WATTS, Author at WATTS

WATTS is getting cheesy for its next fundraising event

The nonprofit Winchester Area Temporary Thermal Shelter (WATTS) is gearing up for one of the cheesiest fundraisers imaginable.

Cheesin’ for a Reason, WATTS’s inaugural grilled cheese and tomato soup extravaganza, will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the central portion of the Loudoun Street Mall in Winchester.

It’s a novel event that WATTS board president Mike Ashby said he borrowed from nearby Strasburg, where he lives.

“They’ve been having one since 2017,” Ashby said, referring to the annual Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup Festival sponsored by the group Discover Strasburg. “It’s so well-received. I mean, they sell 1,200 tickets and they’ve sold out for five years in a row.”

The Strasburg event, the most recent of which was held on Saturday and included Ashby as a volunteer, has become so popular that tickets traditionally sell out in a matter of hours.

“You have to actually line up in person [to purchase tickets] and they still sell them out in a day,” Ashby said.

Following the philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” WATTS, which provides meals and temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness, is replicating Strasburg’s festival and bringing it to downtown Winchester.

“He (Ashby) brought it to me and I thought it was perfect because this is one of my guests’ favorite meals, and we’re always trying to figure out ways to help the downtown businesses and attract people to Winchester,” said WATTS Executive Director Robyn Miller.

Cheesin’ for a Reason will feature 10 local food vendors — Fleur de Lis Cheese Shop, Water Street Kitchen, Sexi-Mexi, Billy Sous, Red Fox Creamery, T.T. Wall’s, Espresso Bar and Cafe, Manolete’s Cocina Gourmet, Knead Bread, and Potato Sensations — preparing their own variation of a traditional comfort meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Attendees will be able to enjoy tastings from all 10 vendors, then vote for their favorite to determine which is the cheesiest of the bunch. Awards will be presented for best sandwich, best soup and best combination of the two.

Along with the soups and sandwiches, Cheesin’ for a Reason will include a scavenger hunt for families involving several downtown shops: Thinker Toys, Abija Blue, Faire Isles Trading Co., Winchester Book Gallery, Exotic Himalayan Handicrafts and Handworks Gallery.

And what will people be searching for?

“We have these little rubber poops,” Miller said, explaining that the items are a nod to event sponsor Johnny Blue, a portable toilet provider in Frederick County. “They need to find those poops and, when they’re done, they win a prize.”

Other family activities during Cheesin’ for a Reason include performances by the Ryan Jewel Band (11:30 a.m.-1:45 p.m.) and Raised on Analog (2:15-5 p.m.), a DJ, magician Kevin Owens, as well as balloon animals, face and hand painting, and about 20 craft vendors selling their wares.

“It is a community, fun-filled event,” Ashby said.

Cheesin’ for a Reason will include three two-hour serving windows starting at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., and attendees will only be granted entrance during their chosen timeframe.

Tickets to each serving cost $20 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under, and can only be purchased online at https://bit.ly/4nC4I4P. If that link doesn’t work for you, ticket sales can also be accessed through WATTS’s Facebook page at facebook.com/helpWATTS. No tickets will be sold at the gate.

All money raised will support WATTS’s mission to keep the homeless safe during the cold weather months. Miller said the nonprofit started offering evening meals and overnight accommodations on Saturday, and its warming center at Montague Avenue United Methodist Church in Winchester will open on Dec. 1.

“The warming center is a place to come inside and charge your phones, take a shower and get something to eat,” Miller said. “It operates from 7 [a.m.] to 1 [p.m.] unless there’s really inclement weather, and then we’ll stay open the entire day.”

The overnight shelter provided by WATTS is held at several participating churches that volunteer to accommodate at least 35 guests for one week at a time. The shelter schedule and locations are available at watts-homelessshelter.org. WATTS has a bus to provide transportation to each week’s shelter location for clients at no cost.

“More people keep arriving every day as they realize we’re out there,” Miller said on Monday of the overnight accommodations, which this week are being provided by Stephens City United Methodist Church. “It’s been a lovely, grateful group of people.”

