Firehouse Ministries breaks ground on 2nd Avenue location

In the last few months, when men experiencing homelessness have come to Firehouse Ministries for a meal and a bed, they’ve known there’s a chance they will still have to sleep on the streets. Frequently, their fate has been decided by a deck of cards.

Red means they have a bed for the night, black means they don’t.

Longtime staff member Melvin Harris said for a decade now, the Firehouse Ministries has been crowded, sometimes overwhelmingly so, due to lack of funding. Harris, who has worked for them for dozens of years, has also in the past used their services while he experienced homelessness. 

At the end of 2018, the Birmingham City Council authorized a $1 million investment for the facility, which will be paid in $200,000 installments over five years. This past December, the Firehouse Ministries celebrated 35 years of service to the homeless community and broke ground at its new location at 626 Second Ave. N., which is expected to take 10 months to build. The new building will accommodate 112 people, instead of the current 50-bed space on Third Avenue North. 

With the approval of the new shelter to be built, Harris hopes they will be able to eliminate the prevalence of the lottery system and be able to do more for men in crisis.

Firehouse Ministries Executive Director Anne Wright Rygiel said their quality of services have some of the best success rates in the entire community, and each day they serve about 300 men through meals, addiction recovery, clothing, free legal counseling, transportation, tutoring or other means of support. Firehouse Ministries is also the only homeless men’s emergency shelter that does not have a specific time limit on the length of stay.

“Our quality of services just don’t match the current building, and that is ultimately why we needed to build,” Rygiel said, adding that they are the only federally-funded transitional housing program left in the Birmingham area. 

Rygiel said Firehouse is working with people who are chronically homeless, and it takes far longer than a few weeks to get out of that situation. The Firehouse Ministries is often the first point of contact to many people seeking support, she said, which is why it’s important to present other options and ways of living. 

In the current shelter, they do not have the space available to present these options, she said.

“The guys we serve aren’t usually the guys with a bachelor degree in their back pocket, as I like to say, they’re usually people that face multiple barriers,” Rygiel said, adding that 65 percent of the people they serve usually have multiple disabling conditions. “They need a lot of resources, a lot of compassion, a lot of people who have walked the same path they had.”

The difficulty lies in making sure the support systems to get people out of the homelessness cycle are fairly streamlined, she said, because those who use their services are in varied level of crisis and require quick action.

“On any given night, you might have a 19-year-old, you might have a veteran missing a couple of limbs, you might have someone in his late 70s, early 80s, all a wide array of people who desperately need a safe place to sleep,” Rygiel said.

In inclement weather, she said the shelter is allowed to house 70 people, but it has created problems due to limited bathrooms and inadequate space. Rygiel said the new shelter will allow them to pay attention to who they are serving, which is key to supporting the people “that no one else wants to support” and making sure they don’t sleep on the streets. 

The new shelter will cater to many previously unmet needs, like offering a respite location for people being discharged from the hospital or hospice, as well as having a designated space for disease control, family housing and medical screening rooms. It will also feature a winter overflow space and youth housing for adults, ages 18 to 24, who are leaving foster care or are struggling with substance abuse.

Men experiencing homelessness will not only have the opportunity to come get a meal and sleep in a bed, it will also feature a tiered reward system that encourages good behavior, Rygiel said. 

The first-tier will include a meal and a spot on a bunk bed, while the second tier includes a curtained, private space with a phone charger outside. Men who get the second-tier option must be meeting with their case manager and participating in the shelter by volunteering with chores or taking classes, another new feature they will have room to offer at the shelter.  

To donate or learn more about volunteering, go to firehouseshelter.com.