On a slow day, she would try on makeup at the cosmetics counter and spray herself with samples of perfume. She said she could never afford to buy anything of her own. “All I could do was admire it.”

As Ms. Smith waited to move into her new room, the electricity cut out to a portion of the shelter and the staff set up battery powered camping lanterns to light the way for movers. Volunteers brought crockpots with taco makings for dinner and put together goody bags for the children staying there.

The accommodations are sparse and some residents could not hide their disappointment that the bedrooms do not have windows.

But 4-year-old Mikias Aiychew was so excited to see his new room at the shelter that he could hardly sit through their weekend Jehovah’s Witness gathering, his mother said.

Dressed in a gray suit ves t and small brown dress shoes, Mikias played with a plastic castle in the shelter’s new family room.

A hand-painted sign on the wall quoted Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can with what you have, where you are.”