Via The Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/watts-is-getting-cheesy-for-its-next-fundraising-event/article_ba83d2b5-f284-5611-9e09-4e5c0dbe0be9.html

Day of Caring project readies a home for the homeless

Hundreds of volunteers rolled up their sleeves and worked up a sweat Friday during the United Way of Northern Shenandoah Valley‘s (NSV) annual Day of Caring.

“We’re pretty excited,” said United Way NSV CEO Andy Gail. “We have over 1,000 volunteers going to 75 different projects across our region — the city of Winchester and Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah and Page counties. That’s more than last year.”

One of the 75 projects was in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Winchester, where Day of Caring volunteers from the Thermo Fisher Scientific manufacturing facility near Middletown partnered with representatives from the Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) program to help people escape homelessness.

“This is my first time doing it,” Thermo Fisher machine operator Madelin Guevara said about volunteering for Day of Caring, noting that she signed up because she felt compelled “to help out the community.”

Guevara and her Thermo Fisher coworkers focused their efforts on a small, single-family house hidden behind a row of very tall hedges. It was the WATTS Transitional House, which was purchased two weeks ago by a private group called 143 Transformations on behalf of WATTS.

Clay Perry, vice president of the WATTS board of directors and head of 143 Transformations — 143 is code for “I love you,” with “I” having one letter, “love” having four and “you” having three — said he felt compelled to buy the house so he and his partners could help WATTS guests who are experiencing homelessness get off the streets and regain their independence.

“Landlords are not taking risks anymore, so unless you’ve got an excellent credit rating and a good rental history and no criminal background, they don’t want to rent to you,” Perry said.

“There’s nothing more frustrating for us than when we have working and sober guests who are doing everything [right and] there’s no place to move them,” added Robyn Miller, executive director of the WATTS program based in Winchester. “So in the end, after they’ve done all this hard work, they’re still homeless.”

Perry and his partners in 143 Transformations decided to help by creating the WATTS Transitional House, where up to three employed people who utilize WATTS can share a house with discounted rent.

“There are special stipulations in the lease agreement that say, because you are a WATTS guest or part-time staff, then you get reduced rent,” Perry said. “We’re not doing a background check, we’re not doing a credit check, we’re not doing any of this other stuff.”

Each resident of the WATTS Transitional House will pay $500 a month to live there. The goal, Perry said, is for the residents to reestablish or build their credit while saving up enough money to buy a car and move into traditional housing.

“It’s giving them a place to live where they’ll be safe,” Miller said. “They can keep their jobs, they can keep their sobriety and they can pay off [debts] until they’re well established, then we can look for somewhere else for them to move that’s more in their price range.”

There is no hard and fast rule on how long tenants can remain in the WATTS Transitional House, but Perry said that’s a secondary concern. He’s more focused on ensuring that renters will remain committed to improving their living situations and, eventually, get their own places.

Friday’s Day of Caring couldn’t have come at a better time for the WATTS Transitional House. That’s because its first two residents were moving in that day.

One of the new tenants is Travis Ryan, who signed his lease on Friday morning.

Ryan had a rough go of things in recent years, which eventually led him to the Winchester Rescue Mission‘s homeless shelter on North Cameron Street.

“Once I got out of the Rescue Mission, I was living in a motel and that’s not healthy,” he said.

Ryan then needed surgery to remove his gall bladder, so any money he managed to save from his tree-trimming job was wiped out. He turned to WATTS for help and ended up getting a part-time job at the nonprofit. Thanks to his full- and part-time jobs, Ryan managed to regain his footing enough to purchase a pickup truck he lovingly refers to as “Henrietta.”

Day of Caring volunteers on Friday wanted to make sure the WATTS Transitional House was in tip-top shape before they started filling the dwelling with furniture.

“Mostly what we’re doing today is a lot of yard work,” Perry said on Friday morning. “ We’ve got some contractors doing some interior stuff — replacing the windows and getting the basement all cleaned up because it was kind of mucky down there. They’re going to put up dry lock and seal the basement to keep the humidity out of there so it will be a nice basement where they can put a washer and dryer.”

Many of the furnishings delivered to the house on Friday were courtesy of Mover Dudes at 1520 Commerce St. in Winchester. Jon Eye, who has owned the moving business since 2006, said he has two storage facilities filled with furniture and other household items that were donated by customers.

