The Manitowoc Warming Shelter will be opening again this winter, but in a different location.
The Manitowoc Common Council approved a temporary Conditional Use Permit request to have the shelter open in the offices of Lakeshore CAP on State Street, rather than First Presbyterian Church, where it was located previously.
During a previous Manitowoc Plan Commission meeting, the warming shelter had some requests to add more beds and allow more time for it to stay open.
However, the commission only approved allowing the shelter to have 12 beds and to be open for 76 days.
Despite that, the Manitowoc Warming Shelter board came to the city council on Monday with gratitude for allowing them to open again.
Executive Director and Pastor Matt Sauer spoke during the council during a public hearing on the CUP.
“The conditions in the permit are not easy,” he explained. “They are not what I or our board would have chosen. But we are willing to accept them because our most urgent priority is this November that no one in Manitowoc is forced to be out on the streets.”
Warming Shelter Board Director Ken Walters looked back on the shelter group’s arrival in the city in 2022, when they were trying to get the shelter open for the first time.
“And it unlocked an incredible opportunity for hundreds of volunteers, for well over one hundred of our homeless brothers and sisters,” he exclaimed. “And it has let the warmth and the generosity and the friendship and the help of Manitowoc come rushing towards us.”
There were no opponents to CUP at the public hearing, unlike during the plan commission meeting.
The temporary warming shelter will open in November and stay open until April.
