Part I: The city and county's take on Madison's day shelter

This is Part I in a series looking at where the city and county meet on homeless services.

Tim sits at a table reading a dog-eared paperback at the daytime warming shelter on the 800 block of East Washington Avenue. He glances occasionally at the congregation of people gathered around an old tube television playing a movie from the ‘80s, then looks back at his book.

“As long as you aren’t drunk, or aren’t causing an uproar, they don’t give you a hard time here,” he says of the shelter’s volunteers, who are managed by director Sarah Gillmore.

Tim, who asked that his last name not be used, has been a part of Madison’s homeless population – a community of individuals nearly 700 strong, according to Ald. Scott Resnick – for five years. During that time, he has been in and out of jail, a place he considers the only sustained roof over his head in years.

In the evenings, Tim camps out at a shelter near the capitol square provided by the Grace Episcopal Church. Since its opening in late November, he spends his days at this temporary shelter on East Washington Avenue, which is affiliated with Porchlight Inc.

The shelter, opened and paid for by Dane County, offers much more than last year’s, now-closed, daytime warming shelter just a block down the street, said Dane County Executive Joe Parisi’s assistant Jeff Kostelic.

“This one’s a little different from the other one near [the former Occupy Madison camp], which the city funded, and it didn’t really do anything. It was just an empty building with heat,” Kostelic said. “[The new shelter] actually provides a short term solution for some of the community’s problems.”

Beyond offering a warm place to rest during Wisconsin’s winter months, the shelter also provides counselors for drug and alcohol issues, advice for individuals looking to expand their job skills, and free daily lunch.

Computers are also set up at the shelter, a resource Tim said is invaluable in the search for employment.

“I’m fairly computer-savvy, and they come in handy when looking for work,” he said.

A small portion of the shelter is devoted to children’s toys and books. During the holiday season, the large gathering space was decorated with holiday garland and a small synthetic tree at the front of the room. There is a coat rack at the entrance of the shelter with a sign that reads, “Free Coats!” Shoes are also available, Tim said.

The temporary day shelter was originally set to be located near the east side’s Madison Area Technical College campus in a building already owned by the county. Kostelic cited issues including zoning restrictions and neighborhood concerns that discouraged Dane County officials to pursue the location.

Ultimately, they decided upon the East Washington Avenue location and are currently renting a building from the Goodman Foundation for the winter months that includes a courtyard not visible from the street or neighboring properties.

The warming shelter has so far been the source of fewer complaints this year than last winter’s daytime shelter and the nearby, original location of the Occupy Madison camp, said Jessi Mulhall, spokesperson for the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association.

“Everything seems to be much cooler this year than last year,” Mulhall said. “Maybe it was just badly managed last year at the other place, but in this place, it’s much more organized and cops aren’t stopping there as much.”

Madison Police Department Lieutenant Dave McCaw said the neighborhood experienced an increase in calls for service near last winter’s shelter. Residents frequently complained about car and house thefts, noise disturbances, public urination, and trespassing.

Kostelic said the only recent complaints regarding the current warming shelter involved littering. And Madison Police Department spokesperson Joel DeSpain said he hasn’t heard a single negative word about the place so far.

Despite what appears to be a comfortable set-up with relatively few complaints, the shelter is not without controversy. Alderman Resnick said the county’s early conversations about a more permanent version of the shelter did not include Madison city officials.

“The county really went about [this] on their own, without consulting the city,” Resnick said of the shelter plans.

Dane County officials set aside $600,000 for the purchase and renovation of a permanent building after initially deciding on a temporary location at 1439 Wright Street in a building already owned by the city. According to Resnick, the county planned to cover any other start-up, building, and equipment costs, but expected the City of Madison to fund the operating costs of the proposed permanent homeless shelter, a move Mayor Paul Soglin publicly criticized. Concerns were also raised over the location for the temporary shelter, and ultimately the county decided to open the temporary warming shelter on East Washington Avenue instead.

After a lengthy conversation between city and county officials, the city offered to fund part of the operating bill for the proposed permanent facility, a number Kostelic pegged at about $25,000. The current temporary shelter, however, is funded solely by the county.

Kostelic said he was not aware of any tensions between the city and the county regarding a permanent version of East Washington Avenue’s shelter, to which officials have yet to assign a location and concrete plans.