Cold weather harder on Gainesville homeless

GAINESVILLE - Cold weather and hard times are filling Gainesville's homeless shelters to capacity as 2010 comes to a close and last weekend's historic snow fall also caught the Good News Shelter by surprise.

Good News Shelter manager Thomas Ramirez said it is not his policy to let people sleep in the cold, not if he can help it, but his south Gainesville shelter on Davis Street is filled to capacity right now.

"We have plenty of people who are coming from the East and the West, from Alabama and Florida and other states, who are hoping things are better in Georgia," Ramirez said. "If people don't mind sleeping in the floor, we make room for them. We give them a sleeping bag and we get them out of the cold."

Ramirez said Good News can shelter twenty people but this week took in twice that number because of the weather.

"We have increased the number of people asking for help," Ramirez added. "We can only keep 15 to 20 people but that has increased to 35 to 40 people now. "This snow caught us by surprise, "we were not expecting it and we had a lot of people who were not ready for this snow."

Ramirez said he is in touch with other shelters that provide emergency housing and every effort is made to get people out of the cold if they have no place to go; there are more people are showing up looking for shelter and help than this time last year.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2010/12/234888