MARQUETTE – It has been a month since the Room at the Inn has opened a two-unit emergency shelter, in the West End of Marquette County, designed to serve families with children in need of immediate housing. As of late Nov., the shelter has already provided emergency shelter to two families.

“There are really young kiddos that had been sleeping in a camper without heat or water for many weeks before we opened the family shelter,” said Executive Director of Room at the Inn, Chelsie Wilkinson. “The fact that they get to spend the holidays somewhere warm, safe and has a Christmas tree; and so their parents could catch their breath a little bit and map out what is next for them is a huge success.”

The shelter is the first in the region to specifically serve families with children, who are not fleeing domestic violence. The shelter allows for a 90-day stay, while finding secure permanent housing for the family. One family, with the financial easement of the family shelter, was able to save enough money for their own place and is headed out of the family center already.

The need for the family shelter was first identified in the winter of last year, the first winter Wilkinson worked at the Room at the Inn, when numerous families facing housing crises were looking for a place to stay. That spring Wilkinson applied for a grant through the Salvation Army, and won it. Now this winter just a day before Thanksgiving the family shelter opened.

“Opening up the family shelter took private, public and nonprofit partners to really get this project up and running,” said Wilkinson. “Even Shunk Furniture, for example, donating all of the beds we needed to open the shelter. Not only did they donate the frames but the frames, mattresses and box springs; but they set them all up the day before Thanksgiving so that we could open.”

This is not the first big expansion to the services provided from the Room at the Inn. Last year the organization also started its Street Outreach program, where workers and volunteers will bring food, water and other material needs to homeless who are unable to make it to the homeless shelter.

“In addition to running our homeless shelter on West Washington we also are managing all of these folks who are out surviving in the elements as well,” Wilkinson said.

Room at the Inn has made huge expansions since its founding in 2007 by a small number of churches organized by Helen McCormick. It was McCormick who saw the need for emergency shelter in the Marquette County community and dedicated herself to ensuring that Room at the Inn establish itself as an private non-profit organization that provides food, shelter and assistance to those individuals transitioning out of homelessness. In February of 2019, Room at the Inn started an initiative to provide a permanent shelter in Downtown Marquette that would replace the rotating shelter model through local churches. After raising the funds necessary, gaining community support, and obtaining the necessary permits to complete the project, Room at the Inn successfully opened the doors to the new shelter on December 24th 2020. Room at the Inn even remodeled its three-bedroom apartment above the Warming Center into a 30-bed Emergency Shelter, which now provides 24/7 shelter access.

Yet after all of these improvements and expansions over the years, Wilkinson is sure the root issue of homelessness in Marquette County hasn’t changed and that the Room at the Inn is functioning as a superficial solution to an unanswered problem.

“I think it really is housing, I feel like it is a little cliche to say but I don’t think Room at the Inn opening five more homeless shelters is the solution here, nor do I want it to be. I want to grow strategically so that we have enough of a safety net to make sure that everybody in our community is going to be okay. I don’t want to grow in anticipation that this problem is not going to get better.”

Wilkinson sees frequent cases of residents at the Room at the Inn finding entry level jobs in the City of Marquette, but the only available housing can be found in Ishpeming or farther away; then the residents become stuck in a near impossible situation.

“So you just got this mismatch in terms of available resources for your working poor who are here in the City of Marquette. So we see that a lot, where people don’t want to lose their job but they don’t want to live in Ishpeming because how are they going to be able to get to their job?”

Wilkinson asserts that one of the ways to personally help with the housing issue is going to Marquette City Commission meetings and Marquette County Commissioners meetings when affordable housing is on the agenda, and showing support. With that she thinks of opening up other homeless shelters across Marquette County, to help bring residents to places with more affordable living opportunities.

“I am happy to say that we have more of a presence in the West End of the county because we recognize the need to disperse where people are finding opportunities to get out of the shelter,” Wilkinson said. “We have a family who we are working with, who are a mom and a dad who are both employed, and their rent raised at their last place and they couldn’t afford it. They didn’t have enough money for a security deposit and first month’s rent at a new place. But they did have enough for a motel in the area so they spent every penny they had to get into a motel for one month, and then they were out of money because they couldn’t save living in a hotel room. So you’ve got these people who are gainfully employed in our community and they can’t afford to live here.”

Wilkinson acknowledges the criticism the homeless population faces, but sees how close the average person and family is to being in similar situations with the rise of living expenses.

“We have found many working class families in our community are having a really hard time paying the bills and are having a really hard time maintaining stable housing,” Wilkinson said. “Even two parent and two income households are having a hard time just making ends meet. I don’t think the average person wants to admit how much more they have in common with the people at the Warming Center as opposed to the people in Washington.”

With the evidence of the effectiveness the family shelter has already had and the demand for its help, the Room at the Inn may have more to come.

“We already have three families on the waitlist to get in here. So I am hoping that we can open up another spot here in the spring,” Wilkinson said. “But it is a heavy lift to get something like that opened.”

Wilkinson urges that what makes Marquette special is the willingness to help from the people in its borders, and that the homeless population is deeply in need of it.

“The resiliency of this community comes from everybody kind of pitching in when they can and what they can,” Wilkinson said. “Everything that we can do as a community to reduce that burden on homeless families I think the more resilient community, on a larger scale, we can have. It takes a village… and the need is great.”

To help the Room at the Inn its website can be found at roomattheinn.org and can be used to schedule times to volunteer, buy items for the organization from an Amazon wish list and to make a financial donation.