A shelter for Porter County women and children facing housing insecurity is able to serve more people.
Gabriel's Horn was given $270,000 from Porter County's share of federal American Rescue Plan money. Executive Director Jerry Czarnecki says that, along with grants and donations, has enabled the facility to almost double in size.
"We went from having six rooms that we could work with clients, varying sizes, to now having 10 rooms," Czarnecki told the Porter County Commissioners last week. "We currently are housing 10 women and eight children at Gabriel's Horn."
He said the shelter's waiting list has shrunk from five to one, thanks to the added space. It's also been able to renovate and expand its kitchen and common areas, update appliances and improve wheelchair accessibility.
Czarnecki said the funding allocated by the county had a big impact. "There's no way — no way this project would've been done hadn't have appropriated that initial, kind of, seed money for it, that allowed us to spur on with, again, the generosity of the community," Czarnecki added.
Commissioner Jim Biggs said the project proves the benefit of allocating some of the ARPA money to community organizations, even though there was a good case for keeping it within county government.
