(Radio Iowa) – Attempts to keep Sioux City’s warming shelter open have failed and the shelter will close on October 1st.
Shelter board treasurer, Joe Tidewell, says they are making the announcement now to give other local agencies time to prepare to deal with the homeless. “The shelter during the wintertime houses on the average of about one hundred men, women and children per night. And last year, in the most severe Blizzard, we had 151 people here in the shelter. And those people are going to now need to find another place,” Tidewell says.

He says the shelter has a half million dollar shortfall in funding for this year, and says the Siouxland Community in general has not supported the shelter.  “It’s not just 500-thousand for this year. What we have made a decision is, if the if the shelter is truly going to be able to be part of the fabric of serving the poor and homeless in the community, we need five year commitments for the funding,” he says. “We’re very disappointed, because both the city and the county and area churches, not all of them, but some area churches support us. ”

Tidewell says the shelter has been hurt by misinformation spread in the community — including the idea that the shelter is a magnet for homeless from other areas of the Tri-state regions. “Approximately 80 percent of the people were born or raised here in Siouxland. So when we close or a shelter closes, where are they going to go?,” Tidewell asks. :They’re not going to go to some other city. They’re not going to just disappear. They’re going to stay where the remnants of their family might be, or the people that they went to school with.”

City leaders say they have spent four million dollars this year trying to address a complicated issue.