Willand Drive Warming Center to reopen this winter for extreme weather only. Here's why.

SOMERSWORTH — After what was said to be its final season of operation, the Tri-Cities have agreed on a plan to open the Willand Drive Warming Center in winter 2022-23, but it will look a lot different than this past winter.

The future of the warming center operated by Dover, Rochester and Somersworth has been uncertain since its run as a full-time nightly shelter in the winter of 2021-22 came to an end. It ceased operations as a nightly shelter on March 31.

That changed Monday night. The Somersworth City Council unanimously voted to enter a new one-year agreement with Dover and Rochester to operate the Willand Drive building in Somersworth as strictly a warming center.

Under the new agreement, the Willand Center will revert back to an “extreme warming center” that is only open during “extreme weather events deemed as life-threatening by the Tri-City Emergency Management,” Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard said during Monday’s City Council meeting.

This decision was made as Strafford County leaders proceed with an effort to get a project approved to build a new county nursing home and renovate the existing nursing facility in Dover into a transitional warming center. This project led the cities to reconsider their plan.

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The Somersworth City Council is the first in the Tri-Cities to vote on the agreement with Dover and Rochester expected to follow.

Somersworth will continue to offer police and fire response at Willand Drive, Hilliard said. The Dover and Rochester city councils will each vote on contributing $50,000.

Strafford County's 'bold' plan

The need for the shelter to operate full-time increased last fall after Somersworth police cleared the homeless encampments near Willand Pond on private property after a request from the property owner. Leaders in the Tri-Cities initially declined to open the shelter full-time, but eventually decided to do so after being urged by numerous community activists.

The Tri-Cities gave Community Action Partnership of Strafford County the green light to utilize the Willand Drive warming center in mid-November as a full-time overnight shelter operation for what was expected to be its last season of operation. Dover City Manager Michael Joyal had said at the time the city's intention for the building, which Dover bought with federal funds, was to sell the building this year, after a new shelter location was found. That didn't happen.

As the months went on, the cities had plans to shift to a model they had before the warming center on Willand Drive opened. They hoped to use municipal buildings and partnerships with churches for extreme weather sheltering. The cities planned to gauge interest from local churches and organizations.

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Those plans changed when George Maglaras, chairman of the county commissioners, proposed a new longer term plan to address homelessness. The idea is for the county to build a state-of-the-art nursing home and convert the current Riverside nursing home at 276 County Farm Road in Dover into a transitional shelter, modeled after Cross Roads House in Portsmouth. Then the 10 cities and towns in the county would undergo an extensive zoning and planning review to find new ways to incentivize affordable housing.

He said the three-prong approach to addressing nursing care, the homeless population and the lack of affordable housing in the county could be one of the “boldest, most creative and innovative programs this county has undertaken."

The Tri-City mayors — Hilliard, Bob Carrier of Dover and Paul Callaghan of Rochester — stood united at Somersworth's council meeting Monday night, voicing support for Maglaras' plan to help the elderly and the unhoused.

Why won't the Willand Drive center operate as a full-time shelter like last year?

Hilliard said multiple factors played into the decision to change course.

Hilliard noted the agreement for winter 2022-23 mirroring the agreement from two years ago is aligned with the “original intent” of the warming center. He said he feels last year’s agreement to operate full-time all winter is not sustainable and added additional stress on the city’s fire and police resources. 

Hilliard also said Community Action Partnership of Strafford County, the shelter's managing organization this past winter, did not express interest in operating the warming center again in 2022-23.

Betsey Andrews Parker, executive director of the Community Action Partnership of Strafford County, described it differently. In an email response to questions from Foster's Daily Democrat, she said CAPSC recommended a full-time shelter at the end of last year, adding “CAPSC would consider operating a full-time seasonal shelter if it was something the communities would consider” in the future.

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If CAPSC doesn’t manage the warming center this winter, Hilliard said, the cities will put out a request for proposals to find another nonprofit or organization to lead it.

Earlier this year, CAPSC reported that the number of individuals utilizing the center for shelter in winter 2021-22 tripled over the previous winter, when it was a warming center only. There were 309 people who used the shelter at some point last winter, 73.5% of them originating from the Tri-Cities, according to Andrews Parker. 

The Tri-City partnership

The partnership was born out of the need to take care of homeless people during extreme weather events amid a public health crisis as the COVID-19 pandemic spread.

Dover purchased the Somersworth property used for the Willand Drive warming center with grant funds in 2020 to provide adequate space for those who need temporary shelter from life-threatening weather conditions. The original idea was the building would be kept until there was a concrete plan to build a new shelter to meet the area’s needs. 

While there are other shelters in the area like Cross Roads House in Portsmouth, the Homeless Center for Strafford County in Rochester and My Friend’s Place in Dover, area shelters reported last year that there were not enough beds to fill the need as waitlists grew longer and longer.

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The three mayors said while the partnership continues to evolve and change, all three cities "remain committed."

Carrier, the Dover mayor, told the Somersworth City Council Monday night “this plan can work, and it will work."

“Three to four years from now, there’s a possibility that we will have a multi-million-dollar complex for the elderly, and a new permanent shelter for the homeless,” Carrier said. “Without this plan for Riverside, we’d just be kicking the can down the road. There was a point where we thought we’d try to sell the building in April, but we’re always looking at different avenues. The building will work for now.”

Callaghan, the Rochester mayor, said he is “100% behind the current plan.”

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Hilliard said because no single city government can solve homelessness or housing insecurity alone, it has to be done as a partnership.

“I am very proud of what we have accomplished to date as a network of the three cities moving and the county moving in the same direction to offer the solutions to one of the most complex issues facing our society,” Hilliard said. "As an individual city, we would never have been able to address this alone as a partnership of three cities and county government, we're able to continue to step forward, making progress step by step and examining what a true long-term solution could look like.”

The bigger picture beyond Willand

Todd Marsh, who is Rochester's city welfare director and a School Board member in Somersworth, serves as president of the New Hampshire Local Welfare Administrators Association. He said planning for winter sheltering cannot wait.

“Planning for winter emergency housing should occur when it is 85 degrees and not 45 degrees,” Marsh said. “Minimizing financial liability concerns for the host municipality should assist with decision making.”

Behind the scenes, there are a lot of legal and liability concerns that factor into what it takes for different types of shelters to operate, he noted. 

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The New Hampshire Local Welfare Administrators Association’s Executive Board recently unanimously approved an ethics resolution guidance agreement to better guide municipalities, set financial liability best practices and encourage municipal government support for emergency housing sheltering, including overnight winter warming centers throughout the state.

The resolution also adds guidance to municipal local welfare departments when determining residency regarding permanent and emergency housing placements from a municipality of origin into another.

Marsh said he hopes the guidance clarifies residency of people accessing emergency housing and responsibility for a person’s city or town of origin.

Marsh added the Tri-Cities have become a "model of collaboration and innovation" across the state. He hopes these new guidelines “will assist with this forward momentum for the Tri-Cities and foster other areas of the state to start lifesaving and life-improving efforts that have yet to begin.”