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The Delonis Center homeless shelter in downtown Ann Arbor.

(Katie McLean | The Ann Arbor News)

As temperatures plunged below zero last winter, the Delonis Center homeless shelter in downtown Ann Arbor found its emergency overnight warming center in high demand.

On several nights, the number of people who came through the doors seeking warmth was nearly double the 50 people the space can appropriately accommodate, the shelter reported.

Different from the 75-bed residential program the shelter operates year-round, the seasonal overnight warming center consists of laying down mats on the shelter's cafeteria floor for those who want to escape the cold and rest up for the night before going back on the streets.

As local officials make plans to expand emergency shelter services this winter, more attention is being given to the fact that Ann Arbor has become a place where other southeast Michigan communities bring their homeless.

Local officials say the problem only seems to be getting worse, causing overcrowding issues for the Delonis Center.

"All we're trying to say is it's wrong for other jurisdictions or institutions in other jurisdictions to just dump people here or encourage people to come here when they don't know that there's a place here for them," said Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, which runs the Delonis Center.

Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, which runs the Delonis Center.

Schulmeister said hospitals, churches and even police from other communities have been transporting homeless people, including those with mental health and substance abuse problems, to the Delonis Center in Ann Arbor.

When the shelter conducted a count this past February, it found half the people at the overnight warming center were not from Washtenaw County.

Through all last winter, 230 people who used the overnight warming center -- about 38 percent -- were not county residents, the shelter reported.

Counting both the residential program and the warming center, 35 percent of the people served by the Delonis Center last fiscal year were not county residents, Schulmeister said, noting that's up from 25 percent a few years ago.

In all, there were 605 people who stayed at the overnight warming center last winter, which is up from 432 two winters ago, and 373 three winters ago.

Schulmeister said there's a seasonal increase in homeless people from other jurisdictions being dropped off in Ann Arbor in the winter months.

"Two separate hospitals in Detroit have cabbed people here," she said, adding she's also aware of a church in Westland that has filtered many people to the shelter.

Schulmeister said the church put six people in a van one night, dropped them off at the door of the shelter at 9 p.m., and then drove away.

"We called them the next day and said, 'What the heck are you doing?' They said, 'Well, they're better off on the streets of Ann Arbor than they are on the streets of Westland, even if they don't have shelter,' which is ridiculous," Schulmeister said.

A homeless encampment under a bridge along the Huron River in Ann Arbor as seen on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014.

"They even went as far to say, 'OK, we won't drive them there anymore. We'll just give them a bus ticket and you won't know where they came from.' That, to me, is outrageous that somebody would do that."

Schulmeister said sometimes people have legal issues they need to resolve in other communities, and trying to do so while homeless in Ann Arbor is a formidable task.

"Many people come without appropriate clothing or medications," Schulmeister said, adding it's a real challenge to serve those people.

"Natural support systems such as friends and family are also not accessible when someone is geographically transported out of their community," she said. "We end up having to spend more of our resources to resolve homelessness in these cases, including transporting people back to their community."

The situation has gotten to the point where local officials have had discussions about instituting a policy of serving only Washtenaw County residents at the Delonis Center.

It's an idea John Hieftje, Ann Arbor's recently retired mayor, has brought up on multiple occasions, including at his last meeting on Nov. 6.

Hieftje said the shelter was paid for by the people of Washtenaw County and thrives on contributions from people in the community who have an expectation that it's going to be taking care of people from Washtenaw County for the most part.

If the percentage of non-county residents staying at the shelter continues to climb, Hieftje said, he's not sure there are many other options.

"Our community can certainly not solve the homeless issue on its own, because the better we get at it, it appears that more people will come," he said. "We need to make sure we can take care of the people of Washtenaw County."

The Delonis Center has an annual budget of about $2.5 million, and $175,000 comes from the state with the stipulation that the shelter can't deny service to people from other jurisdictions. So, if the shelter were to institute a policy saying it only was going to serve people from Washtenaw County, that $175,000 could go away.

Schulmeister said people coming from outside of Washtenaw County and seeking placement in the Delonis Center's residential program will be placed on the wait list, but the shelter does give some preference to county residents.

"If we have people from Washtenaw County, we're going to serve them first," Schulmeister said. "And to me, that's our job, because 94 percent of the money we get is local donations or locally controlled money. So if that's our budget and that's who's paying for us, that's who we should be serving."

About 53 percent of the shelter's funding comes from private donations and local foundations, while 22 percent comes from local government, 13 percent from federal sources, and 12 percent from the state.

For now, Ann Arbor officials are trying to use their lobbyist, Kirk Profit, to open doors in Lansing and convince state officials to step up and help other communities in southeast Michigan adequately serve their needy populations.

"We need to do what we can to encourage the state to expand human services throughout the region," said Christopher Taylor, Ann Arbor's new mayor.

"The best solution is to have the state and other jurisdictions step up and do what needs to be done to take care of people in need," Taylor said, adding it's not Ann Arbor's role to be the human services provider for southeast Michigan.

"Caring for the needy among us is an important community value here in Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor. We, as a consequence, devote considerable resources to human services, and this is right and proper," Taylor said of the $1.24 million the city gives annually to nonprofit human service providers, money that is matched by millions of additional dollars from the county, United Way and other groups.

"Neighboring jurisdictions in the state have not made human services the same priority, and as a consequence, we attract people in need and serve as a pressure valve for other jurisdictions," Taylor said. "This is not fair to the residents of Washtenaw County."

Ann Arbor City Council Member Jane Lumm, an independent from the 2nd Ward, shares the same concerns.

"We are accepting responsibility and have been for these other communities that have not been stepping up to the plate the way Ann Arbor has and that cannot continue," Lumm said, agreeing that the Delonis Center's donors want to help people from Washtenaw County, and the shelter's ability to do that is being undermined.

"We're all ready to roll up our sleeves and do whatever we can to reach out to these other communities and apply the necessary pressure to open those doors," she said.

Schulmeister said it's a very sensitive subject and she doesn't blame the people who are coming here from other communities. She said they deserve help, but the Delonis Center only has room and resources for so many people.

"It's really the inhumane dumping of people that I am more concerned with than anything else, and the fact that we are here primarily for Washtenaw County," she said. "When a hospital puts somebody in a cab to a shelter, and they have no idea whether there's a bed there or not, that is unconscionable."

Schulmeister said the Delonis Center isn't going to turn people away on a freezing night just because they're from another community. She said the shelter might let them stay the night and then try to find a better place for them the next day.

"When somebody comes here, they need to be evaluated to see if we can help them or not," she said. "If we can't help them and it's ill-advised for them to be here, we should offer to help them to reconnect to where they were."

Schulmeister said there are some people who come here from other places and think of the Delonis Center as a free hotel they can stay at until they establish themselves, but they have no clue how expensive it is to live in Ann Arbor.

"Lots of people see that Ann Arbor has the lowest unemployment rate, so they come to get a job," she said. "But then when they get a job, they find out they can't find housing, so it's like a moot point. And you can't stay at the shelter forever. So there's lots of stuff about Ann Arbor that people don't know."

Making a case for investing more public money in affordable housing, Hieftje offered his own assessment at his last meeting earlier this month.

"Ann Arbor suffers from the same thing that many communities that are similar suffer from," he said. "If there's a high demand for people to live in your community, you are going to have high housing prices, and that's very hard to avoid."

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com or 734-623-2529 or follow him on Twitter.