Your thoughts on heat shelters

We don't even have a regular homeless shelter in town. And we have a HUGE homeless population. I have seen cooling shelters during the day when it get really hot. We can get to 110's for a stretch during the summer. We don't have warming shelters but it only gets freezing over night not during the day.
 
We don't have warming centers here, just cooling ones in the summer. However, rarely does anyone go to one. And the criteria are pretty extreme. They don't open until it has been 103 or hotter AND the low 70 degrees or hotter for three consecutive days.
 


We don't have anything like that here on a regular basis, in winter or summer. If it gets really cold (Zero or below, usually), a few places will open as warming shelters during the day, usually a church.
 
We don't have anything like that here on a regular basis, in winter or summer. If it gets really cold (Zero or below, usually), a few places will open as warming shelters during the day, usually a church.


We use schools as churches all the time so is there a reason why schools cant act like shelters from the heat during summer vacation
 


So in the winter they have cold shelters why not have heat ones for when it becomes unbearable hot for the homeless

I live in San Jose, CA and we have both warming and cooling centers, no idea what the utilization of either is, but they are certainly available throughout the Bay Area. Many schools in the area are used in the summer for a variety of programs, so those wouldn’t be an option.
 
We use schools as churches all the time so is there a reason why schools cant act like shelters from the heat during summer vacation
Clarification: Churches PAY to use schools on Sundays. Anyone can rent a school building -- it is VERY cheap. Cheerleading groups often rent our gyms, several cultural groups rent our auditorium.

Schools as shelters in summer would be tricky for several reasons:
- All parts of the school aren't cooled during the summer; for example, if the gyms aren't being used this week, they're closed up /air is turned off. Who'd pay the bill? Schools have NO extra money.
- Kids are ROUGH on a building. The school maintenance people use the summer months to fix things, to repaint, and especially to buff floors -- every desk has to come out of every classroom, and they spend about two days per classroom to buff and refurbish the tile. It's a big job, and if strangers are wandering through the building, they're going to mess up the floors -- walking where they shouldn't, etc. Maintenance is SO SERIOUS about this that they take away all the teachers' keys so no one can come down the wrong hallway and mess up their work.
- People who come into buildings like schools often vandalize things. Our church is in an old downtown area, and homeless people have broken in multiple times -- and have ransacked spaces, stolen food from the pantry, and more.
- Shelters tend to be nighttime things, and the heat of the day comes at noon -- when people are at work.

What seems most possible to me: Opening just the gym as a cooling shelter. The county has used our gyms multiple times as a tornado or floor shelter. It's far from ideal, but it works.
 
I am not aware of anything like that in our area. However, I do know a lot of people here in Texas that do not have A/C in their homes. They just have fans.
 
We get a couple of hot spells every summer (into the upper 90s or 100s). When it gets really hot, they open "cooling centers." They're mostly senior and community centers. Anyone can go and sit inside. They also have overnight warming centers when it gets really cold.
 
Many communities throughout the US have cooling shelters. If someone needs more information on what is available locally, a good first step is to call the United Way.
They can be very helpful assisting folks in finding and accessing social services.
 
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We have cooling places here in So Cal.
Doesnt get cold enough (usually) for warming places during winter.
But libraries are usually full of homeless people in the summer.
 
So in the winter they have cold shelters why not have heat ones for when it becomes unbearable hot for the homeless

We have them in the town I work, which has a very large homeless population & housed families who are well below the poverty line with no A/C. Takes place at the senior center & library and all are welcome.
 

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