Four years in the making, the new Bartillon Men’s Shelter is set to open on September 1st and welcome guests into the new space. The shelter, run by Porchlight, is giving guests the resources to work towards permanent housing is the main goal of this center and not using the temporary drop-in shelter model, making it one of a kind in Madison, said Porchlight Executive Director Karla Thennes. Madison’s other facilities specialize in temporary and emergency shelter.
What makes this shelter stand out even more from Madison’s other shelters is the demographics. The Bartillon Shelter, operated by Porchlight with funding from the City of Madison and Dane County, will specialize in serving Madison’s most vulnerable homeless men: elderly men 65 years of age or older, men with very serious physical health issues, and those in hospice. Those who rank on the Coordinated Entry’s vulnerability score are eligible to get a spot in the limited 250 beds. This is a common assessment of an individual’s vulnerability and complicating factors in the context of homelessness and housing services.
“It leaves out a lot of people,” said Thennes, who has worked with the organization for 35 years. ”That will be shocking. I mean, it’s certainly been shocking to us. It’ll be shocking to the community. But this is where we’re at, and so it will be different.”
The Zeier Road shelter, a temporary shelter also operated by Porchlight that serves 325 people a night, will be closing the same day the Bartillon shelter opens, September 1st. This difference in beds means there are 75 fewer beds available for homeless men seeking shelter in Madison, which has caused some apprehension about the project.
This choice was due to the rising percentage of homeless elderly people in Madison. Thennes notes this is due to tenuous Madison housing and social services that don’t keep up with the cost of living.
Bartillion was built to be better equipped to meet these men’s specific needs. The entire layout of this building is intentional, with every inch designed to serve a purpose.
On September 1, guests who were offered beds will be transported from the Zeier Road shelter by Porchlight to the new shelter and will be oriented to the new space through tours in groups of 50 at a time.
For the first 90 days, the shelter will only operate as an overnight shelter. Once everyone gets their bearings, the goal is to shift to a full 24/7 schedule.
When guests enter, their first stop will be security. In the beginning, security will be available from 5 pm to 8 am, then all hours of the day as the shelter moves toward 24-hour operations. Previously, at other Porchlight shelters, security was used only for intake.
In addition to physical security, cameras are posted throughout the building for full coverage.
These security changes are intended to make guests feel safe and more confident in the shelter.
Porchlight conducted a survey of guests at their other shelters to see how they could improve; safety for themselves and their belongings in the shelter was their number one concern.
To further security, every bed has a locker next to it to have a secure way to store property.
The bed bug furnace, where guests can put their belongings in as a preventative or treatment to the pests, also helps protect guests.
Near security is the caseworkers’ offices. Onsite, the caseworkers help the shelter’s guests work through the process to obtain the documents and requirements to obtain a stable job and housing. This includes things like getting official identification, work uniforms, security deposits, bus funds, and social services.
They also have acquired grant diversion funds to help with homelessness outside the shelter’s population.
In this setup, the doubled-in-size caseworker team can meet with ten men a night to work through their goals in depth.
This is also the first Porchlight shelter where staff will have a break room.
Beyond their offices is the large lounge space.
“During the day I can just see all these tables, a group of people playing checkers or a game of cards, somebody else is sitting and helping somebody fill out an appointment application,” said Thennes. “I just see this busy hustle place, but if somebody wants to chill, they can step outside to the patio and chill, and relax out there.”
In the open area, Porchlight is hoping to bring over interns from nearby Madison College to staff the computer lab. There, they want Madison College students to help shelter guests with IT and basic computer skills, like creating an email.
The students can further be integrated into the shelter by helping in the kitchen and other needs like hair care.
Connected to this area is the cafeteria and the kitchen. Thennes is enthusiastic about the future opportunities the shelter’s new industrial kitchen has to offer for Madison.
As a step towards the main goal of permanent housing, the shelter has plans to employ shelter guests in the kitchen. This will allow guests to build culinary work experience that could lead to a restaurant job.
