Rowan Helping Ministries will have more room for people to stay in its homeless shelter once the new facility on North Long Street in Salisbury is complete. But new classroom space excites executive director Kyna Grubb as much as the 85 new beds.
Rowan Helping Ministries doesn’t merely shelter the homeless; its goal is to help people in crisis help themselves. More space opens new doors of opportunity.
“We can begin to expand our programs to educate and empower people to break the cycle of crisis, so they can move out of homelessness,” Grubb told a Post reporter recently.
Known to many as the homeless shelter, Rowan Helping Ministries actually is a whole continuum of services. In addition to the shelter, there’s the a soup kitchen, transitional housing apartments, a food pantry, a clothing center, financial assistance through the Crisis Assistance Network, New Tomorrows Program and Journey Forward Program.
The fact that donors have made the $6.5 million expansion possible has prompted supporters to call the new building the “miracle on Long Street.” Rowan Helping Ministries has been helping people from a building on Long Street for over two decades. In addition to the shelter and kitchen moving into the new 20,000 square-foot building on one side of the street, the RHM project includes the renovation of its existing building, built in 1989. It will be renovated to more efficiently serve those needing the homelessness prevention services of Crisis Assistance Network, the food pantry and the clothing center.
As of the last, official count, about 610,042 people experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, reports the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Rowan County is fortunate to have committed professionals, volunteers and donors working to reduce those numbers. A bigger building gives them more room to work their miracles.