photo by: Derek Redd

Salvation Army Lt. John Lawrence shows one of the rooms to be used for the new women’s homeless shelter at the Wheeling Salvation Army site.

WHEELING — An additional 30 beds for homeless women opened Tuesday night at the Salvation Army in Wheeling, adding dozens of crucial spots to help as Wheeling’s exempted encampment was closed for good Tuesday morning.

Service providers hope this event will provide some calm following the chaotic hours around the encampment’s closure.

Salvation Army Lt. John Lawrence and members of the Life Hub board of directors discussed the shelter’s opening, as the two organizations will work together to provide a place indoors for many of Wheeling’s homeless to sleep. The Salvation Army Shelter will be the space for women, while the Life Hub will continue to provide 50 beds per night for homeless men.

“(The women) will be able to come in in a safe and respectable way to a place that gives them a sense of worth and a place that will give them a clean, warm place to stay safe,” Lawrence said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to work with the Life Hub and the other community members that are going to be involved in this in order to meet this need.”

Lawrence said he was approached about three weeks ago by Life Hub board member Dr. William Mercer to see if the organization would be able to reopen its shelter to help house those in need after the City of Wheeling closed the exempted encampment on Dec. 1.

The Salvation Army shelter has new showers, laundry facilities and beds for the women who stay there, Lawrence said. About $130,000 in renovations have already gone into the shelter, with another $27,000 in heating systems to come.

Lawrence and Mercer said that the period between when they agreed to open the shelter to the encampment’s closure was a tight window, and that projects of this magnitude often get more time. That led to a mad dash to get everything in place. Lawrence said the Wheeling Salvation Army site wasn’t able to get the final go-ahead to open from the organization’s Atlanta headquarters until 4:45 p.m. Monday, and city fire and health inspections could not happen until that green light was given. Those inspections were completed Tuesday morning.

Lawrence said several factors went into that late go-ahead. There were several levels of authorization that needed completed and, with an organization the size of the Salvation Army, Lawrence said that can take time. An insurance waiver also needed to be procured and the timing of the process around the Thanksgiving holiday didn’t help.

“Anybody that has worked with large entities will tell you that, to be able to get something like this done in just three weeks, that was just an act of God getting that done,” Lawrence said.

That left a night where the encampment was closed and the Salvation Army site was not yet open and sent homeless advocates scrambling to find shelter for many. An appeal to the city to postpone the camp’s closure was denied, Mercer said, but Catholic Charities opened its ballroom for people to stay.

City crews and law enforcement were at the encampment Tuesday morning to start the dismantling, and some living in the camp were still there. According to Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, a volunteer from the organization was arrested Tuesday morning on trespassing and obstruction charges. Video of the arrest was posted on social media. Following that arrest, members of the organization went to the encampment with Wheeling Police, Wheeling Fire, city operations and the Humane Society to help move the last of the people out of the encampment.

Though there are now 80 beds at the Life Hub and Salvation Army, Life Hub officials said that still isn’t enough for everyone who stayed at the encampment to have a bed. When the vote to close the camp came in October, the Life Hub’s beds were full at 50 and there were 71 people staying at the camp.

Mercer said they would be working with homeless people on an individual basis and, in conjunction with the Coalition for the Homeless, trying to find them more permanent housing.

Mercer said that he didn’t want to paint a picture of warring factions — those working with the homeless on one side and city officials on the other.

“I’ve talked to (Wheeling Mayor) Denny Magruder many times,” Mercer said. “He understands it. Maybe sometimes we differ on how to do it, but we all have at heart what we want to do. We want to get our homeless appropriate help and appropriate housing.”

Mercer added that a managed camp — an option that is possible, though the logistics between service providers and the city have yet to work out — would be a viable course of action, and discussions should resume to make that a reality. The agreement between Life Hub and the Salvation Army for the women’s shelter is for six months, which should provide the time for those discussions.

For now, Mercer, Lawrence and other service providers see great promise in what they have been able to do in opening the women’s shelter. Mercer hopes the momentum from this teamwork can carry on.

“It’s probably one of the best (collaborations) I’ve seen,” he said.