"With Hope Community Center’s homeless shelter closing this week, Rick, a Charlottesville cook who has lived there since February, has secured his future accommodations: He bought a $17 tent and has been scouting locations in the woods.

Those staying at the shelter on a mild night last week talked nervously of the hardship and uncertainty of braving the elements, a situation with which they are all too familiar. The ones possessing disposable income and foresight had already stocked up on camping equipment in preparation for the shuttering of the shelter Thursday.

The vast majority, though, had few plans and even less confidence of finding a place to stay, resigned to sleeping on city benches, in parks or on church porches. And no one interviewed said they had a friend or family member with whom they could live.

“It’s upsetting to everyone,” said Mark, a carpenter who has lived at Hope since the shelter opened its doors in November.

“I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I really don’t.”

Hope, located on 11th Street Northwest, is closing its shelter after a lengthy and contentious battle with neighbors and the city. The shelter has operated illegally since fall 2007, but city officials gave it a reprieve to remain open for the next few months while its owners sought a permit from the City Council.

But city building inspectors mandated that the operators — pastor Harold L. Bare, of Covenant Church, and his son Josh — make costly renovations to the community center, including installing a sprinkler system, to ensure the safety of the homeless.

Those upgrades, and the ruling that not more than 20 people can sleep in each of the center’s two buildings, proved too onerous for the Bares. The family, church members and other individuals and congregations in the community have funneled thousands of dollars into the shelter’s operations since December, when COMPASS, the organization that opened the shelter, collapsed.

With no guarantee Charlottesville would grant the permit, without the promise of any large donations and facing the prospect of closing the community center for a time to make the expensive renovations, the Bares say they had little choice but to cease running the shelter.

“We would have lost our day-time programs, and the whole reason we came to this community is to help the families and children in the neighborhood,” said Josh Bare, who has spent up to 70 hours a week at the center this winter and spring.

The shelter will shut down Thursday, though the community center will continue to run all its other programs. And the result is that dozens of people who have lived there for months will be homeless again.

“You are going to have 35 people back on the streets and scared to death,” said Daniel Howell, who works at the center and has been supervising the shelter at night.

The reality is that there are few organizations in the community that can provide housing for the displaced. PACEM’s rotating shelter does not open until late fall and the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter is near capacity nearly every night, said David Gilbert, its director.

“There are no beds,” Bare said. “And there’s not a new shelter that is going to come up now, especially after how difficult the city has made it for us.”

In the past few weeks, Hope’s operators have been able to help find housing for nine regular clients out of the nearly 50 who come each night. Four have secured beds at the Salvation Army; two are moving into apartments through the Region Ten Community Services Board; one has housing thanks to the AIDS/HIV Services Group; and two have found a place to stay elsewhere in the community.

“This goes to show that we are still not doing enough in terms of providing the bottom rung with housing,” said Dave Norris, PACEM’s director and Charlottesville’s mayor. “If we had a more adequate stock of housing we wouldn’t see so many people in this situation.”

In the shelter there’s a palpable mixture of frustration and despondency. While holding out hope that the center and other organizations will generate a plan to find them housing, most are starting to comprehend the grim reality of life back on the streets.

“I’m hearing a lot of despair, a lot of ‘I don’t know,’ and a lot of ‘I’ll figure it out,’” said Lynn Wiber, who was evicted from her apartment last year after being hit by a car and rendered unable to work.

Before Wiber was homeless, she was a homeless advocate and worked for PACEM. Now she finds herself in the same situation as those she used to assist. Wiber has a tent and plans to live in the woods unless something miraculous happens.

Why, Wiber wonders, did the city zoning and building inspectors come down so hard on a shelter that is providing a much-needed service in the community, giving the Bares no choice but to close its doors?

“I don’t understand why they would take housing away from people when it wasn’t costing the city anything,” she said.

Charlottesville officials respond that the Bares were flouting city rules by running an overnight shelter in a residential neighborhood and that an exemption could not be made because of the good service the Hope center was performing.

“The facts are that they are in violation of the [zoning] code and fire code and the city has an obligation to step in and cite them,” said Maurice Jones, assistant city manager. “The city was in a position where we had to balance out the code as it is today and the concerns of the neighborhood.”

The city, Jones added, has started holding regular discussions with various nonprofits and homeless advocates to “map out a plan” to address issues surrounding Charlottesville’s homeless population.

For the homeless, the community center provides more than just a roof over their heads. It is a haven, a dinner spot and a source of social services, including employment counseling.

Just as important, it is a place where you can “get stuff together,” Rick, the cook, said. You can take a shower, do laundry and search the paper for jobs.

“It’s hard to look ahead when you are homeless. It becomes all-consuming,” Rick said.

“But here you are safe, you have a place to put your stuff and you can actually accomplish something.”" (Seth Rosen, The Daily Progress, May 26, 2008)