Emergency grant will help winter shelter open

The Quad Cities Community Foundation has joined a team of organizations across the region to ensure that a winter emergency shelter that has for the past 10 years been mostly run by volunteers will once again open.  

The shelter at Kings Harvest Ministries is incredibly important to our community, and thanks to Humility Homes and Services, Inc. and a collaborative effort by funders in the region, it will open as scheduled on December 1.

The Quad Cities Community Foundation made an emergency grant of $10,000 from the Community Impact Fund to Humility Homes and Services, Inc. to make the opening possible. “This is a powerful example of what we can do thanks to donors who give to the Community Impact Fund at the Community Foundation,” Kelly Thompson, vice president of grantmaking and community initiatives, said.  

“Because those donors believed that giving to a communal effort would allow them to accomplish more than they could alone, we can address the most pressing needs and promising opportunities of the Quad Cities as they arise and change throughout the years—and we are able to be a part of the swift and responsive funding to ensure that the winter shelter keeps our fellow community members safe and warm during these cold months.” 

Thompson added, “We are so grateful to Humility Homes and Services for stepping up to open this shelter, and all the coordination and staffing it entails.”

Additional funding came from Scott County Community Services, United Way of the Quad Cities Area, Downtown Davenport Partnership, Scott County Housing Council, Build to Suit, and King's Harvest.

There is an additional collaborative effort to look more long term about this in context of holistic needs in housing and homelessness in the Quad Cities, and a call to action for people and cities to get involved in solving the problem in the medium to long term. Strategies to address this ongoing crisis of homelessness are converging on the Quad Cities Housing Cluster, also a grantee of the Community Foundation. This multi-sector effort will convene this January to continue to address chronic homelessness.

“This issue is solvable, but we can’t do it alone,” Thompson said, “which is why we are inviting people and organizations from across the Quad Cities, especially businesses and government leaders, to join us at the next meeting of the Quad Cities Housing Cluster on Thursday, January 10 at 10:30 am. This is a problem we can—and must—solve together.”