A Month To Get Back On Their Feet: That’s The Offer From A Danville Program For Homeless Men

A new emergency shelter program for homeless men in Champaign-Urbana opened on January 6th during the recent cold snap. Two local churches are  hosting the shelter program, to replaces others that closed down last year.

Meanwhile in Danville, a men’s emergency shelter program has been running for years --- with an emphasis on getting participants into jobs and their own housing.

The men in the Danville Rescue Mission’s Transit Program live in a dormitory setting. The mission building --- formerly a school --- has space for a sleeping room, a common room, and rooms for sports the recreation.

But Daniel Offett, the mission’s pastor and director, says the men in the program are only there at night. During the day, they’re looking for work.

“They have to leave from nine till four to look for jobs”, said Offett. “They get with the counselor when they come back, on the jobs they went looking for. And after a month, if you haven’t found a job, we pay for your bus ticket to go to Bloomington, or one of the other surrounding communities, to try maybe a Mission there, because you might have better luck getting a job there.”

Offett says the number of homeless people in Danville is growing, fueled by drug abuse and an influx of people from bigger cities.

“A lot of people, they’re coming from surrounding cities, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, as far as New Orleans”, said Offett. “And when they come, they might have thought they were going to stay with a family member and something didn’t work out. And the police or someone told them to go to the Rescue Mission.

The Transit program at the Danville Rescue Mission saw about 30 men each night during the recent cold snap. Offett says Transit and other programs at the Mission are funded by church and private donations. He says they stopped taking says government funding a few years ago, because of pressure to change the religious orientation of their programs.

Offett says the Transit program is the only emergency shelter program for homeless men in Vermilion County. He says the Danville Rescue Mission is launching a shelter program for women and children. The program, called Dayspring, will open in a house on Bowman Avenue later in January. But it won’t be the only shelter program for women and children in Danville. It will supplement the larger Women’s Shelter run by the Danville YWCA.