New Tuscarawas County homeless shelter nears opening

After being in the planning stages for three and a half years, Tuscarawas County’s new homeless shelter is about ready to open – a facility designed to provide humane and dignified living spaces for its guests.

“It's been a long and winding road,” said shelter Director Calvin White.

The 20,000-square-foot facility — known as “Jack’s House of Hope” after shelter founder Jack Ream — will be located behind the current facility at 211 E. High Ave., New Philadelphia. The shelter is operated by Friends of the Homeless of Tuscarawas County.

“It's quite exciting for us to be able to do things the way they should be done, instead of just having to cobble things along and do the best we can with what we have,” he said.

The new $5.5 million shelter will have 14 rooms for males, 13 rooms for females, four family rooms and four couples rooms.

“There's enough space that people won't be on top of each other. The fact that there's individual rooms, versus a congregate setting where you have six men sharing a room and everything that goes along with that,” White said.

The new shelter will have a capacity to house up to 45 people, versus the old shelter that had a capacity of 36.

In addition, it will have a laundry room and shower available for people who are not guests of the shelter, a chapel and a large dining room that can seat 60. The dining room can also be used for programs.

“This facility offers so much more opportunity for us so we have a kitchen now that's bigger than a closet, like in the old shelter. So, we can do some culinary programming, involve the guests in preparing meals, just a lot more interaction and engagement with the processes of daily-to-daily living that we all go through,” he said.

White said, “One of the advantages about this is we have the space and it's big enough that we're looking at this as somewhat of a hub of services related to the populations that several of the agencies in the area work with on a regular basis, from the ADAMHS Board, Job & Family Services, the Wellmore Center, SpringVale and OhioGuidestone.”

An open house is planned from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. on April 23 for the general public, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:15 p.m. Shelter officials said they hope that Ream will be available to attend the event.

The Friends of the Homeless has purchased a house next to the old shelter. White said future plans call for refurbishing that building and possibly opening a cafe in the garage behind the house, where guests could get some work experience.

As for the current shelter, the plan is to convert the aging 1930s-era structure into low-income housing. It will house 10 efficiency apartments.

White said there is not enough housing available in Tuscarawas County at the moment for extreme low-income residents, with only 53 spaces available.

What does the new shelter mean for unhoused people in the county?

“I think what we really want to show for the homeless people that come in here is we care about more than just housing them,” said Becky Everhart, the shelter’s operations manager.

“We're trying to get all of the programming in here so when they come in here, we'll have some life skill classes, like why is it important to dress for going for a job and cleanliness, why your appearance is necessary, how to fill out an application, how to interview, how to look for housing, how to approach a landlord, all these different skills and classes that we want to provide for them, so that whenever they leave here, they have a better chance of staying independent living longer.”

White said, “It means that people do care about them, to instill in them that they're worth something. Again, that's why this is nice. They're just like everybody else, they're deserving of a nice, safe place to go.”

White noted that donations are needed to make the shelter sustainable. They can be made by visiting fothtusc.org or by mailing a check to Friends of the Homeless, 211 E. High Ave., PO Box 466, New Philadelphia, OH 44663.