The Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Center, at the South Parish Congregational Church at 34 Bridge St., has seen great demand since opening for the season Nov. 1, with people lining up outside for one of the center’s 30 beds, which typically fill to capacity as soon as the center opens. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

AUGUSTA — The Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Center has people lining up as much as two hours before its doors even open at 5 p.m. most days, all of them looking for one of the center’s 30 beds, which typically fill to capacity as soon as it opens for the night.

Just over a month since opening for the season Nov. 1, the center at South Parish Congregational Church at 34 Bridge St. has already had more than 100 different overnight guests, putting it on pace to serve well more than 300 different guests for the season, up from last year’s 283 guests. The year before that, the warming center’s first year, there were 186 guests.

While the center is limited to 30 beds, that doesn’t mean homeless people looking to get in out of the cold will be turned away if they’re not among the first 30 there. This season the center has already had one night where 51 people came inside to get warmed up, have coffee, get something to eat, watch some television, socialize, or just get out of the weather. The night of the recent snowstorm, 42 people stayed overnight there.

Not all guests stay the night. But if they happen to fall asleep while sitting in a chair, and spend the whole night there, they won’t be woken up or told to leave, said Julia Stone, director of the nonprofit warming center.

Stone said the first option when so many people come to the center in need of shelter is to see if any other shelters have the capacity to take them, such as Bread of Life, which has a family and veterans shelter on Hospital Street.

However, more often than not, longer-term shelters don’t have the capacity to take the center’s overflow, so those people either go back outside, or stay in the warming center without a bed, which they’re allowed to do as long as they follow the rules. They also go on a visitor status list, and if a bed opens up if a guest with a bed leaves during the night, they can slide into that bed.

At least for now.

Director Julia Stone, left, and Betty St. Hilaire, chairperson of the Augusta Overnight Warming Center Advisory Board, are pictured in 2022 during a tour of the center in the South Parish Congregational Church. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

“We try to make arrangements if we are over capacity to see if any other shelters have open beds but that doesn’t seem to happen, so if someone doesn’t have a bed and they fall asleep on the furniture or in chairs, we don’t wake them up to leave. As long as folks aren’t being disruptive and they’re willing to follow the center policies, we get creative in how we keep them indoors,” Stone said Friday, one day after updating Augusta city councilors on the warming center. “At some point, however, I fear the number will just be too high for us to safely manage, staffing wise and physical building space-wise.”

This is the center’s first season operating without relying on financial assistance from the city. During its first two seasons, the city provided just under $250,000 from its federal emergency relief funding to get the center up and running for the cold winter months.

This season the center did not seek funding from the city, instead relying on multiple grants, with most of its funding coming from MaineHousing, via a $218,170 grant for warming shelters and $80,179 in long-term solutions grant funding from the state agency. The center also received $10,000 from United Way of Kennebec Valley, some smaller grants of between $2,500 and $5,000, and is awaiting word from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation on its application for $50,000 in grant funding.

Data compiled by warming center staff of the unduplicated guests they’ve had this year show that 33% have identified themselves as from Augusta, with another 38% from within a 20-mile radius, and 29% from outside 20 miles or from unknown locations.

At-Large City Councilor Stephanie Sienkiewicz said the broad range of where overnight guests have come from, including many from within the city itself, both confirms the need for such facilities, and the need for them to be funded by the state, not individual municipalities that could be overwhelmed by the need to help care for so many people in a region.

Sienkiewicz said the data indicates “we still continue to have a significant issue in Augusta, and that these types of centers do need to be state-funded. People come and they go; some people may have not had a permanent residence for a very long time. So I appreciate this was able to grow from some seed money that the city of Augusta was able to give, and become reliant on broader funding, because you’re serving a really broad population.”

Stone noted only one guest at the center so far this year has been from Portland, and speculated that may be because of that city opening a social services center there.

Ward 2 City Councilor Kevin Judkins summed up the warming center’s role, in providing homeless people with a place to stay out of winter’s dangerous cold, more bluntly.

“We have a very fragile safety net for this population in Augusta. You are such a key element to that, there’s no question you’ve saved lives,” Judkins told Stone and Rob Flannery, manager of the center, Thursday night. “Exactly which ones, we can’t really point to, because they’re still with us. So we know what you do saves lives; there aren’t words powerful enough to say how valuable you are to our community.”

The emergency center does not offer case management or substance use programs, but does have outside providers come in to meet with guests and offer such services regularly. It also works to help find more permanent housing for guests.

This year in November the center helped five guests secure independent apartments, three move into sober-living facilities, and three others get into other, longer-term shelters.