Homelessness is on the rise across The United States — and the city of Lincoln is not exempt.
Overnight on Thursday, Jan. 24, Lincoln’s primary homeless shelter ‘The People’s City Mission’ housed 403 people. Their facility, at 110 “Q” St, was only built to house 250 people.
Pastor Tom Barber, CEO of the People’s City Mission, tells KLIN News this is the shelter record. Not once in the Mission’s 118 year history have they ever had this many people stay overnight.
“We are extremely overloaded. We have well over 100 women, kids, and men on the floor,” said Barber. “We’re not sure how many more people we can take before we have to start turning folks away, which we’ve also never done in our history… we have a real issue right now with homelessness here.”
When demand is this high, Barber says their basic services are not affected. Additional staff is required to accommodate the influx. Some services they offer, such as efforts to help people get housing or basic casework, do become slowed down and backlogged when their system experiences this level of overload.
“It’s too many people to casework, and so the casework sort of slips some. We still feed everybody the same meals, and we still try to make sure they have beds,” added Barber. “But when it gets that crowded, I don’t have enough staff to adequately provide all the services we normally provide.”
Barber said the reasons for why someone might be experiencing homelessness vary, and are wide ranging.
“There is no consistent reason. But I’m suspicious that some of it has to do with some of the government aid during COVID and other monies that were available to people for rent-assistance have sort of dried up,” Barber speculated.
As for what the community can do to help, Barber says the Mission receives nearly all its funding from the general public through generous donations.
“We’re asking for anything people can do to help us, whether it’s volunteering their time, helping us with warm clothing, and certainly financially,” said Barber. “Our food costs right now are just through the roof… so any financial support people can give us is great. But if they can’t do that, if they want to come volunteer or they got an extra coat in their closet or warm clothing, we’d certainly appreciate that too.”
To learn more about volunteer or donation opportunities with The People’s City Mission, visit pcmlincoln.org.