The record cold weather that ushered in 2018 is being felt at the state's largest homeless shelter. Tim Sully with the Siena-Francis House near 17th and Cuming says they have provided shelter for more than 500 people each of the past several nights.
They only have 392 beds so many people are sleeping in chairs and on mats on the floor. Sully says their day shelter is also jam packed. To ease that load, they are allowing people older than 55 to stay in the lobby of the men's shelter because it's warmer.
When the weather is this cold, Sully says the do "extended peremeter" checks where staff walk a couple of blocks around the shelter looking for people who need assistance. "In the past 2-3 days we found a few women and a few men who were certainly not properly dressed for the weather. I do think we saved a couple of lives because of that," Sully says. He says one of the men they found suffered serious frost bite and was treated at a hospital.
Sully says they are in need of winter coats and twin bed blankets to help keep people they serve warm.