Those who work with Carroll County children and families struggling with homelessness advocated last week for a continuing effort to construct a new family shelter facility in Westminster.
During Thursday’s Carroll County commissioners meeting, staff and contractors who work with the county to provide services to homeless residents, expressed the need for an expanded facility, as they gained commissioners’ support for submitting a grant application to the state.
During the past four years, 160 adults and 202 children used the county’s family shelter, and the facility has a waitlist, according to staff.
“The current facility does not provide a safe environment or adequate space for some of the county’s most vulnerable,” staff stated in meeting documents. “In addition to safety and space concerns, the existing shelter is not fully accessible and is not child friendly.”
The current family shelter, at 10 Distillery Drive in Westminster, is about 6,000 square feet. In 2021, the county purchased the Penn-Mar Organization building, at 115 Stoner Ave., in Westminster, for $1.3 million. The building is on the same campus as the county’s adult and night-by-night shelters and the county’s Westminster Senior Center.
The new building will include approximately 7,580 square feet for the county’s family shelter relocation and renovation.
Human Services Programs of Carroll County Inc., is the nonprofit Community Action Agency that partners with county government, as well as several state and federal programs, to provide shelter and housing services, including homeless prevention programs, eviction prevention and other housing supports to the community.
HSP Executive Director Scott Yard told commissioners Thursday that the new family shelter is “a long time coming,” and will allow the agency to leverage services to enhance safety and comfort for those seeking help.
“It will also allow a more balanced and appropriate setting for children. Right now, the children are on the fourth floor of an office building. The rooms don’t have ceilings, it’s very loud and very sterile and non-comforting,” Yard said. “The new shelter will put the children in a much better place so they can have a much more stable environment.”
The new facility will be called The COVE, which stands for The Center for Opportunity, Value and Empowerment, “because we know that in that building that is what we would like to do — to be able to lift people up and empower people and to put them into stability, whether it’s through aging programs, other government programs or the shelter itself,” said Celine Steckel, director of Citizen Services for the county.
“As you know being evicted is very traumatizing for a child and we want to do everything we can do to help them have the best transition back to a normal life,” Yard said. “[The new shelter will] also help to alleviate second-generation poverty. When a child grows up in a homeless shelter the chance that they will live in a homeless shelter as an adult greatly increases. So, providing a newer facility that allows us to have more resources in the facility and leverage other services, the chance of diminishing generational poverty in Carroll County is going to increase rapidly.”
Steckel said the new building will be a community space, with a portion dedicated to a new conference room that can be used by community partners, and space for the county’s Citizen Services and the Bureau of Aging and Disabilities departments.
Deb Standiford, manager of the county’s Office of Grants Management, said the county’s Community Development Block Grant application for fiscal 2025 will request the maximum amount available, $800,000, from the state. The grant program supports public facilities devoted to providing services to clients of low or moderate means, including homeless families, she explained.
The funds would be used toward construction of the family shelter. The county has said the shelter would be built during fiscal 2025, and the total estimated cost of the project is $5.5 million.
The county has received CDBG funds from the state for other projects in the past, including Springboard Community Services’ domestic violence Safe House, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Carroll County gymnasium in Westminster, respite facilities for Penn-Mar Human Services, and facility renovations at the ARC of Carroll County.
