City says there is ample overnight space, no need to make City Hall a shelter

Kost says mayor rejected plan due to $10K security cost; mayoral spokesperson says shelters have ample capacity

Lansing City Council member Ryan Kost said City Hall should be opened as an overnight shelter during the cold snap to save lives.

Mayoral spokesperson Scott Bean said Lansing’s existing non-city overnight shelters said Thursday that they have enough capacity to cover anyone in the city who is willing to stay indoors, so opening up new spaces isn’t necessary.

Kost said the city’s Letts Community Center, an overnight shelter, has a capacity of 60 but had 85 people earlier this week, and he expects the number to grow with the colder temperatures. 

The whole point of the City Hall proposal is the very cold temperatures coming, Kost said. “And we’re already at over capacity,” he said.

Kost said he formally asked Mayor Andy Schor this week to open City Hall overnight as a “Band-Aid for an immediate, immediate need,” but said he was rejected after the mayor cited an expected cost of $10,000 for security for two days.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Kost said, “$10,000 for two nights of security is bullshit.”

Letts is the only city-operated overnight shelter but there are several religious or other shelters. There are numerous daytime warming centers, including city libraries and the Capital Area Transportation Authority’s bus station downtown.

Bean said all of the primary non-city shelters are reporting plenty of space ahead of the weekend’s cold blast.

“No person in Lansing will be left out in the cold if they are willing to come indoors in these frigid temperatures,” Bean said.

Bean and Kost each said there are occasional challenges in getting some people to accept aid and come indoors.

City Rescue Mission and Holy Cross have dozens of beds available for men, women and families, Bean said. And Advent House and Union Missionary Baptist Church also report having ample space, he said.

Shelbi Frayer, the interim director of Holy Cross, said Thursday that her organization has capacity as the region is headed into the cold.

Kost said he does not know how long City Hall should be open during the current cold spell but the standard going forward should be that City Hall would be open overnight during times of extreme cold.

This is Kost’s fourth January as a council member and he said the city fails every year to prepare for the cold.

“We are every year, for whatever reason, completely unprepared,” Kost said.

He said he has previously suggested opening Foster Community Center or other city properties as overnight shelters. 

This time, Kost said he suggested City Hall because it is open during the day like warming centers and it is common practice elsewhere to open up township halls and libraries as warming centers.

“There’s no reason we can’t have it (City Hall) open at night,” Kost said.

He said the city claimed it would be too expensive but that he is willing to find the money in the budget.

“Because at the end of the day,” he said, “can you really put a price tag on someone’s life if they freeze to death?”

It’s gonna be bad out

It is expected to be seriously and dangerously cold this weekend, even for a Michigan January.

The upcoming weather conditions is expected to be as cold or colder than the 2019 Polar Vortex, the 2009 cold snap and those “storm stories from the ‘70s,” said Joe Ceru, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Grand Rapids station, which covers Lansing.

The upcoming cold blast is not from a polar vortex, although some of the factors are similar, he said.

For people outside, it will feel brutally cold.

Frostbite could happen in 10 to 30 minutes; dog paws will be vulnerable and so will water pipes; and people should minimize their time outside and also check on vulnerable neighbors, Ceru said. 

There are two cold threats, he said.

Friday is expected to be extremely windy and really cold, with temperatures around -3 and wind chills of -20 or below.

Friday’s weather makes way for weekend clear skies and cold temperatures high in the atmosphere with a fresh snowpack, which is a great recipe for considerably dropping temperatures, Ceru said.

So temperatures this weekend could drop into the negative teens, -12 to -15, and it’s possible to have a -20 thermometer reading this weekend, Ceru said.

But wind chills by then should be very light, one to two miles an hour, he said.