Homeless shelter opens on former MARMC grounds
A 62-bed shelter has opened its doors on the grounds of the former Mineral Area Regional Medical Center in Farmington to help meet a growing need in the community for temporary housing for the homeless.
The now-vacant 98-bed osteopathic hospital located at the corner of Weber and Wallace roads closed its doors in January 2016, just nine months after BJC HealthCare purchased the property and ultimately consolidated operations into Parkland Health Center’s Liberty Road campus. The Mineral Area Regional Medical Center property and buildings were eventually purchased by local businessman Sharo Shirshekan who in turn donated it to East Missouri Action Agency (EMAA).
While there are plans to repurpose the former medical facility into a regional behavioral health center, the homeless shelter occupies what was previously used as the hospital’s maintenance building. It sits behind the main hospital structure and to the left of the Farmington Oaks Senior Center.
“Mr. Sharo Shirshekan was generous enough to renovate this building for us,” said Nicolle Hahn, EMAA Community Services program director. “It has this large dining room. We don’t have a full kitchen, but our goal is that we will be reaching out to churches to help us provide meals using a rotation schedule.
“So far, for the last three nights, we have had meals provided for the clients. We’ll provide them with a continental breakfast and then they’ll be on their own for lunch, but we’ll have some things if they need them.”
Each bedroom at the shelter has three to four beds with a full set of bed linens. The handicapped rooms have three beds to allow them to navigate wheelchairs and other aids. There are storage bins under the beds where they can keep personal items; a bulletin board on the wall for announcements, rules and messages; and a small desk area. There are also hallway bathroom/shower areas.
The bedrooms at the new homeless shelter in Farmington are basic, clean and comfortable. Each room has three or four beds, storage bins for personal items and a small desk area.
According to Hahn, the building’s new interior looks completely different than it did prior to Shirshekan’s renovation work.
“When I first walked into this building, it had shelves, tools, and all sorts of stuff,” she said.
There is no doubt in Hahn’s mind that the shelter is something the community needs now more than ever before.
While meals won’t be cooked at the homeless shelter, local churches are being enlisted by EMAA to provide meals on a rotating basis.
“Before we started working with the homeless population — when the Uplift Day Center became a thing last summer — people in this community had been talking about the homeless and knew that there were some, but we were seeing about 10 to 15 clients a day,” she said. “Then last year when we began to provide housing because it was so cold and we had received a grant and were able to put people up in hotels, we ended up at our highest number of 65 people in St. Francois County at one point in time in February 2021.
“And so, we knew we had a higher population than we even thought there was. And they’re really good at staying in places where people don’t really see them. Some stand on the corner, but there’s a lot of people who are out in the woods or in smaller spots in town or find spots where they don’t feel they’re going to be seen.”
Hall bathrooms at the shelter are functional and clean. They provide a toilet, shower and sink.
Asked how a homeless person can find a temporary home at the shelter, Hahn said, “They work with our day center staff which currently for the next few days will still be at the Uplift Day Center by the senior center.
“Eventually, our hope is to move everything down here. You would just come to this building. We would do an intake and referral and we would go through with the client all of their needs, what resources they do have, what resources we need to connect them with and then we would work with the resources the agency has as well as resources within the community. Through this project and through what we’ve been calling ‘Dream Big St. Francois County,’ we have been able to partner with many organizations to learn about the services and get everybody together to say, ‘OK, this person can help with this, and this organization can help with this.
“And so, when somebody comes in, it may not even just be EMAA resources we connect them to. It might be other resources as well. After they come in and do that intake and referral, we’ll see if they’re eligible for a homelessness voucher through HUD. Maybe they have an eviction record — we might be able to work with Legal Aid of Southern Missouri and work to get that eviction off their record. Or can we find a landlord who accepts the HUD program?
