An emergency shelter is now open in Cowley County, and it has already housed its first temporary residents. The shelter has been in the works for years but now has the opportunity to change lives. In Cowley County, resources for housing are slim. The Cowley House of Hope shelter is meant to fill those gaps. The shelter’s been in the works since 2017 when thousands of dollars had to be raised to make it a reality. The shelter is built similarly to a duplex. It sleeps five people and has two rooms with several beds in each. Each room also has a small kitchen and bathroom. Winfield, the seat of Cowley County, doesn’t have enough resources to put into homeless infrastructure. So, the city and county turned to nonprofits to fill in the gaps. “A lot of shelters have staff, or they have more steady resources than what we do. We’re dependent mainly and mostly, entirely on donations, private donations,” said Bradley Gamber, the director of the Cowley House of Hope. Due to the lack of funding, the shelter is still small, but officials with Winfield said that at any given point in Cowley County, there are between 14 and 30 people struggling with housing.
Source: KLC Journal
