St. Thomas warming shelter to remain open during freezing weather this winter

Kandice Longstreth, Outreach Coordinator for St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, tries out a cot in the warming shelter as Tammy Clark, President of Homeless Hands of Zanesville and Travis Roach, Deputy Director of the Muskingum County EMA supervise.

By Christine Holmes, News Director
January 29, 2019

The basement of a Downtown Zanesville church will become a regular warming shelter for area homeless this winter.

St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, located at 144 N. Fifth St., will open the doors to its Rosary Hall throughout the winter whenever temperatures are below freezing.

Church Outreach Coordinator Kandice Longstreth said the parish has wanted to reach out to the homeless community for a while, and the opportunity to provide a warming station was a great opportunity to do so.

“It was a God thing,” said Longstreth.

The church first opened the warming shelter on Jan. 21 with the help of Homeless Hands of Zanesville. Since then, they’ve continued to offer the space as needed and will do so whenever temperature dip below 32 degrees.

“This is absolutely amazing, the support everybody is giving,” said Longstreth. “And it just really makes you appreciate the community we’re in.”

Longstreth said the church has received an outpouring of donations and volunteers.

“Everybody has been so responsive that we’ve got dinners covered now through Saturday,” said Longstreth. “We’ve got blankets, pillows … people are donating, so it’s just incredible.”

Longstreth said donations will never be turned down, especially water and coffee, which are in high demand.

Tuesday afternoon, the Muskingum County Emergency Management Agency and Red Cross dropped off cots for the shelter to borrow.

The supplies are shared between the EMA, American Red Cross and Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department for emergency purposes.

Muskingum County EMA Director Jeff Jadwin, Red Cross Disaster Program Manager Tim Callahan and Deputy EMA Director Travis Roach set up a cot at the St. Thomas warming shelter Tuesday afternoon.

Longstreth is calling on other churches in the area to consider opening their doors to the homeless, too.

“We want to encourage other churches to follow suit,” said Longstreth. “If they have facilities that can accommodate, I just encourage them because it’s a tremendous, tremendous blessing to be able to do this.”

Longstreth said she’d be willing to be a coordinator if needed.

“I can step up and help them figure out how to do it,” said Longstreth.

The warming shelter at St. Thomas opens each night at 5 p.m. and closes at 9 a.m. the following day.