I was asked to share a bit of the history of the shelter at Grace for Porchlight’s annual gala last evening. Here’s what I said:

                     The History of the Homeless Shelter at Grace

I would like to thank Karla Thennes for inviting me this evening to share a bit about the history of the Men’s Drop-In Shelter at Grace Episcopal Church. I became Rector (Senior Pastor) of Grace in 2009 and for much of my tenure the homeless shelter was an integral part of our identity and mission. Even now, when I introduce myself to long-time Madisonians, they are likely to mention the shelter and reminisce about volunteering there over the years. Though I’ve been at Grace and lived in Madison for more than fifteen years, I’m still considered by many to be a newcomer, and my presentation this evening will necessarily be heavily weighted toward my own memories and the events of the last decade and a half. I will also offer a warning before I begin. I am a trained historian so my account this evening will try to be objective, to paint the full picture, warts and all.

Still, it’s worth recalling how it all began. Those of us of a certain age may be able to remember back to the early 80s, to the era of Reagonomics. There had been a strong push toward deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people beginning in the Carter administration but the planned development of community-based mental health facilities never came to fruition. With the shrinking safety net under President Reagan, urban redevelopment that demolished rooming houses like the YMCA here in Madison, deinstitutionalization, cities across the country were seeing a dramatic rise in unhoused people, especially single men.

In Madison, Madison Area Urban Ministry (the forerunner of Just Dane) organized a temporary shelter ion University Ave in 1984. In 1985, the shelter relocated to Grace Church, where it remained until 2020. In the early years, it provided accommodation for both men and women. While there were paid staff, meals were provided by volunteers and volunteers also staffed the facility overnight. 

As demand for services grew, overflow shelter was provided at St. John’s Lutheran Church on East Washington Ave. and in the winter at First Methodist. In later years, intake took place at Grace, where evening meals and breakfast were provided for all guests. After dinner, groups would be accompanied to St. John’s and First Methodist where they would spend the night. By the 2010s, the shelter would open its doors at 5:00 pm in the winter, and later in the summer, closing after breakfast at 7:00 am. The line of guests waiting for entry on cold evenings was an uncomfortable reminder to passersby of the inadequate facilities and services on offer.

From time to time, there were efforts to move the shelter or to force its closure. City officials cited it for code violations in the 1990s which led to a renovation spearheaded by then Governor Tommy Thompson. An article in Isthmus in 2010 by Joe Tarr exposed a new generation to the challenges presented by the shelter. Entitled “Bleak House: Grace Episcopal’s Homeless Shelter is a Dispiriting Space” caught the eye of Epic employees and led to another major renovation of the facilities funded by Epic.

But there were things that no amount of renovation could fix. The space was in a church basement, inaccessible to mobility-challenged guests. It was much too small for the need. 48 beds with room on the floor for an additional twelve. In the winter, the total number of  guests often exceeded 150. There was limited space and funding to offer essential services like case management while the shelter was open. Medical care was provided by volunteer medical students two evenings a week. 

Another enormous challenge was the fact that the shelter was only open at night. Hospitals regularly discharged homeless patients directly to the shelter. Often they would be dropped off by taxis in the middle of the day when there was no one to receive them, in wheelchairs, on oxygen or with catheters. The same was true of the Dane County Jail and the state prison system.

In 2011 and 2012, the jerry-rigged system of providing for unhoused people during the day collapsed when the basement of the State Capitol was declared off-limits and the Central Library underwent renovations. After a couple of years of temporary day shelters, Dane County and Catholic Charities opened the Beacon on E. Washington Avenue, which helped to address that crucial lack of services.

Grace Church’s identity and mission had been intertwined with the shelter since the 1980s. When I came to Grace, there was enormous pride in the congregation that we were doing this important work, even if our efforts amounted mostly to serving as landlord for Porchlight which operated the shelter. In fact, as I did research for this presentation, I was surprised to discover that one of my predecessors as Rector at Grace, Bill Wiedrich, wrote in a report to the congregation in the late 80s that our involvement with the shelter amounted to little more than acting as landlord. Nonetheless, we received much of the praise and blame from the community for its presence on our property.

Still, I was moved by the extent to which Grace members embraced the shelter as an institution. They fiercely defended it against detractors and were often hesitant to admit to its shortcomings (as I personally learned in the wake of Joe Tarr’s article). More importantly, they welcomed guests to our services and programs. I was surprised by the compassion showed to guests who wandered into our 8:00 service on cold Sunday mornings and their efforts to connect guests with services.

Like many other congregations and community groups, over the years Grace provided regular meals to shelter guests. Early in my tenure, my wife had a vision for our monthly meal that would treat guests and other community members to a sit-down dinner with musical accompaniment. Out of that developed “First Mondays at Grace” which offered a scrumptious meal and musical entertainment ranging from Bluegrass to Opera. Guests would often linger at their tables long after finishing their meals to enjoy the music and sometimes sing along, and we had a dedicated team of volunteers who loved to help. Each December, members of the church choir would sing holiday songs and Santa would distribute warm winter socks to everyone in attendance.

By the late 2010s, it became clear to me and a number of Grace’s lay leaders that the shelter facilities had reached a point of non-viability. We gathered a small group of people to begin strategizing our options. It quickly became clear to us that while many in the community were aware of the inadequacy of Grace’s facilities, there was little political will to move forward with a new shelter. We were told flatly by city and county elected officials that unless we set a deadline for its departure, nothing would happen. My response was to say, “As long as I am rector of Grace, you will never see a headline in the paper: ‘Grace evicts homeless shelter’.”

As our work progressed, we contracted with Susan Schmitz, former President of Downtown Madison, Inc, to gauge interest in the community for a new men’s shelter. We formed a committee made up of community members, homeless advocates and providers, city and county staff to begin working on this difficult issue. Our first meeting was in November, 2019. 

Then came the pandemic, and on March 30, 2020, the shelter closed its doors at Grace for the last time, relocating first to Warner Park, then to what will become the Madison Public Market, now to Zeier Rd before its new facilities are completed. Not only did it leave empty space in our building; its departure left a hole in our identity and mission.

In spite of that, Grace’s commitment to unhoused members of our community remain. We continue to serve them, through our Food Pantry which has been open since 1979 and serves housed as well as unhoused populations. A year ago, Off the Square Club moved into the space vacated by the shelter. It serves mostly unhoused people with a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, providing all kinds of support including meals, laundry and shower facilities, assistance with job training and housing placement, and with medical issues. Ironically, our records indicate that Off the Square Club used space at Grace back in the 1970s.

         Even as memories of the Drop-In Shelter at Grace begin to fade, the need to provide shelter for our unhoused neighbors does not. With the deepening crisis of affordable housing in our city and growing uncertainty about the federal social safety net, it is likely that there will continue to be many people who live on the streets. And unlike 50 years ago we won’t be able to rely on congregations to address unmet needs as membership in religious organizations plummets and grows older. 

All that’s for another day to discuss. For now, let us remember and celebrate those visionary folk who saw the need and created the shelter, brought it to Grace Church. Let’s also honor the other churches who contributed space, like St. John’s Lutheran and First Methodist, and the countless volunteers from those churches and many others, as well as civic organizations who provided meals every night, 365 days a year, for all of those years. All of them deserve our hearty thanks and gratitude, as does Porchlight and its predecessor agencies who operated the shelter for many years, and will operate the new shelter when it opens in 2025.