Hundreds brave the cold and damp to help the homeless

Saturday evening was cold, wet and miserable.

In other words, it was the perfect night to experience, at least for a short while, what it’s like to be a homeless person in Winchester.

The nonprofit Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) held its second Coldest Night of the Year walk on Saturday. The event raised money for its programs to support the homeless and give people an opportunity to step in the figurative shoes of a person who has nowhere to turn for shelter and survives on whatever food is provided by churches and charities.

“You will walk past the [WATTS] guests who have to sit at a bus stop for an hour in this same weather,” WATTS Executive Director Robyn Miller said as the walkers assembled inside Braddock Street United Methodist Church at 115 Wolfe St.

The Coldest Night of the Year is an awareness initiative and fundraiser that originated in 2011 in Toronto, Canada, and since then has generated more than $75 million in contributions to help the homeless populations of 190 Canadian communities. The event expanded into the United States last year, and WATTS participated in the inaugural event with more than 400 volunteer walkers.

In terms of participants and money raised, WATTS ranked second in the United States last year among all the communities that held Coldest Night of the Year walks. The local effort was only eclipsed by the city of Fredericksburg.

This year, Miller said she wanted to be first among all 40 participating locations in the U.S. — and she nearly was. Winchester had 719 walkers and raised $114,656, which was 176% of WATTS’ goal of $65,000, but Fredericksburg led the nation with 770 walkers and $169,051 in contributions.

Even though Winchester came in second nationally for the second year in a row, Miller said participation in Saturday’s walk was “beyond my prayers. I just couldn’t have imagined.”

“We were expecting about 600 [walkers],” WATTS board member and Coldest Night of the Year event chairman Clay Perry said.

Miller said the money raised Saturday was enough to cover a quarter of WATTS’ annual operating budget. That will allow the nonprofit to continue its mission of serving the homeless with temporary overnight shelter and meals during cold months, daytime heating and cooling centers with snacks throughout the year and ongoing services to help them regain control of their lives and obtain permanent housing.

“Every time they (clients) apply for an apartment, it’s a $40 fee. Every time they get an ID, it’s another $10 fee,” Miller said. “We pay for all of that.”

Most participants in Coldest Night of the Year walks are part of a team comprised of family, coworkers, fellow church members and so on. In Winchester, Southside Church of Christ fielded the biggest team with 38 walkers, followed by Winchester Medical Center‘s School of Medical Imaging with 29. It could be argued, though, that New Life Christian Church had the most participants because it fielded three separate teams with a total of 61 walkers.

“They sign up as different teams to challenge each other and raise more money,” Perry said.

Among the walkers were a host of local and state dignitaries including Winchester City Councilors Les Veach and Emily Windle, Frederick County Supervisor John Jewell, Frederick County Circuit Court Clerk Sarah Kahle, Winchester Sheriff William Sales, Frederick County Sheriff Lenny Millholland, Del. Bill Wiley (R-Frederick County) and Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

“This is not something that is new to me because I ran a homeless shelter for women and children when I lived in Hampton Roads,” Earle-Sears said. “I wanted to be here. … WATTS is what happens when people say, ‘Somebody ought to do something,’ and then they realize they are that somebody.”

Earle-Sears commended WATTS for having the foresight to recognize that area churches could be utilized as temporary shelters during cold-weather months. The nonprofit is able to accommodate overnight guests through the winter thanks to a rotating roster of churches and community organizations that partner with WATTS and allow use of their facilities for one week at a time.

A former client of WATTS also shared his story of going from the streets to his own apartment.

He said he took a “leap of faith” and left his home in Washington, D.C., to move to Winchester. However, a lack of affordable housing forced him into homelessness for several months before he found his own dwelling.

“I’ve seen both sides — having shelter and not having shelter — and believe me, there are really good people living without,” the employed man said. “You can’t always judge a book by its cover because everyone has a story.”

The 719 people who had crowded onto Wolfe Street outside of Braddock Street United Methodist Church then stepped off for their walk through Winchester. Participants remained together until they reached the intersection of Amherst and West Boscawen streets, where they split into two groups: One that followed a 2-kilometer course, and a second that took a longer 5-kilometer route.

Despite a cold, steady drizzle, walkers had high spirits. That was particularly evident when Sabra Veach of Winchester skipped her way across Amherst Street, a huge grin on her face.

All the cold but happy walkers eventually returned to Braddock Street United Methodist Church for a simple meal of soup, exemplifying how people who are homeless sometimes have to subsist on the most basic food items — if they can find any food at all.

To learn more about WATTS, visit watts-homelessshelter.org or Coldest Night of the Year at cnoy.com/winchester.