“We also do Medicaid expansion education through our agency. Even today one of our staff is over there talking to clients about if they are eligible, how to help them get health insurance. We also have somebody who does the Affordable Care Act, and we can sign them up for that. It just depends. We look at their whole intake. We ask them questions — sometimes hard questions to help us understand where they’re coming from and how to be as self-sufficient as they can be.”
Hahn said that the length of time that a person can stay at the shelter depends on their circumstances, but the shelter is not intended to be a long-term solution for homelessness. She added that the shelter’s greatest need is volunteers.
“Volunteers to help,” Hahn said. “Whether that be serving food, helping us keep things clean, answer the phone talking to clients, signing them in and out — anything like that we can use volunteers for. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact the shelter or they can contact me at (573) 431-5191, ext. 1105 or email me at nhahn@eastmoaa.org. We do have to do a background check because of our grant policy and things like that. Once we do that, we will train them in how to do what we’ve asked them to do over here. There will be two staff here all the time — that is our goal and plan.”
Keri McCrorey, East Missouri Action Agency executive director, expressed a mixture of excitement and a little bit of fear with the opening of the homeless shelter.
“Because we’re stepping into a new world here,” she said. “We couldn’t thank Mr. Shirshekan enough for everything that he’s done. He built this building for the homeless. He has a very big heart for the homeless. I don’t want to speak for him, but I’ve just never met anyone quite like him.
“It’s just been an awesome experience that we’ve developed this relationship with Mr. Shirshekan. He puts God first in everything that he does — and he will tell you that — ‘Don’t thank me, thank God.’ God is using him, and he is allowing God to use him. Without that, we wouldn’t be where we are today. I’m so thankful he’s provided this for us.
“East Missouri Action Agency has never done anything like this before. I’ve been in the business for 32 years now. We did have a shelter in Elvins at one point. It was really two apartments, but it was for homeless people. It wasn’t of this magnitude, of course. I oversaw that shelter. My former boss, Bill Bunch, led the effort to get it funded. This isn’t really new to me, but the scale of it is new.
“Of course, we’ve done a lot of different research and best practices on how the best way is to operate an emergency shelter. Everybody does it different, and so we’re trying to take the different pieces of the things that we’ve learned by visiting different shelters and make it what it needs to be to be a best practices home.”
And what does McCrorey see as “the big picture” for the homeless shelter and other plans for using the former medical center?
“I think the big picture is that we’re really trying to provide total care on this campus,” she said. “If somebody comes in — like Mr. Shirshekan says — they’re broken people and they’re hurting, so we really want to provide care to them and get them to a point where they are able to hold down a job, able to have their own apartment — just be able to be a functioning member of society.
“We want to be a part of that. There are a lot of hurting people in this community, as well as other communities. We oftentimes want to ‘other’ people. By ‘othering’ them it distances us from them because we don’t believe we could ever be in that kind of situation — and that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
“We want people to realize that this is a community project. This is not an EMAA project. Yes, we are overseeing it. Yes, we are organizing it, but this is about making our community better, and we need the community’s help because the more we come together as a tight-knit community who support each other, the better outcomes we can have for the people we are serving.
“We need volunteers, we need monetary donations. We’ve estimated there are enough churches in St. Francois County to provide meals where they don’t have to provide them once a month or once every couple of months — and a dinner meal — just a hot meal for people. Without their support, EMAA can only do so much and so it’s really important that people understand this is about making their community better.”
Shared Blessings, a non-profit transitional homeless shelter, has been operating in Bonne Terre since 2005 and can house about 35 individuals.
“We couldn’t thank Mr. Shirshekan enough for everything that he’s done.” – Keri McCrorey, EMAA executive director
With the recent opening of a 62-bed homeless shelter on the grounds of the former Mineral Area Regional Medical Center in Farmington, from left, East Missouri Action Agency Executive Director Keri McCrorey, Assistant Community Services Program Director Christopher Massey and Community Services Program Director Nicolle Hawn are excited to see St. Francois County stepping up to help the homeless.
Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-783-9667 or kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com
