Starting Dec. 1, some of Juneau’s most vulnerable residents will have a place to sleep on nights where temperatures dip below freezing.
The City and Borough of Juneau’s Cold Weather Emergency Shelter is expected to open Friday, Dec. 1 in the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s former public safety building on Whittier Street, according to an announcement Tuesday. At its Nov. 6 meeting, the CBJ Assembly approved committing $75,000 to the project, which will mostly go to staffing the shelter.
That amount of funding, according to projections from CBJ Housing Coordinator Scott Ciambor, should allow the shelter to operate for 100 days between Dec. 1 and April. The Glory Hole shelter will help with staffing the center, and the city has cots that it will commit to the project. The plan is for the shelter to be open from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., Glory Hole Interim Director Kyle Hargrave said in early November.
The shelter will be open on nights where the temperature goes below freezing, so it won’t necessarily be open every night. Staff will work out a notification system to let people know when the shelter will be open, but details are still being worked out. Details will be publicly available soon, according to a CBJ release Tuesday.
