(KSCJ photo)
Sioux City’s homeless shelter is now back open after a series of disturbances and calls to police this weekend forced it to close.
It’s called the “warming shelter” because it was originally opened to give people a place to go in the winter — but is now open year-round. Police Sergeant Tom Gill says they’ve been getting an increase in calls to the shelter in June, and then Sunday things got started with a call about two women fighting over a phone.
“The females I think had been physically fighting, but neither one of them wanted to pursue anything and they were told to go their separate ways. And then they were called back for another disturbance involving some people that had been staying at the warming shelter. And then a third time where a staff member was actually assaulted there and that’s when they finally decided to shut down,” Gill says.
Gill says police received reports of homeless people from around the region being dropped off in Sioux City because the shelter is open year-round. He says officers determined some of the issues there were caused by illegal activity in a nearby building. “They found that people were coming and going from the warming shelter to this abandoned apartment building and they were going in there to consume alcohol, use drugs,” Gill says. “There were several items of drug paraphernalia and alcohol found inside of this abandoned apartment building.”
He says officers got ahold of the owner of that building who helped clean up around the building and boarded it up.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)