This season marks the second time the city of Cottonwood has supported the Verde Valley Homeless Coalition’s One Person, One Night program, which provides warm, safe beds for the homeless during cold winter nights.
“The One Person, One Night program provides a motel room to homeless individuals, for at least one night, to prevent someone from being exposed to frigid temperatures,” stated a document prepared for the Cottonwood City Council by city clerk Marianne Jiménez.
By unanimous vote Dec. 6, the council approved a $2,500 donation to the Old Town Mission, the agent to administer the program for the VVHC. In 2015, Catholic Charities administered the program but could not do so again due to lack of funding.
The amount marks a $500 increase over last year, when the council approved $2,000 for the fledgling program. The funds will come from the city’s contingency funds, which Cottonwood Mayor Timothy Elinski said amount to approximately $15,000 each year.
Joy Mosley, a volunteer with VVHC, said that 65 individuals received shelter through the program during the 2015-16 winter. According to her, there are currently three area hotels offering free or substantially discounted rooms to VVHC and OTM.
“We are honored and blessed to take over this program,” OTM Executive Director Kellie Wilson said, adding that the program officially kicked off Nov. 28. “Since that time, we’ve housed 12 individuals for a total of 17 nights.”
According to Wilson, the program has already resulted in a surprise. Instead of encountering individuals she recognized from her time at OTM, Wilson came across mostly unfamiliar faces.
“It just surprised me, how many people we don’t know are homeless,” Wilson said.
Many of the people making use of hotel rooms, Wilson added, are elderly individuals living out of their cars.
Now and then, however, someone fell outside even the elderly profile. Wilson said that one individual has a full-time job and volunteers at the mission, but was nonetheless forced to live out of her car.
Wilson said that one of the many advantages of the program is that it keeps people out of the emergency room. In some instances, it may even be the “first step toward self-sufficiency.”
Elinski called One Person, One Night “a tremendous community effort” and a worthy cause, but also said that the program was the “single most expensive way” to house a less fortunate person for a night.
“I feel like it’s a band-aid,” Elinski said, but praised the organizers for finding a solution to an ongoing problem.
