After a flood in April, Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church’s building in east Vancouver is unusable, according to its pastor. The church is looking for another organization to take its rotation as a winter shelter from mid-November through mid-March. The church was undergoing roof repairs when a heavy rainstorm hit, flooding the building, according to Cheryl Pfaff, co-coordinator of the shelter. The inside of the building is gutted down to its studs. The church now holds service at Immanuel Lutheran Church in central Vancouver. The church was part of the interfaith Satellite Overflow Shelter — a group of churches and other organizations that shelter people during extreme cold weather when other shelters don’t have room. Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, as well as Outsiders Inn (the nonprofit that helps staff these shelters), seeks someplace that can offer floor sleeping space for about 15 people from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays from mid-November through mid-March. Staff would need to arrive between 5 and 5:30 p.m. and leave between 8 and 8:30 a.m.

This place would also need to be available one Saturday night in December and one Saturday night in February. The shelter needs volunteers and enough space to serve meals, according to a news release. The other members of the Satellite Overflow Shelter — Immanuel Lutheran, Outsiders Inn and Council for the Homeless — will help with supplies, volunteers, volunteer and guest background checks, and staffing, according to the news release. January’s winter storm demonstrated the need for such shelter, Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church Pastor Jean DeVoll-Donaldson said. The church normally hosts about 15 people during cold weather. “We see so much homelessness in our community, and when it gets cold, it just tears at your heart,” she said. “Offering shelter is so minimal when it’s cold, so if they have space and capacity, it’s actually pretty easy to do with Outsiders Inn (staff).”

The January winter storm made members of River City Church, which also hosts winter shelter, realize its shelter capacity needs to expand. The church is working with Council for the Homeless to make that happen, according to its pastor, Ryan Sidhom. The church technically has capacity to hold only 15 people overnight, but it let about 300 people through its doors during the winter storm, Sidhom said. “People used literally their last energy to get through our doors. We had multiple people just collapse in our lobby because they knew they were safe,” he said. People walked in with frostbite, he said, and received treatment at the church. The event was quite literally “the perfect storm,” Sidhom said, and shelter systems were unprepared for the level of need.

“We said, ‘We have four walls and a roof, and our heaters are working,’ so we didn’t turn anyone away,” he said. “It was beautiful the way people we hadn’t even met before were stepping up and saying, ‘Hey, we can help.’”

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