Room at the Inn unveils permanent homeless shelter

MARQUETTE — The Marquette area has made a significant step towards solving its homelessness issue.

Room at the Inn’s Warming Center has opened the area’s first permanent homeless shelter.

Along with helping people transition out of homelessness, the new shelter also serves as a useful tool for Room at the Inn.

“Now we have a real tool where we can measure our effectiveness of ending homelessness locally,” said Nick Emmendorfer, Executive Director of Room at the Inn. “Now we can measure how frequently people are homeless, how long they’re homeless, and how often we can get them out of the homeless shelter and into housing solutions, and what working solutions we have available in the community to make the shelter an effective piece of the crisis response system.”

The bunk beds in the shelter were a community effort; local CTE students assembled the beds, which were cut and hand–made by Marquette Branch Prison inmates.

30 bunk beds are in the new shelter, which will give people somewhere to stay as they find more permanent housing solutions.