“Then it goes to a good place” such as the WATTS Transitional House, Eye said.

The WATTS house was just one of several Winchester-area project sites that benefitted from Friday’s Day of Caring. Gail said volunteer workers also helped make improvements requested by the Henry and William Evans Home for Children Inc., the Virginia Tech memorial garden in Sherando Park, the nonprofit Selah Theatre Project, Friends of Old Town, the Winchester and Frederick County parks and recreation departments and many more.

“We called all our friends and said, ‘Hey, we have so many volunteers, how can we help you?'” Gail said. “If a nonprofit needed teams, they got them today.”

To learn more about United Way NSV and its annual Day of Caring, visit unitedwaynsv.org.

Christina Strother of Strasburg, an employee of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Middletown, volunteers on the United Way’s annual Day of Caring on Friday to clear overgrowth in the backyard of a home in Winchester recently purchased by a partnership with WATTS for its transitional housing program.

Stephanie Cather of Berryville, an employee of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Middletown, volunteers on the United Way’s annual Day of Caring on Friday to remove unwanted vegetation from the backyard of a Winchester home that was purchased recently by a partnership with WATTS for its transitional housing program.

United Way Day of Caring Volunteer Taylor Young of Front Royal, an employee of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Middletown, uses a pole saw on Friday to remove a dead maple tree branch in the backyard of a Winchester home that has been purchased by a partnership with WATTS for use as transitional housing.

Via The Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/day-of-caring-project-readies-a-home-for-the-homeless/article_21ad6120-0213-5412-8d92-225cae0fabe8.html

City Council reviews proposed zoning rules for nonprofits serving the homeless

After hearing concerns last month regarding a proposed zoning ordinance amendment regulating humanitarian service facilities and the best places to locate operations of that nature, City Council on Tuesday held a first reading of a revamped ordinance that would better differentiate between service providers and homeless shelters.

The proposed ordinance update was first discussed in March, when Winchester Zoning Administrator Alfredo Gutierrez-Velasquez told the Planning Commission that a humanitarian services facility designation was needed to replace the city’s existing definition of philanthropic and charitable organizations, which he said was too broad and poorly defined.

At City Council’s meeting on April 22, representatives of several nonprofits that could be affected by the ordinance change spoke out against the amendment because they believed it inappropriately lumped together every agency that provides services to Winchester’s homeless population. Council voted to table the matter and advised Gutierrez-Velasquez to meet with the nonprofits and find a workable solution.

On May 12, Gutierrez-Velasquez said city staff sat down with representatives from shelter providers Winchester Rescue Mission and Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS), and service providers C-CAP, Knights of Columbus, Highland Food Pantry and Winchester Church of God’s Home Again Care Center.

“The nonprofits know better than we do,” Mayor Les Veach said on Tuesday. “I appreciate their input.”

After hearing the representatives’ concerns, Gutierrez-Velasquez updated the proposed zoning amendment. In addition to differentiating between homeless shelters and service providers, the measure now being considered by council:

Changes the term “philanthropic and charitable institutions” to “charitable provision centers,” which excludes on-site hygiene facilities, cafeterias and meal services.

Allows charitable provision centers that distribute free food and clothing to individuals experiencing homelessness to locate by-right in Winchester’s Central Business (B-1), Residential Business (RB-1), Highway Commercial (B-2), Commercial Industrial (CM-1) and Medical Center (MC) districts. Homeless shelters would require council’s issuance of a conditional-use permit (CUP) and be limited to the B‐2, CM‐1, MC and Limited Industrial (M-1) districts.

Allows homeless shelters to charge clients for program services.

Documents each guest’s length of stay at a homeless shelter to prove that the facility is not being used for permanent residences.

“I would support this, providing that the nonprofits and their contributions are incorporated,” Councilor Kim Herbstritt said on Tuesday.

If approved, the amended ordinance would not apply to religious institutions that provide homeless services such as food and clothing distributions as part of their mission, or the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank’s warehousing and distribution branch in Winchester.

A vote on the revised humanitarian services amendment is expected to take place at council’s next meeting on July 8.

