YAKIMA--For the past three years Yakima's homeless have had a place to sleep when temperatures dip below freezing, but extreme weather shelters may shut down without more volunteers.
Hoping for three men's and one women's shelter, but they will need 30 people willing stay overnight to open even one shelter.
The shelters are scheduled to open on November 15, but right now they only have 15 volunteers willing to stay overnight.
That's well short of the 250 volunteers the Yakima Homeless Network is hoping for.
They're required to have two monitors at each shelter each night, but those volunteers can't be expected to help out every single night.
"Some of them work once a month or once every couple of weeks and so we need the high number just to have enough people in the scheduling rotation to keep it open every night."
Hanson will hold two more training sessions for anyone interested in helping out, Saturday, November 7, at 10:30 a.m. and Wednesday, November 11, at 6:30 p.m.
Both will be at Vineyard Christian Church on East Martin Luther King Boulevard, and take about an hour and a half.
Hanson's also working with some Sunnyside churches to open a shelter in the Lower Valley. With enough volunteers, that shelter could open by Christmas.
