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April 21, 2008

Crossroads opens shelter for homeless women / Photo

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski
A look at one of the rooms in the new shelter for women opened today by Crossroads Rhode Island, the state’s largest provider of services for the homeless.

PROVIDENCE -- In a ceremony marked by bright colors but acknowledged regret, Crossroads Rhode Island this afternoon opened a new shelter for homeless women.

The shelter, which cost about $500,000 to build and will cost another $350,000 to operate for a year, will house up to 55 women a night, said Anne M. Nolan, president of Crossroads.

"I’m not happy that we need to have a shelter,’’ Nolan told more than 100 guests and political dignitaries gathered in the sunshine outside the Broad Street center. But the community’s response to the emerging crisis of homeless women, Nolan said, made today one of her proudest moments.

Crossroads is the state’s largest provider of services for the homeless. But in the year since the state closed one of its largest shelters, in Cranston, it has also been taxed as an overnight shelter. Dozens of women each night were sleeping on the floors of the center, which once housed the YMCA.

Now in the basement, which once held the gym’s weight room and lockers, are rooms painted cheerful lavender, bunks with bedspreads of lime, mauve and lemon, and even a beautician station for women on their way to a job interview.

Nolan said Crossroads is still raising money to pay the operating cost of the shelter, which will open tonight.

-- Journal staff writer Tom Mooney

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 2:25 PM | Permalink

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