Via The Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/city-council-reviews-proposed-zoning-rules-for-nonprofits-serving-the-homeless/article_f2cd41c4-36ad-59d1-b716-27c941a2588b.html

Cooling Center Opens in Winchester as Heat Index Nears 110 Degrees

A pop-up Cooling Center will open in Winchester this week as heat index values are projected to reach up to 110 degrees, prompting weather warnings and increased safety efforts for vulnerable populations.

The National Weather Service has issued Excessive Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories across the region as temperatures are expected to rise into the upper 90s to near 100 degrees through the week.

The added humidity will result in dangerous heat indices, creating a heightened risk of heat-related illnesses.

In response, Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) has opened an Emergency Cooling Center at Montague United Methodist Church, located at 102 Montague Avenue in Winchester, VA.

The facility will operate from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday this week, providing relief for adults experiencing homelessness in need of a cool, safe space.

According to WATTS, the Cooling Center will offer air-conditioned shelter, cold drinks and snacks, access to restrooms, a shower, and phone-charging capabilities among other resources.

Open to adults ages 18 and older, the facility follows a low-barrier policy, meaning no identification, sobriety requirements, or background checks are necessary for entry. Lunch may also be offered when provided by volunteers.

WATTS staff will be available and working from the Cooling Center throughout the week.

The organization, which began in 2009, operates seasonal overnight and daytime shelters to serve adults experiencing homelessness in Winchester and surrounding areas.

WATTS also employs Transition Support Specialists who work year-round to help guests access long-term housing resources, apply for benefits, and connect with medical and recovery services.

However, the current focus remains on ensuring immediate safety during the ongoing heat wave.

Local officials are urging residents to stay indoors during peak heat hours, drink plenty of fluids, and monitor family members and neighbors who may be at higher risk due to age, health conditions, or lack of air conditioning.

Via The Winchester Gazette

Original article: https://www.thewinchestergazette.com/articles/news/cooling-center-opens-in-winchester-as-heat-index-nears-110-degrees/

Future Plans: Phase 2

Following the completion of our permanent year-round shelter, WATTS would like to focus on Phase II of our vision, which is transitional housing. Shelters are an essential first step to ending homelessness, but without transitional housing to progress into, individuals can become stuck. We envision our own transitional housing which would be for guests who are employed and meeting certain criteria towards ending their homelessness, so as to create a full continuum of care from homelessness to housing.
Back to Future Plans

Future Plans: Phase 1

WATTS has been working for several years towards our goal of a permanent, year-round shelter that would allow us to better serve local men and women who are experiencing homelessness. Our current model of operation – our shelter being housed in a different local church each week of the winter from November through March – has worked beautifully for 15 years, but unfortunately, the need in our area continues to grow. We are so grateful for the generosity and kindness of our church partners who’ve opened their buildings to WATTS and our guests over the years, and for all the people who have been a part of making it happen! Our plan is to continue these partnerships with our churches going forward, with expanded opportunities for the community to help on a regular basis as well, all within the “hub” of our year-round facility.

First envisioned by WATTS’ inaugural and long-time Executive Director, the late Marion Schottelkorb, serious talks and fundraising efforts related to establishing a permanent location have been underway for almost a decade now. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 on the homeless community and the implementation of our Transition Out of Homelessness program in 2021, further clarified our vision on the improved and expanded services we seek to offer. Continuity of care is vital – we’ve seen that, often, it takes longer than the 5 months of our shelter’s current operation to work through complex processes and systems to get a person out of homelessness. There are also many services and unique needs that our guests require in the meantime in order to care for their whole person (body, mind, and spirit) and empower them to be successful at breaking the cycle of homelessness.

Now in 2025, we are excited to have entered into the initial planning stages of realizing a tangible, year-round location. Check out these early drafts of the architectural drawings for the shelter we envision to meet the needs of those experiencing homelessness in our community. Some of the highlights include:

50 low-barrier beds, each with a personal storage cubby/locker
An area for 50 more beds during emergencies
A day room for 90 people
A commercial, full-service kitchen
Laundry room for WATTS and guests’ needs
70 personal lockers (including for those who are not overnight guests)
A clinic with exam room
4 isolation rooms (for contagious diseases or post-operative recovery)
Kennels for animals
A conference room and classroom
Bathrooms and showers
An outdoor area for guests to enjoy

Back to Future Plans

Coldest Night of the Year event fills city streets to help the homeless

When most people step outside to confront winter’s cold, the first thing they want to do is go back in.

