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MADISON, Wis. – Less than 12 hours after Madison’s Common Council voted to table a final decision on a permanent men’s shelter location, Alder Samba Baldeh says the city is trying to move forward with an incomplete plan. “The city has no plan,” the District 17 Alder said.  “They’ll tell you they’ll bring resources here. Last night, I asked them,...

This is part of a series of interviews with Madison educators, organizers and leaders looking back at lessons they took from 2020. Find the others HERE. In a year that pushed Madison to its limits and propelled the city to reimagine key services, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway is leaning into change and innovation.   She’s learned that when it’s necessary, and with the assistance of “talented and resilient” city workers, local government can move quickly. Last spring, in a matter of weeks, the city moved a third of its employees to telework and transformed other positions...

They are the main provider for men in need of shelter in Dane County. For many years, Porchlight provided overnight shelter through basement facilities in 3 Madison churches on the square, with Grace Episcopal Church as the main shelter. But the COVID-19 Pandemic presented a new challenge in Porchlight’s history. Kim Sutter is the Director of Services for Porchlight. When the pandemic hit, she and her colleagues knew they were going to need a new facility to properly follow COVID-19 precautions. “The city and county rallied around us to find a new space where we could fit everyone into th...

At 5:01 p.m. Wednesday, the first homeless men arriving on multiple buses entered Madison’s new temporary homeless shelter at the city’s former Fleet Services Building on the East Side, the future home of the Madison Public Market. Carl “CJ” Parkin, homeless since mid-July and one of the first inside, moved through screening for COVID-19 and chose a bed in a corner of the massive space and then got bedding and a towel from Christopher Conner, who is also homeless and volunteering at the men’s shelter. “Given the time they’ve had to set it up, it’s actua...

The arrival of cold weather makes the push to shelter those without permanent homes even more important, while the pandemic in many ways makes that more complicated.