St. Thomas Aquinas Church Warming Shelter Served More Than Forty People

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – A local church has been providing homeless people with a warm place to stay during the Winter.

St. Thomas Aquinas Church was inspired with the idea to open a warming shelter in their Rosary Hall because they were thinking of the homeless people without a warm place to stay throughout the winter weather. They opened the Rosary Hall doors beginning in January. More than forty people stayed, and every night they were met with warm food and cots to sleep in. The cots were donated from the Muskingum County Emergency Agency. Outreach Coordinator, Kandice Longstreth, said the volunteers were more than happy to assist their visitors with other things too such as job applications and transportation to jobs.

“We had a couple of people that actually got jobs while they were here. One of them is now in an apartment because we were here to give him stability to help him prepare. He had a place to get cleaned up, he had clean clothes, was able to get to a job site. So that’s a success story we’ve had,” she said.

Longstreth added they have created a strong bond with the people that have stayed with them, forming a family like connection.

“It’s like a family, and we really hate to see this season come to an end just because we’ve grown really close to them. We’ve seen a lot of beauty in these people. And just to have that relationship and that bond is beautiful,” she said.

St. Thomas Aquinas Church’s goal is to form a coalition of people, to make it broader and involve more facilities to partake in a cause like this one.