Features

Winter Shelters Close

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday April 18, 2006

Despite heavy rains experienced in Berkeley this year, two of the city’s emergency storm shelters have closed and a third has only a few more days of funding. 

The Oakland Army Base winter shelter, which houses 50 people from Oakland and 50 from Berkeley, shut down April 15. Funds ran out last week for the youth hostel that had housed about 40 homeless and transient youth since November. 

The emergency storm shelter at Trinity United Methodist Church, run by Dorothy Day House, has enough funding to last until around April 24, according to coordinator J.C. Orton. 

The city estimates that at any one time there are 836 homeless people in Berkeley of whom 254 are marginally housed..