Duluth Opens City’s First-Ever Permanent Warming Center in Lincoln Park

The facility in the basement of the Lincoln Park Community Center on West 3rd Street includes 3 showers and handicap-accessible restrooms

DULUTH, Minn.- Duluth opened its first-ever permanent warming center Monday, located in Lincoln Park. While acknowledging the major step forward in bringing more people across the city inside from the cold, advocates said this new facility barely scratches the surface of housing the 600+ people without a permanent place to live in Duluth right now.

“It is good to have this facility where some of them come but we know that the vast majority are still out there,” said John Cole, Executive Director of CHUM “And so we know that the real solution is housing and we have to keep fighting to get there.”

The cut of the red ribbon by a person experiencing homelessness Monday marked the introduction of Duluth’s first permanent warming center located in Lincoln Park.

“I think it’s really nice now that you have CHUM downtown if you’re homeless and need a place to sleep at night you have a place in Lincoln Park as well,” said Jill Keppers, Executive Director of the Duluth Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA).

The facility in the basement of the Lincoln Park Community Center on West 3rd Street includes 3 showers and handicap-accessible restrooms. Soon Lake Superior Community Health Center will provide health services in the building.

“That they get the boot-care, the foot-care necessary, and the correct healthcare that will help them to make a headway,” John Cole, Executive Director of CHUM, said.

Upward of 50 to 100 people can fit inside, depending on the number of CHUM staff on site. “People will be coming and instead of going to the Rainbow Center Downtown they can come to Lincoln Park Center and have a warm place to stay overnight,” said Keppers.

It took the Duluth Housing and Redevelopment Authority and other partners about a year to complete with about $470,000 thousand dollars in cares Act funding from the City of Duluth.

“St. Louis County provided the operational funding, CHUM provides the operational staff and service provision, the HRA provides the building,” Keppers said.

Cole said it’s an amazing example of community organizations coming together. “It shows that we all realize that if our brother or sister is suffering that we all are suffering that we all have a part to play in redeeming the situation.”

But he stressed at Monday’s press conference, this facility is in no way the end of the long road to housing the city’s 600+ homeless.

“I brought this along to show you,” he said, unfolding a crumbling mat during Monday’s press conference, “this is what folks have to sleep on. And this is the floor.”

“And this is shelter, and this is what shelter is like,” said Cole. “And this is not ideal.”

Cole said existing shelters are overcrowded as it is, and this leads to people seeking warmth elsewhere such as vacant properties like the Esmond Building in Lincoln Park.

“We know that there will continue to be fires in Duluth because people need to be warm,” said the CHUM Director. “And as long as there’s a need out there we’re going to continue having those types of catastrophes.”

“Until every single person is housed, we can’t rest,” he said.

It will be open from November to April, seven days a week, from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m.