The largest public homeless shelter serving Durham is facing financial headwinds. But the director of Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD) says services will continue and may even expand.
Last month UMD lost two federal grants, one from FEMA and one from the USDA. The loss of the grants combined with other economic pressures, like the rising cost of ingredients and a decrease in donations, forced the shelter to cut the budget by ten percent and lay off seven full and part-time employees.
Roughly 40 people remain employed by UMD, and services are not being cut, according to Executive Director Sheldon Mitchell.
“We’re still here, able to provide services. We definitely are looking to and have to sort of realign some duties and activities for folks who are no longer with us to be able to do that,” says Mitchell. “We are definitely looking to extend our net and our networks to gain new support, to hopefully encourage others that might want to support us in a bigger way.”
UMD regularly works with 4,000 volunteers to serve around 6,000 people in the Durham area with housing, food, and other services. According to the organization, 118 people ended their homelessness by accessing UMD’s services.
The federal grants UMD lost are worth nearly $60,000 and were used for the purchase of food served or distributed through UMD’s Community Cafe and Food Pantry. Coupled with the rising cost of pantry staples, like eggs and coffee, the loss of the grants put strain on the organization at a time when more community members need to access services.
UMD has seen an 11 percent increase in people eating meals at the shelter, and in the last couple weeks there have been around 140 single adults and over 70 families on UMD’s waiting lists looking for shelter.
“We know the need is still there. We see the people that show up for the meals, those numbers remain elevated. So we tried to do, you know, the best we can really to maintain those core services, while we can look at how we can reduce costs and manage around those things,” Mitchell says.
Amid this perfect storm of financial factors, fundraising is also down at UMD. A recent fundraising drive pulled in $100,000 less than last year, according to Mitchell. And giving has been down overall since the COVID-19 lockdown, when there was a major influx of donations.
“This has been really the first time that we’ve seen a significant reduction in funding coming into the organization,” Mitchell says. “During the pandemic, of course, there was a lot of funding. People were very charitable, because everybody wanted to do something or be able to make a difference. And then now, you know, coming in a couple of years after the pandemic, we’ve seen that those levels continue to decline.”
Mitchell said he has not experienced similar circumstances in his nine years with UMD.
Despite the funding struggles, Mitchell said UMD is optimistic about potential growth. Mitchell presented in May to the Durham County board of commissioners about expanding services in a multifloor building for the community’s homeless population.
“We call it a community impact project, really looking at the housing, homeless housing system, you know, UMD would just happen to be one of the primary partners or players in that,” Mitchell says. “Once that’s finished, I think that’s going to provide some direction or for timing, what’s needed or what gets prioritized.”
Mitchell said that these concerns surrounding funding and demand for emergency services will likely be felt by other organizations and food banks as well, and that funding cuts to USAID and other federal funding is already indirectly hurting UMD by hurting its partners.
“That’s been a greater impact to us, because those companies also sponsored our events, provided support to our organization as community corporate citizens, and now you know, we no longer receive that support,” says Mitchell.
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