Geauga County's First Women's Shelter, Once the Subject of Protest, Finds a Home in Chardon

A year after their failed attempt to put a women’s homeless shelter in Munson Township, Geauga Faith Rescue Mission found a home in Chardon. Credit: Geauga Faith Rescue Mission

It’s fair to say that residents of Munson Township weren’t exactly thrilled when, last February, they heard a Christian nonprofit was bringing a homeless shelter to town.

Not just any homeless shelter: Geauga County’s first ever shelter for women, built by the Geauga Faith Rescue Mission as a companion to their men’s shelter down the road in Chardon. Affordable housing in Geauga was scarce; single women had a better chance living in their cars than finding a place to stay.

The residents of Munson didn’t seem to care.

“I’m probably going to be putting a target on my back,” one woman groaned at the meeting at Munson Township Hall, last February. “This is our children! This is our streets!”

“What about the safety of our students?” another woman said. “When you have residents leaving the facility—those who have access to weapons. They have access to drugs.”

This year, Nathan Long, the head of GFRM, found instead a welcoming second chance for his nonprofit’s shelter project: a tiny, four-bedroom space just down the street from GFRM’s men’s shelter on Washington Street, near Chardon Square.

Long, who helped take in $95,000 in private donations to secure the property’s mortgage, said applying for a variance with the Chardon’s Planning & Zoning Department was a polar opposite experience than he’d received in Munson.

“Oh, it was a smooth process; no one came out in opposition,” he told Scene. He laughed: “It was unanimous in the vote.”

Munson Township residents weren’t all welcoming to Nathan Long’s pitch, at a town hall last February. “I’m going to probably be putting a target on my back,” one woman said. “But this is my backyard, and I can’t have somebody come into my neighborhood who has connections to a variety of *communities*.” Credit: Mark Oprea

There are roughly 40 homeless living in Geauga County, a tiny sliver of its population, at any given time, Long said.

But beds are scarce. Many live in hotels, or out of their vehicles. Add on spoils from divorce suits, lost jobs, felonies and alcohol or drug addiction, and one’s chances of selling a landlord or keeping a home are small.

Which the space that Long hopes to fill: free beds for single women where there weren’t any previously. Yet with restrictions: only service pets are welcome; no kids; no victims of domestic violence; no one on a drug or alcohol binge; and no one on the National Sex Offender Registry.

“And they have to abide by house rules,” Long said. “And be looking for a job. Be in counseling. Proactive in getting back on their feet.”

“They can’t continue a lifestyle that led them to be homeless,” he added.

Five years out of the pandemic, cities like Cleveland have, with the help of federal funds under the Biden administration, created social programs to throw a hand to homeless who’ve been relegated to downtown streets or tent cities. As of March, its Home For Every Neighbor program paid for 12 months of rent for 154 people.

But rural counties often linger, either due to smaller general funds or, as in Munson Township, a deleterious perception of who exactly homeless people are, and what they’ll quote-unquote do to preestablished society.

All why Long said GFRM found its way near Chardon Square.

“I mean, we’re a community-supported organization,” he said. “Everything that they peope see here—it’s saying, ‘We want to be here for someone.’”

“We don’t take tax dollars,” he added. “It’s all out of people’s generosity: we want you to be here.”