But what if they couldn’t? What if there was no place they could go to escape the elements? What if they had no choice but to sleep outside in windy, sub-freezing conditions?

Winchester’s third annual Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) event, a fundraiser for the Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) program, gave hundreds of participants the opportunity to experience, albeit briefly, what it’s like to be homeless, vulnerable and struggling to survive.

“This is such a fantastic event and a great tradition to help those in need, and I’m honored to be a part of it,” said U.S. Rep. Ben Cline (R-6th District), who traveled from his home in Roanoke to participate in Saturday evening’s walk that began and ended at Braddock Street United Methodist Church, 115 Wolfe St. in Winchester.

“This is a great event every year and I don’t want to miss it,” added Winchester Mayor Les Veach. “It’s a good cause.”

Cline and Veach were among 611 walkers from 87 teams who traversed one of two courses — one 2 kilometers, the other 5 kilometers — that wound through Old Town, went up Amherst Street and ended back at Braddock Street United Methodist.

Thanks to sponsorships and donations, participants raised $93,826 this year for WATTS, according to data from the Coldest Night of the Year website. However, Clay Perry, vice president of WATTS’ board of directors, said on Sunday that about $7,000 in cash and check donations had not yet been counted, so the total amount raised is expected to be over $100,000, which would top last year’s total.

“This will help us fund our upcoming 2025-2026 season,” WATTS Executive Director Robyn Miller said on Saturday. “It’s used to maintain and operate the overnight shelter every night of the season.”

WATTS is a nonprofit organization that partners with area churches to provide temporary overnight shelter and hot meals to people experiencing homelessness during cold-weather months. From the first week of November to the last week of March, 35 or more people each night are transported to a participating church that agrees to operate a shelter for one week.

For the current shelter season that ends on March 29, Miller said WATTS so far has accommodated 130 people through its overnight shelter program.

WATTS also operates daytime warming and cooling centers seasonally throughout the year, offering snacks and drinks, a restroom, shower, and other resources available. Since November, Miller said the Warming Center has served 120 people.

Additionally, WATTS offers support services year-round to help its clients become independent and obtain permanent housing.

“We currently have 14 people that have already been qualified through centralized housing intake or already earn enough money to apply for housing,” Miller said on Saturday. “Our Transition Out of Homelessness program has been incredibly busy. In four months, we’ve helped 12 people get identification, two driver’s licenses, six birth certificates. Six guests found employment. We helped three guests move out of the area [to] where they had family and better opportunities … Three guests have entered drug or alcohol treatment … [and] one guest has been housed.”

The Coldest Night of the Year is an awareness initiative and fundraiser that originated in 2011 in Toronto, Canada, and expanded to the United States in 2022. To date, the event has raised more than $84 million to support homeless support initiatives in about 250 communities in North America.

WATTS started participating in 2023. For each of the three Coldest Night events held since 2023, the number of walkers in Winchester has been second-highest in the United States, eclipsed only by the number of walkers in Fredericksburg, VA. But Winchester did come out on top in terms of the number of teams who participated in Saturday’s 58 walks in the United States. The city’s 87 teams was the highest in the nation, followed by Fredericksburg with 84.

The team that brought in the most money for WATTS this year was WINCOG Cares, comprised of 20 people from the Winchester Church of God. That squad collected $6,296, followed by the general WATTS team, Walkers for WATTS, coming in second with $5,345.

To help all of the walkers in Winchester’s Coldest Night event understand why the money they raised was so crucial, one of WATTS’ clients who is currently homeless spoke and shared a bit of what it’s like living on the streets.

“We are right out there in front of life’s storms. Whoever we are and whatever we have is all we have. Dignity is our last thread,” the guest shared.

While WATTS has been overseeing cold-weather temporary, thermal shelter since November 2009, Miller said the goal is to find a permanent year-round home for the nonprofit and its clients.

