DETROIT (AP) - They come to Saints Peter and Paul Church for shelter from the weather and an impatient public. They come for a warm meal, rest for weary feet and sometimes just for a kind word.
And it is here, in Detroit’s oldest church structure, where homeless people in Detroit can sleep on mats in the hallway under the watchful stone faces of Mary and of St. Therese, the Little Flower, according to the Detroit Free Press ( https://on.freep.com/1vnOqM7 ).
“It can get really crowded in here,” Michael Thomas, outreach coordinator of the church’s Warming Center, said Sunday, his voice echoing off the marble walls.
When it reopens after construction on Monday, the center that serves 50-80 men and women each weekday during the winter - and three days of the week during the summer - will be nearly triple its former space, the result of an $800,000 donation from the the UAW-Ford National Programs Center and other support.
The old wood paneling in the main room and the rows of dated, dingy offices are gone, replaced by a room for those who need rest on the center’s new cots, private rooms for those seeking medical help and foot care, and a renovated, stainless steel kitchen - a centerpiece of this nearly 3,000-square-foot space.
A single old shower stall - tiny and with unreliable water temperature - is gone, too, replaced by three spacious, handicapped-accessible restrooms.
Standing in a new laundry room along a wall of brand-new washers and dryers, Thomas said it’s easy to miss the importance to a homeless person of the things to which others give hardly a second thought.
“We tend to take things like laundry and showers for granted,” he said. “But for a lot of guests out on the streets, just to get their clothing clean or to get a shower on a hot, muggy day - it makes them feel better about themselves. We have guys who walk maybe 5, 10 miles just to get a shower here,” he said.
With a ceremonial cutting of a bright-red ribbon, the Rev. Pat Peppard, parish administer, reminded those who gathered of their connection through Christ to those whom they might not otherwise notice.
“Jesus taught us: Whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, that you do unto me.”
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Information from: Detroit Free Press, https://www.freep.com
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