The sites are open to adults 18 and older who lack shelter or adequate home heating.
Pets are not permitted. Face coverings will be required unless visitors are eating or sleeping. Families with children will be referred to a motel voucher program coordinated by Elk Grove Homeless Assistance Resource Team, or, HART.
The warming sites are being staffed by Cosumnes Fire Department, Elk Grove Police Department, and Elk Grove HART volunteers.
Elk Grove’s Overnight Warming Locations, or OWL, notification system is open. People can sign up on its website to receive notifications by telephone when a location opens.
The OWLs were announced with fanfare in late November 2021. The message that year from Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen, surrounded by volunteers, city and faith leaders outside the entrance of a church in the city’s Laguna West neighborhood, was that the warming locations would be “a place to come in from the cold.”
Sun Grove Church, the site of the news conference that introduced the OWL program last November, was one of 12 designated OWLs to be mobilized within 48 hours’ notice for two weeks at a time across the city.
Those first warming locations in 2021 opened in late December and were opened as needed through April whenever weather conditions became dangerous for those outdoors or in homes without adequate heating.
But the city-led coalition knit together last year to provide overnight warming sites for the city’s homeless and vulnerable had struggled to relaunch this year just as a series of cold, wet winter storms had begun to plunge overnight temperatures near freezing.
About 150 people live unhoused in Elk Grove, city officials and advocates estimate.
“Our faith-based organizations have experienced some difficulty with activating their resources for these programs as frequently as they might want to,” Elk Grove city spokeswoman Kristyn Laurence said prior to the city sites’ opening. “Like many of our neighboring agencies, we are continuing to activate within the scope of the County OES guidelines but lack the resources to do much more than that at the moment.”
As the calendar turned to December and major storms pushed into the Sacramento region, Sacramento and Sacramento County each activated its own sheltering programs and warming locations.
Sacramento County and its partners activated its Weather Respite motel sheltering program and 28th Street Annex warming shelter. Sacramento also expanded capacity at its North A Emergency Shelter by 30 beds ahead of the first of the recent storms.
Sacramento and Sacramento County also shook hands on a pact, prompted by Measure O , that provides more coordinated services and shelter space for the thousands living outdoors in the Capital city and Sacramento County.
But until Monday’s announcement, no Elk Grove OWL sites had been identified this year even as overnight temperatures began to drop toward the cold weather threshold.
Elk Grove activates the warming sites when forecast RealFeel temperatures are 34 degrees for two straight days; when the forecast is 75% chance of rain for two days; or when sustained 15 mph winds or greater are forecast for two days in a row with temperatures of 36 degrees.
“From our standpoint, it’s challenging to get that coordinated. Two days’ notice to get (volunteers) to stay overnight — even with normal warming and cooling center programs, they rely on volunteers,” said Mark Hedlund of Elk Grove HART. “The difficulty and the logistics of being on-call, some of the churches felt they couldn’t do it.”
Hedlund has been on the front lines of homeless advocacy in Elk Grove for years with HART and earlier winter sanctuary efforts. He was on the ground at Elk Grove United Methodist Church in the city’s Old Town when it became the first of the warming centers to open last December.
Hedlund said volunteers, advocates and the faith community are ready to respond, but Elk Grove needs to shoulder more of the load. He said that starts with opening a temporary location each winter.
“The city needs to step up and do more. They need to provide a facility. Having the facility itself is the key — that’s the missing linchpin. I’m talking about an emergency shelter in the winter months. They have the resources to do that,” Hedlund said.
“We can get the volunteers, but we can’t do everything,” Hedlund continued. “The city needs to do more than buy sleeping bags. City leaders can do that if they choose to. They have to make the commitment to do that.”
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