Sub-zero temperatures during the cold snap in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in January and February this winter caused a surge of homeless people seeking shelter at the Room at the Inn — one of only a handful of shelters in the U.P.
But Chelsea Wilkinson said there's more to be alarmed about than cold weather. She's executive director of the Marquette shelter.
The group's street outreach program found many more people than it could theoretically shelter during the cold snap, Wilkinson said, with many in unsafe conditions.
"They're sleeping in their cars or their campers, or maybe they're in an abandoned building somewhere or a camp, maybe a place that doesn't have any electric or running water," Wilkinson said. "So we ended up sheltering an additional about 25 people over the last three months beyond our capacity at our regular shelter because we were really concerned about them succumbing to the elements, frankly."
Wilkinson called the overcapacity situation a "canary in a cold mine."
Street outreach workers try to help homeless people take inventory of their social safety net, she said, to see if there are any friends or family that would take them in for a week, to buy time to figure out a solution for them.
But that's getting harder and harder to do.
"The folks that were barely making it before are well over the cliff," she said. "They're unable to make ends meet themselves. Everyone is feeling the increase of the cost of housing, of the rising cost of food, the rising cost of gas. There's a crescendo of things that are happening that are weakening people's abilities to survive."
Wilkinson said her shelter's own expenses have skyrocketed, with utility bills going from $1,800 a month in 2023, to about $4,000 today.
Adding to the worries, it's not clear if the Trump administration will renew the federal Continuum of Care program, which pays for the staff members on the street outreach team.
