Fire death prompts call for more help for the homeless

Associated Press

CINCINNATI

A man’s death in a weekend fire at a homeless camp prompted advocates on Monday to renew their call for a broader city system to provide emergency shelter in cold weather.

The blaze in an isolated area near a city viaduct and a flood wall also consumed a large makeshift shed and some other manmade structures, fire department spokesman Capt. Michael Washington said. William Floyd, 44, was found dead after the fire, though the official cause has not been determined.

The head of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless said that a more accessible emergency cold shelter system might prevent homeless people from building fires to keep warm.

“Every night, people sleep outside in the cold in Cincinnati,” said Josh Spring, the coalition’s executive director. “I’ve never heard of a fire burning down a camp here before, but it certainly is not unusual for people staying in them to set fires to stay warm.”

Washington said fire officials were still investigating to determine what started the fire.

Spring estimates there could be as many as 100 homeless camps scattered around Cincinnati. He is urging city government to allocate more funding so a cold shelter can be open more often during the winter months.

The Cincinnati Health Department coordinates when the shelter at the Over-the-Rhine city recreation center needs to open, health department spokesman Rocky Merz said. Until two years ago, the shelter was not opened unless the temperature fell below zero. Starting in the winter of 2008-2009, the temperature level at which the shelter could open was raised to below 10 degrees, increasing the number of days the emergency shelter was open.

“Diminishing resources have made it increasingly challenging to keep the services intact, and we have had to open more days since we changed the criteria,” Merz said. “We want to protect as many people as possible from the elements, but it depends on the resources.”

With the city facing an estimated budget deficit of $60 million for 2011, it doesn’t have money to allocate specifically for an emergency shelter, said Meg Olberding, spokeswoman for the city manager’s office.

“If the homeless coalition and other advocates could help provide that money, that would be great,” she said.

The Cincinnati Recrea-tion Commission has provided several thousand dollars annually to staff the emergency shelter, but that money comes from the commission’s personnel budget and has to be supplemented with donations, said Michael Thomas, community recreation superintendent.

“We certainly are willing to help any way we can, but we have reached capacity,” Thomas said.

City officials said they are continuing to work with social service providers and homeless advocates to try to come up with an alternative that would provide trained staff for an emergency shelter at a location better suited to house people.

Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said that while health standards differ by geography, public health officials recommend that winter shelters be available from the first of November through April. Temperature variability should not be a factor in whether they are opened or closed, he said.