The Kalamazoo Gospel Mission has had open beds in its emergency shelter since implementing new capacity limits on October 6, according to Chief Operating Officer John Simpson.
The mission stopped placing mats on the floor for overflow guests and now operates with 140 beds total, 80 beds for men and 60 beds for women, down from previous capacity that included floor space.
“We’ve actually had open beds in our emergency services shelter since October 6 when we made those changes, which has been surprising for us. We expected that emergency shelter to be full from day one,” Simpson said.
The new system uses a lottery to assign beds, with names entered for available spots. Initially, 99 women and 200 men were on the wait list, but the mission worked through the entire wait list by October 10…