On a sticky, hot day in June, a Virginia Beach church group was busy carting things around the old Roanoke Area Ministries House, readying items to be moved to a new location.
While the volunteer group worked, other employees of the RAM House were busy with their own tasks — which are extensive when moving the contents of a homeless shelter in just two months, without the help of an elevator.
RAM, which usually offers two daily meals and other essentials to unhoused people, is moving just a half of a mile to a new building on Elm Avenue Southwest from its home of four decades — a former church off Campbell Avenue Southwest that the organization rented from the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
RAM Executive Director Melissa Woodson said she hopes to open the new building for basic services in early August, and hopes construction will be complete by mid-August…