Safe Haven, another Porchlight shelter which serves daily meals, will now be getting their meals delivered from the Barillon instead of preparing the meals at the Safe Haven building. This is more efficient to make the meals in a kitchen that is prepared to already make large quantities of food.
On opening day, lunch and dinner will be served here and guests will stay that night with grab-and-go breakfast in the morning.
Adjacent to the kitchen is the medical office. They have a medical space being operated by Madison Street Medicine. Porchlight was able to provide Street Medicine the materials they needed, like an exam table and new supplies.
They also have four quarantine rooms outfitted with a bed, a personal toilet, and a shower. These rooms are for individuals who need a quieter, secluded place while receiving medical care, such as people receiving care for mental health, contagious disease, or patients discharged from the hospital who may need more attentive care.
As for sleeping areas, the first floor consists of accessible beds to accommodate men with physical disabilities. Most of the beds and showers are on the second floor.
Guests are grouped into pods of 10 beds with separation to create a calm and semi-private area. In the survey, guests also noted that having available outlets to charge their phones and devices was another big need.
The building was also built with efficiency in mind. The building is equipped with solar panels, rainwater recycling to flush the toilets, and geothermal energy for heating.
This building came a long way from Porchlight’s origins in as a response to two people freezing to death on the streets of Madison in 1984. The community and faith groups got together to create a men’s shelter with the goal of preventing these types of deaths. Thenne reflects on this as she walks through the new building.
“To be able to come to this amazing space that the city and county have built and that we are blessed to operate, I still can’t even believe it. Our guests are very excited,” she said.
The waitlist is another innovative part of this shelter.
Instead of applying to be contacted when one of the limited beds is open, the Homeless Management System, a tool used nationally, is proactively seeking out individuals who connect with Madison’s network outreach services to find those that are the best fit. This way they can streamline the process and make sure once a guest finds permanent housing their old bed can be filled immediately.
In preparation for opening day, guests received contracts about the mission of the Bartillon shelter and how their stay works.
Guests staying in the shelter have 90 days to find stable housing on their own if they are not interested in working with a caseworker. However, past this time case management with the shelter or with outside services is required to continue staying at the permanent housing-oriented shelter.
“It’s not a shelter where the only goal is that people don’t freeze to death. Folks are not just going to sit here and say, ‘Well, this is the new place where I’m living, for five years,’” Thennes said. “Our goal is, you have individual needs and wants and goals, and we have them for you also. Let’s work together to get you moving up and out.”
Every quarter, Porchlight is inviting services to connect people with the resources for their specific goals. These can be as direct as connecting people with food stamps or as complicated as work people through the process of communicating with landlords and applying for affordable housing.
For many this start is registering for a new ID to start the process of reaching their goals. Additionally, for a population consisting largely of elderly men and veterans, getting connected with disability social services is another large goal.
As long as guests are working toward their housing goals, there is no time limit for their residence in the shelter.
The funding for this building is on the city’s mind. The previous Porchlight shelter cost around $600,000 per year to operate, a drastic difference from the Bartillon shelter where the overnight program alone is projected to cost $3.5 million.
This cost is being met largely by the City of Madison and Dane County providing about half and Shelter Friends of Dane County providing a similar amount through fundraising. The rest of the funding comes from Porchlight and private donors.
In the fall, the organization will apply for grants to fund the overnight portion of the shelter. These grants are vital to pay for staff, utilities, cleaning, and security.
“We need a year’s worth of funding so we can open 24/7,” Thennes said. “The city has already put in two million dollars into an endowment for us. We need the community to be invested in this day program and to see the value of the day services.”
This support allows Porchlight to keep focusing on its other projects like affordable housing.
Looking towards the future, Thennes is excited for the array of volunteer opportunities. These opportunities will be opened in 2027 to give the shelter guests and staff time to establish themselves and work out the kinks.
Additionally, while Porchlight was making the transfer into their new space, they temporarily paused the donations of goods.
On October 5, they will reopen receiving donations from the community. They plan to post their specific need on their website, but in the meantime, these needs will be posted on their Facebook.