“We’ve been looking hard and working with the city, trying to find a location we can all be happy with that will house at least 50 to 100 people in a real emergency and provide a safe place for more than five months a year,” she said.

But finding a permanent facility is only part of what WATTS wants to do to better serve Winchester’s homeless population. The organization is also eager to find more housing for people with limited incomes, but the area’s affordable-housing options are few and far between. Miller said that’s frustrating because clients who are qualified to live independently can’t find a suitable house or apartment.

“They’ve done everything right,” she said, “but housing that’s affordable for them doesn’t exist.”

To learn more about WATTS or to support its mission to help the homeless in and around Winchester, visit watts-homelessshelter.org.

Via Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/coldest-night-of-the-year-event-fills-city-streets-to-help-the-homeless/article_144161b4-3e3f-50db-9ac5-63f85985e5eb.html

More than 600 participants walk up Amherst Street in Winchester during Saturday’s Coldest Night of the Year, a fundraiser for the Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) program. This year’s event brought in approximately $101,000 for WATTS. – Photo by Brian Brehm/The Winchester Star.

Chain of Checks donations presented to 6 local nonprofits

The annual Chain of Checks charitable campaign sponsored by the Community Foundation of the Northern Shenandoah Valley (NSV) and conducted over the 2024 holiday season has awarded $25,000 in grants to six local nonprofits.

“Due to the community’s outpouring of support, the campaign was able to expand the number of grants [from four to six],” Barry Lee Bowser, founder of Chain of Checks, said in a media release of the 2024 fundraising campaign.

With the theme of the most recent campaign being “shelter,” grants were presented to:

Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter (WATTS) — $5,000 to help with the expenses of maintaining and operating a bus that transports 35 guests each night during cold-weather months to a local host church where people experiencing homelessness can enjoy a free meal and safe place to sleep.

Winchester Rescue Mission — $5,000 to put toward the purchase of 25 heavy-duty, easy-to-clean beds and mattresses for the nonprofit’s soon-to-open emergency shelter on Valley Avenue.

Blue Ridge Habitat for Humanity — $5,000 to improve the marketing and outreach of its ReStore home improvement outlet on Millwood Avenue in Winchester, which raises money to help the nonprofit build and rehabilitate houses for families in need.

The Laurel Center — $5,000 to support its outreach programs so that victims of domestic and sexual violence are aware of the nonprofit’s emergency shelter and services on North Cameron Street.

Blue Ridge Legal Services Inc. — $2,000 to help it continue to provide free legal assistance to low-income residents of the Northern Shenandoah Valley.

Wesley Housing’s Senseny Place — $3,000 to help it provide affordable housing and support services for low-income older adults.

Applications for the 2024 Chain of Checks grants were submitted online through the Community Foundation NSV and reviewed by the foundation’s community-conscious selection committee. The $25,000 in awards came from the following sources:

Corporate sponsors Bill and Lois Reynolds, as well as the Gum family with White House Foods in Winchester.

Half of the proceeds from opening night of Frederick County Parks and Recreation’s “Winter Wonderland” holiday light display in Clearbrook Park.

Christmas movie fundraisers hosted by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Nerangis Management Corp.

Collection canisters at various local businesses including 16 Handy Mart/Dunkin’ Donuts locations and Solenberger’s Hardware in Winchester.

The Clarke County Community Band’s Berryville Christmas concert.

Online and mailed donations from individuals and businesses.

Applications for the 2025 Chain of Checks campaign will open in late spring at the Community Foundation NSV’s website (cfnsv.org). For more information, email Community Foundation NSV Executive Director Rebekah DesMarais at director@CFNSV.org or visit the Chain of Checks website at chainofchecks.com.

Since 1986, Chain of Checks has awarded a total of $2,009,703 to assorted nonprofits in the Winchester area, the media release states.

Via Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/chain-of-checks-donations-presented-to-6-local-nonprofits/article_2ab6cd8e-cf32-5168-aed8-ac18e75082b3.html

Annual homeless count is happening this week

An annual tallying of people who are homeless in the Winchester, Frederick County and Clarke County region will happen today and Thursday, according to a media release from the Western Virginia Continuum of Care (CoC).

