The Salvation Army partners with City of Hartford to open warming center

HARTFORD, CONN (December 3, 2019) - Today the City of Hartford announced that this year its overnight warming center will be at the former Milner School at 104 Vine Street. The warming center will run from December 9, 2019until March 31, 2020 from 7 PM until 7 AM each day. The City will run a bus service between various shelters and the warming center in the evening and morning.

“Hartford is one of the few municipalities in the region to run an overnight warming center, and this year we will be able to keep more people out of the cold on the most frigid nights of the year,” said Mayor Luke Bronin. “As a region and as a state we need to do more to help transition people from shelters to permanent housing, and while our warming center is not a substitute for that, it is an important way to support the most vulnerable during the winter. I want to thank the Salvation Army, Journey Home, and the Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network for their ongoing partnership and work to support homeless individuals.”

The goal of the warming center is to keep as many people as possible out of the cold, as comfortably as possible. The Salvation Army will operate the warming center, and the city will provide cots for individuals to lie down on. However, if more people require shelter than cots allow for, the warming center may have to substitute chairs for cots.

“We are grateful to the City of Hartford for listening to the concerns raised by the community and for working closely with the Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network in putting together a plan of action that will maximize resources, increase capacity for the winter, and relieve stress on the existing emergency shelter system,” said Matthew Morgan, Executive Director of Journey Home. “We are proud of the City of Hartford and the leadership they have shown by spending countless hours to address this issue and for adding additional resources to keep as many people as possible safe and warm this winter while simultaneously working to end homelessness by providing housing to as many individuals and families as possible.”

The City’s FY2020 budget includes $192,000 to fund both the warming center and additional shelter beds for families and women. In addition to that funding, the City will dedicate $65,000 recently received as part of the sale of Barbour Gardens to support the expanded warming center.