The right thing to do

Grant County’s frigid winter temperatures are nothing to mess around with. For those of us with animals, the winter months mean frozen water bowls outside and family pets wanting to venture inside where there’s warmth. Some cars don’t start as easily in the winter months, and it’s challenging to stay on schedule if there’s snow and ice on the roads. Fortunately, we get through the minor inconveniences and a cold winter makes us more appreciative of warmer spring and summer months.

What if you lost your home and the outdoors became your indoors? The perceived adventure of braving the cold weather and sleeping outside would get old fast. Not to mention dangerous, as being outside in the dark presents a host of new dangers, including the heightened risk of injury, theft and assault if you’re not behind a locked door.

Yet 131 people in Grant County are sleeping outdoors, according to the Grant County Homeless Task Force. Volunteers found people residing outside, include people sleeping in tents, abandoned buildings or in RVs with no electricity, as discovered during a homeless count in January 2015.

In response, the Task Force and many other local groups worked together to open a warming center at the former Boys and Girls Club in downtown Moses Lake this month. The center is scheduled to remain operating through February. The night time and early morning hours of operation, 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., are scheduled when it’s coldest out. The warming center is designed to offer a place for people to get off the street and warm up, but not be a permanent homeless shelter, according to an article in Monday’s Columbia Basin Herald. Area churches are providing small meals and rotate the duty among themselves each week.

We don’t know the circumstances or back story about everyone who is being helped. At this point, we think it’s important to offer temporary assistance and point people to a more permanent living situation. During the coldest part of the winter, the warming center offers the community a good solution. We think offering the warming center to people in need is the right thing to do.

— Editorial Board