The Western Virginia CoC is a network of nonprofits, regional planners and government funders aimed at reducing and preventing homelessness. Each January, the organization conducts its Point-in-Time (PIT) count to provide a “snapshot of homeless individuals on one night each year.” The program does this by canvassing the region to find and survey those who are living in cars, abandoned buildings, local shelters and tents.

“The goal is to get an accurate census of everybody who’s experiencing homelessness, so that [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] can allocate federal resources,” explained Kaitlin Heatwole, who is the Western Virginia CoC’s data lead.

Both locally and nationally, homelessness has been trending upward since the COVID-19 pandemic, Heatwole said.

In 2024, the PIT census identified 112 people without homes in Winchester, Frederick County and Clarke County. Eighty percent were found in local shelters, like Winchester Rescue Mission and Winchester Area Temporary Transitional Shelter, while the remaining 20% were unsheltered.

Last year, there was about an 8% increase from 2023’s PIT count in the greater Winchester region, according to Heatwole. And homelessness increased by 18% throughout the country in 2024, per nationwide PIT count numbers.

Heatwole described these totals as undercounts, with certain groups — like people staying in motels or people who are living at a friend’s or relative’s home — left out of the tally.

Those who are not staying at a shelter, who are on the streets or in their cars instead, are “a lot harder to find.” This year, though, the Western Virginia CoC has expanded its team of volunteers in hopes of identifying more people and coming back with a more accurate result. It’s still possible that the numbers for 2025 will end up lower than expected because this week’s intense cold could be driving more people into hotels and motels than usual, Heatwole said.

As the CoC’s volunteers canvas the community this week, they will not just be taking a headcount. They will also be surveying individuals on reasons for lacking a residence, which can help the CoC better understand and help the homeless.

“We’re not required to ask that question, but we do because it helps us understand why people are in that situation and what we can do to help them get out of it, get back into stable housing,” Heatwole said.

Last year’s most common response for the “single top reason” of homelessness throughout Western Virginia was unemployment or lack of income. A few other common answers were being unable to buy a place, eviction and inability to pay rent and mortgage, according to Heatwole.

“The straw that breaks the camel’s back for people is economic,” she said, “and it’s very tied up with housing as well.”

To learn more about the program, how to get involved or how to get help, visit continuumofcare513.com.

Via The Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/annual-homeless-count-is-happening-this-week/article_6f158a09-1ee8-5979-9318-6e45359bd2b4.html

Open Forum: Kathy was compassionate, empathetic, generous

I will sorely miss Kathy Nerangis because Kathy was my Den Mother! Let me explain. In 2009 we were new to the Winchester area and our church was getting involved in a new program to shelter the homeless during the winter; it was the Winchester Area Temporary Thermal Shelter or WATTS. Kathy took a leadership role in our church’s WATTS program — her specialty was breakfast. It took a special person to get out of a warm bed at 4 a.m. on cold, frosty February mornings so she could drive to our WATTS shelter to cook and serve hot, nutritious breakfasts to our WATTS’ guests. Kathy organized a small group of us into the Christ Church WATTS Breakfast Club, which we later renamed the Mole Patrol because we worked in the dark so we wouldn’t wake up the guests. Kathy was our Den Mother.

Kathy took time to get to know our WATTS’ guests and helped those that she could find jobs, which led to some guests reconciling with their kids and other family members. She especially looked forward to giving our WATTS’ guests knitted prayer squares with inspirational messages.

Kathy was compassionate, empathetic, and generous with her time, money, and talent. Over the years her energy waned but she always showed up to hand out prayer squares and to hug the guests as they left the shelter. She never asked for any personal recognition but was the first to point out and ask for the recognition of deserving volunteers.

I will deeply miss our Breakfast Club/Mole Patrol Den Mother but I’m sure that somewhere in heaven Kathy has already set herself up as a Den Mother organizing her fellow angels to support our neediest friends and neighbors.

by PATRICK KOFALT, a resident of Winchester.

Via The Winchester Star

Original article: https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/open-forum-kathy-was-compassionate-empathetic-generous/article_3e603884-9f74-5cf6-98cf-51388d144a27.html