The Grace Inn Shelter in Belleville is continuing to care for the homeless during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Staff and volunteers at the shelter in downtown Belleville are working round the clock to help as many people as they can.

Board chair Jodie Jenkins gave an update on the difficulties and the successes of doing that during a pandemic when he appeared on CJBQ’s Newsmaker Sunday.

“We’ve been working with agencies and Hasting County to protect staff and guests overall. We are one of the few places open for the vulnerable. Thrift shops aren’t open. Food programs closed or slowed down considerably. We literally are a last resort for the population that is not doing well and we’ve definitely seen an increase in visits. We’ve seen an increase in calls and we’re continuing to do what we can.” He added, “The issue that we have is some of the precautions we have to take in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 or the potential of it happening at our facility is we’ve had to limit the amount of people that we take in in order to maintain proper physical distancing. So we have people in there, our staff are in there. We put up some plexiglass around our intake area to protect staff and protect guests.”

https://media.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/1977/files/2020/04/1-GRACE-INN-NEWSM.mp3 The number of people accommodated at the shelter has been cut from 21 to just under 16.