By Joe Morey
News Editor
The Oakwood Haven women’s shelter will be moving to the former LCO Halfway House building on Haskins Road and the overall plan is for the current shelter to become a shelter for homeless men.
According to Michelle Beaudin, LCO Secretary-Treasurer, LCO Development is currently looking at the Halfway House and figuring out what needs to be fixed. She stated they are also looking into what it will take to move the fence that surrounds the Oakwood Haven property over to the Haskins Road location.
“Once they are out, then we’ll look at the current building and see what all needs to be done to get the men’s shelter opened,” Beaudin stated. “We want all this done very soon because the weather is changing quickly and we don’t need our people who are homeless sleeping outside and freezing.”
Regarding the men’s shelter, Beaudin said TGB members are planning to visit Lac du Flambeau’s homeless shelter to see how they have set up their facility and what policies they operate under. She indicated they have a working shelter and if they share their policies as a roadmap that we can change to meet our needs, it will help expedite us being able to open ours sooner.
“We realize we’ll have to budget for it, and we’ll be able to figure that out after visiting with Lac du Flambeau,” Beaudin said. “We’ll have to have a limited amount of staff on site, but that is what we will need to plan for.”
Regarding the New Post and Signor Community Centers, Beaudin said the TGB plans to discuss their future plans with LCO Housing. She said they had a great listening session in New Post and the community has a lot of wonderful ideas on what they want to do with their center and having an open dialog on the needs of the community.
“We also have to do some work with Signor to get it cleaned up and running again so that the TGB can hold a Listening Session there in the near future and so the community members have a facility to use,” Beaudin stated.