Louisville Rescue Mission is expanding its women’s day shelter, opening a new branch in Jeffersonville and changing its name to Re:Center Ministries.
Currently women can drop-in at the homeless services provider for 10 hours a week to shower, do laundry and receive other services. But starting Oct. 1, the center will expand hours and allow women to drop-in from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day at their location on E. Jefferson. Women with children will also be welcome.
“With this new edition of expanding those hours for women, and now adding women with young children, we're going back to the model of having a space where they could stay all day long if they really wanted to, in order to have that safe space,” said Cory Bledsoe, executive director of Re:Center Ministries.
The expansion of women’s-only services means the drop-in site for men will cut back hours, but Mary Frances Schafer, director of community coordination with the Louisville Coalition for the Homeless, said there are still two other day shelters for men to go to.
Schafer said that on any given day in Louisville, there are around 300 women living on the streets. There’s one other day shelter for women in the city, called Uniting Partners (UP) for Women and Children.
“We know that there are other places that have stepped to the plate with this, but it's a small space and they are overrun,” Schafer said. “So we know that there is more need.”
Indiana Gets Homeless Prevention Campus
Re:Center Ministries is also opening a new facility in Jeffersonville, which is geared toward preventing homelessness. It will offer counseling, parenting classes, job readiness programs, case management, short-term classes on addiction recovery and restorative arts classes.
Bledsoe with Re:Center Ministries said the new center will be open during normal business hours.
“There's one shelter in Jeffersonville, they may be staying there," Bledsoe said. "They may be staying on the streets or they may be housed but just unstable. And it will be a space where they can get support and someone to walk with them as they're trying to navigate their life.”
