A Roanoke nonprofit that’s been serving unhoused people for 55 years is moving to a new location. In doing so, Roanoke Area Ministries is reinventing how it addresses homelessness.
Roanoke Area Ministries was founded in 1971, and for the last 40 years it’s has been feeding and clothing unhoused people from a former church on Campbell Avenue, known as the RAM House.
Executive director Melissa Woodson says things got worse during the COVID pandemic: Older people arrived, in larger numbers, with bigger needs. And the RAM House could only do so much…