Hannah Estabrook, executive director of the nonprofit The Sanctuary Collective, wants to create a new Sanctuary Night drop-in center, the first full-time facility to serve prostitutes and victims of human trafficking in Columbus. The center would be created from a fixer-upper home on Sullivant Avenue, the major corridor through Franklinton and the Hilltop that was the subject of a three-part Dispatch series detailing problems with prostitution, drugs, vacant and boarded-up homes and other problems.

The windows of the little blue and white house on Sullivant Avenue are mostly either broken or boarded up. The paint is peeling and the gutters dented and hanging. Weeds snake up the exterior walls. The inside is a disaster.

Yet when Hannah Estabrook clicked the button to flash photos of the fixer-upper on a screen for the crowd who squeezed into a packed Franklinton meeting room Tuesday night, cheers and applause filled the air. In this broken home at 1195 Sullivant Ave., Estabrook sees only promise and hope for the future of the women who walk the streets of the neighborhood.

"We're just this baby organization with a really grand dream," said Estabrook, who plans to turn the home recently purchased for almost $40,000 into Sanctuary Night, a place that would be the first full-time drop-in center in Columbus to serve prostitutes and victims of human trafficking. "The women need a refuge ... a place that is communicating, by our very presence, that you are so worthy, that if you want out of the life, we'll help you."

>> Suffering on Sullivant: Read the Dispatch series

Estabrook, executive director of Sanctuary Night and its overarching nonprofit, the Sanctuary Collective, unveiled plans for the center on the day that the last installment of a three-day Dispatch investigation "Suffering on Sullivant" was published. She referenced the series and its statistics, including how, of the 1,880 prostitution arrests in the city between 2017 and July of this year, more than half were on Sullivant or just steps away.

She displayed a Dispatch map illustrating those numbers, and pointed to the largest circles representing the most arrests. "This is us, y'all. We are right here, right where we need to be," she told the crowd of community leaders, activists, advocates, supporters and friends who had gathered at the Idea Foundry on State Street to hear about the project. "We want to turn 'Suffering on Sullivant' into 'Sanctuary on Sullivant.'"

There are three drop-in centers operating on Sullivant now (including the existing Sanctuary Night, which has operated out of Lower Lights Ministries for two years), but each is open only a few hours a week. Elsewhere in Franklinton, the Salvation Army recently opened a drop-in center on Mound Street with more hours, operating all day Wednesdays and Fridays.

Estabrook hopes to open the new Sanctuary Night in June 2020. She is trying to raise $150,000 to rehabilitate the building and recruit crews with a goal of operating as many as 60 hours a week initially. She then hopes to be open 24/7 within the first year. The zoning in the neighborhood already allows it, but a parking variance likely must be obtained.

There is little empirical research on the effectiveness of drop-in centers for human trafficking victims. But Stephany Powell doesn't need to see the evidence of their success on paper. She sees it first-hand every day.

A retired vice unit sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department, she now runs Journey Out, an organization that helps adult victims of sex trafficking in the San Fernando Valley of California. Powell travels the country speaking on the topic and helping other organizations with their work.

Journey Out's drop-in center, which serves about 350 women a year, is open all day weekdays and has a crisis team available from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m. in case someone shows up at the door.

It operates in an office building with apartments next door and an elementary school across the street. Powell said there has never been resistance to the work it does, which includes full wrap-around services of counseling, job coaching, group sessions and the like.

She said the population it serves, however, is different from that in Columbus. Few, if any, of the women Journey Out sees are drug-addicted. The prostitution there is fueled almost 100% by the demand of violent traffickers, not to support a habit.

Although, while the programming offered at a full-time drop-in center in Columbus might be structured differently, the idea of hope and help remains the same, Powell said.

"A drop-in center is like giving somebody an umbrella when it's still raining. It's a process," Powell said. "The women come to trust us, and when they are ready to get out of the life and seek safety and help, we'll be here."

The existing centers in Columbus provide mostly respite: a kind face, a hot meal, a quiet place to rest, a change of clothes, and the ability to pick up a supply of condoms and Narcan.

There is no accreditation process for drop-in centers in Ohio, but Estabrook plans to have her mentors and peer supporters at the center seek accreditation through the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Sanctuary Night will have, among other things, a kitchen, laundry room, showers, classrooms, and areas to just relax in a quiet environment without fear. A Columbus Public Health clinic is also expected to operate on site.

The hope is that the center will also be a space where the women — many of whom don't trust law enforcement — feel safe reporting crimes that have been committed against them.

What it won't have is beds or cots. No one can live there.

"We are not a shelter, not a treatment center, not sober living," said Estabrook, who currently is coordinator for Franklin County's Municipal CATCH Court, which serves victims of human trafficking who have been ticketed or arrested. "We want to offer more-robust services for those yo-yo'ing in and out of the lifestyle until they are ready to exit, so that maybe they don't have to enter the criminal justice system."

Estabrook and her husband, Brian, live in Franklinton, and he works for the Franklin County Economic & Development Office and is a Franklinton Area commissioner.

"This is our home," she said. "Being a good neighbor is really important to us."

In some instances, Columbus neighborhoods have not been welcoming to drop-in centers, in part because neighbors are skeptical and activists wonder if the centers entice more prostitutes to an area. Recent plans for what was to be a second 24-hour drop-in center, this one on Sullivant on the Hilltop, have recently fallen through.

But Tuesday night, after Estabrook's presentation, a man standing at the very back of room raised his hand and spoke up.

"Hannah," he said. "We're going to be your immediate neighbor. And we say bring it!" The crowd cheered.

He was Trent Smith, who happens to be the executive director of the Franklinton Board of Trade but was there as a resident of West Park Avenue, just around the corner from the new drop-in center. Smith and his wife, Joanna, have offered to host a meeting with neighbors about the project.

Trent Smith sees the prostitution, drug abuse and human trafficking that ravage the neighborhood taking place everywhere — in the alleys, behind the buildings, on the street corners.

"There is no place for these women to go," he said. "On this street and in this neighborhood is where they need the help. This will work."

For more information visit www.sanctuarynight.com.

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah