The ribbon cutting ceremony that was held on Friday evening at the homeless shelter in Nikiski, known as the Nikiski Shelter of Hope concluded work to better serve the homeless population across the Kenai Peninsula. The building is located on the Kenai Spur Highway, 3.1 miles north of the Andeavor/Tesoro Facility. The Nikiski Shelter of Hope is a 22 bed facility serving families, families with children and single adults. Participants enter for 30 days and are encouraged to participate in a PATH (Personal Action Toward Health) plan. Participants who are actively working their Path plan but are not yet ready for permanent housing placement may have their shelter stay extended for 30 days. The facility initially opened in December.
Love INC will run and care for the facility. They will provide or connect people with the wraparound services they need to become stable. Love INC’s Executive Director Leslie Rohr said on Friday:
“I want to say this is a culmination of many years of planning and a lot of conversations and to see it come to fruition is pretty amazing.”
Meals will be provided at least once a day by the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank, according to Executive Director Greg Meyer:
“We provide the majority. The collaborators, of course, especially Kathy Gensel and Leslie Rohr were awesome to put the right group of people together when we were working on how to open this up and our piece of that puzzle was to do the food. We do meals. We cook extra food at the food bank. We bring it up when we come by or else we freeze it ahead so they have meals for dinner. We also bring and do special meals, but then they come down to the food bank or they send us a list each week and we fill out that order and then we drop it off every Thursday morning for them.”
The purchase funds for the building was covered by Rasmuson Foundation and Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI) with the total purchase price being around $360,000 for the entire facility. Sophie Minich, President and CEO of CIRI told KSRM:
“I got an email from Tim Navarre, and he was reaching out to ask if CIRI would like to be a partner funding the acquisition of this building. A little back channel before that happened, CIRI just recently received our CARES Act funds, so we knew we were getting the funds and we were trying to deploy those funds in the manner in which you could deploy them. It was just a fortuitous timing.”
On behalf of Rasmuson Foundation, Mike Navarre said:
“I came here to thank you for recognizing the need, secondly recognizing the opportunity that this building presented, reaching out, putting a plan together. The Homelessness Coalition and the efforts that you put into our entire community is extraordinary and it does, as I know all of you know recognize, make a huge difference. This is exactly what the Rasmuson Foundation likes to do, this type of project. We’re thrilled to be here in partnership with CIRI, Sophie, again, thank you.”
Call (907) 262-5140 for more information or email leslie@peninsulaloveinc.org