Some Find Housing After Warming Center Closure

The encampment on Heritage Crossing

Photo: Lee Burnett

By Lee Burnett, Submissions Editor

The closing of the warming center at former Lafayette School on April 30, 2024, sent folks in four different directions, according to York County Shelter Programs. About half are getting beds indoors.

Many people are going back to living in tents, such as at Heritage Crossing in the Mill Yard, according to YCSP’s Executive Director Megan Gean Gendron. Others are choosing to move to the emergency shelter on Shaker Hill in Alfred, the Layman Way Recovery Center on Route 4 in Alfred, or more permanent situations.

“We were able to help about two dozen,” said Gean Gendron.

By afternoon on the 30th, neighborhood kids on bicycles were congregating in the parking lot behind the former elementary school.

People returning to encampments are probably going to tents that were never taken down during the winter, according to Gendron. “I think many people moving back kept their space there. There’s a community there. People watched over their stuff.”

The Sanford Police Department had expected a surge of people into the city’s largest tent encampment on Heritage Crossing, but that may not have happened, according to Deputy Chief Eric Small.

“We haven’t had a barrage of calls,” he said. “That’s a very good sign. To my knowledge, today has been a regular day. That’s a testament to our partners.”

The shelter was at capacity of 44 every night in recent months and stayed open longer than other warming centers around the state, said Gean Gendron. “We were one of the last to close,” she said. “And we saw the justification for that in these last two April storms. If we had closed, we would have had a very dangerous situation.”

Gendron said it’s too early to say what options exist for a warming center next winter. Lafayette School is not laid out well for meals service and overnight stays in zero gravity chairs. It’s centrally located, but there was some friction with the neighborhood. “Lafayette School was not ideal, but it was available,” she said. “Sanford needs to think very hard about this. Not just Sanford. Other communities.”