LAKEPORT, Calif. – Following months of planning and preparation, the Lake Ministerial Association will open its community warming center for the homeless on Christmas Eve.
This is the second year the association has hosted the center, which again will be based at the Lakeport Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1111 Park Way.
Check-in on Saturday will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the bus stop in front of the old Natural High School on N. Main Street in Lakeport. Those who have other means of getting to the center can go directly there for check in, said Rev. Shannon Kimbell-Auth, one of the warming center's lead organizers.
Warming center rules require that guests arrive by 8 p.m. Once at the center, guests will go through an intake process.
The center will stay open throughout the Christmas weekend, and then will resume normal hours of 6 p.m. to 7 a.m., Monday through Friday. It will be closed on weekends.
The community members who stay at the center will be offered a safe, warm place to sleep, dinner and breakfast, hot showers and laundry assistance. Pets are welcome but must stay in a designed area outside of the building.
Everyone who stays at the center must sign off on a guest agreement which includes not being disruptive or visibly intoxicated, with no drugs or alcohol use allowed on the church premises. The full agreement can be seen at the center's Facebook page.
By county ordinance, the warming center is limited to 24 guests per night, Kimbell-Auth said.
Earlier this year, the center opened in January and continued through the start of April. During that time frame, Kimbell-Auth said the warming center served 85 different guests.
Kimbell-Auth said this year the association has been required to adhere to a number of rules that it wasn't required to follow last year, including getting a major use permit to operate the center and making improvements in response to county inspections.
She said they paid more than $2,600 for the major use permit application – which isn't refundable – and also had to pursue an early activation permit because the major use permit process can take several months to complete.
On Wednesday, the center received the approval for the early activation permit just in time, before Community Development Director Bob Massarelli left the county for the holiday. County staff said no one else was authorized to sign off on the permit.
Another change to operations this year is that the bus top where center clients are screened is being moved to Natural High, rather than the Third and Main Street location where it was earlier this year.
In a Dec. 15 letter to the county to give input on the warming center's use permit, Lakeport Community Development Director Kevin Ingram raised concerns about the use of the Third and Main Street bus stop for pickup and dropoff of warming center clients.
Ingram said that the concern was about “the unintended consequence” of concentrating homeless individuals within Library Park and downtown Lakeport, which he said was clearly observed when the center last operated.
“The significant increase in homeless individuals impacted the Lakeport Police Department with a dramatic increase in the number of call-outs to Library Park and downtown Lakeport which involved shelter patrons,” Ingram wrote. “These call-outs included issues of: public intoxication, illegal drug use, public urination, verbal altercations, trespassing and aggressive panhandling.”
Those problems led to the city receiving numerous complaints from local business owners, Ingram said.
The city in turn asked for the morning dropoff service from the center to include Lake Transit bus routes anywhere in the county, not just those in the city of Lakeport, according to the letter.
At Tuesday's Lakeport City Council meeting, Kimbell-Auth and several community members spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting in response to the letter, which they said had threatened the warming center's opening.
“We understand that the public needs to be protected, but so does the most vulnerable part of our society that falls through the cracks,” said Lakeport Seventh-day Adventist Church Pastor Randy Brehms, who added that the homeless should be treated with dignity.
Kimbell-Auth said having the bus stop as part of the warming center operations is integral to controlling the number of people who show up in order to adhere to county rules.
Due to the issues the city had raised, Kimbell-Auth said Lake Transit was unwilling at that point to offer its support for busing until the city had given its support for the latest bus stop plan.
She said they had heard people's concerns about the Third and Main Street bus stop last year and already had decided to move the screening stop to Natural High. “We're not opposed to getting better at what we do.”
However, she was concerned about busing people in from other parts of the county.
At that point, City Manager Margaret Silveira and Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen agreed to meet with Kimbell-Auth the following day to iron out the issues so the center's opening could move forward.
Both Kimbell-Auth and Silveira separately confirmed to Lake County News that the meeting took place, and the agreement was to move the screening to the Natural High bus stop and to allow for busing in from other parts of the county.
“We'll see how that works,” said Silveira, adding that the city and the ministerial association agreed to meet on Jan. 25 to see how the program is going and address any issues.
She said Lake Transit has now signed on, as it hadn't wanted to move forward until the city and association had worked out the bus stop matter.
Silveira said the city's goal was to mitigate the impacts of the center on Lakeport, and that they would try to do a better job of studying whether incidents that occur in downtown Lakeport are actually related to the center's guests.
While Kimbell-Auth said she agreed to the change in location, she is concerned that the new approach to allow busing in from different parts of the county will cause the center to run up against its client limit.
Organizers previously have dealt with complaints and concerns about the warming center's operations from neighbors of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, some of whom told Lake County News that they didn't feel they had been given much notice about the center's opening at the start of this year.
The warming center was drawn into controversy earlier this year when a church neighbor who had complained of having issues with homeless people trespassing on his property was stabbed by a Lower Lake man who was waiting for the center to open.
While the suspect in the stabbing – which did not occur on the church property – was there to visit the warming center, and had sometimes eaten dinner there, he wasn't actually a guest, according to Kimbell-Auth.
Kimbell-Auth said some of the other changes to the warming center's processes this year include the option for guests to go through a longer intake process that could qualify them for assistance and programs through the Continuum of Care, the program meant to address homelessness in the community.
Another change is that center volunteers will offer to connect clients to a family member in order to find them a place to stay, and that age and race of clients will now be tracked as part of understanding the county's homeless population, she said.
Kimbell-Auth said guests also will be part of a weekly meeting at the center.
There also will be security on site at all times when the center is operating, she said.
In the midst of getting the center ready to open this week, Kimbell-Auth worked with community members and organizations such as the Salvation Army to find temporary shelter for two homeless families with three children each until the warming center opens. Christmas gifts for the children also were donated by St. Vincent De Paul.
The warming center is in need of 24 sleeping bags and as of Friday only had six, Kimbell-Auth said. Any type of sleeping bag is welcome, new or gently used, and can be dropped off between 5 and 6 p.m. Saturday.
Other needs include pillows and a variety of toiletries. Kimbell-Auth said once the center opens she'll have a better idea of what other needs they'll have going forward.
Kimbell-Auth said US Cellular is providing a cell phone for the warming center, where messages can be left for guests or for staff. She said on Friday she was waiting to pick up the phone and so didn't yet have the phone number to release.
A GoFundMe account also is open for those wanting to donate to help the center.
The warming center's Facebook page is posting updates about items needed and volunteer opportunities. Kimbell-Auth asks that anyone wanting to help or donate contact her through the page so she can reply to their inquiries.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
