Chippewa County Outreach Fundraising for Homeless Prevention

The L.E. Phillips Career Development Center’s Chippewa County Outreach Office is raising money for its annual 100 Nights of Shelter campaign.

The 100 Nights of Shelter campaign seeks to address one of the biggest challenges facing the unhoused population in the area, which is that Chippewa County does not have a homeless shelter.

Without services like the Sojourner House or the new Day Resource Center in Eau Claire, addressing the needs of the unhoused population in Chippewa County is more difficult. The campaign seeks to raise enough money to fund emergency motel room stays through the first week of March.

The cost of the motel room stay is $80 per night. According to the organization’s website, the campaign currently has enough funding to provide those stays through mid-December.

Karri Pitsavas is a Homeless Services Coordinator at the Chippewa County Outreach Office. She says providing assistance has been especially difficult this year with higher demand and limited funding.

“Times are very, very tough right now for everybody,” she said. “I’m getting a lot of calls for rental assistance and utility assistance and things like that. So to not have funding available for those folks is a little more challenging. You know we have other agencies that do help guests or folks here in Chippewa County, but again the funding is so scarce this year compared to past.”

Pitsavas says the lack of a homeless shelter in the county and their funding struggles makes collaboration between their office and organizations like the Family Support Center and Hope Village even more important.