St. Anne's Center

OGDEN - Weber County's two homeless shelters were overflowing before Tuesday's winter storm hit but, oddly enough, the storm didn't make matters worse. It's a matter of timing, said Jennifer Canter, director of St. Anne's Center. "I stood during lunch and told everyone that I didn't want anyone sleeping outside," she said Wednesday morning. And after lunch she gave out hundreds of coats and blankets and gloves. "But as I was doing that, I knew that a lot of those people wouldn't come back." They didn't. There were only 12 men sleeping in the center's "overflow shelter," really the floor of the shelter's lobby. Normally, it has double that.

St. Anne's has been dealing with heavy traffic for more than a month. Cold weather has driven some homeless people to seek shelter, but the housing crisis has also forced more families, and women with children, to seek the center's help. St. Anne's opened its lobby as an "overflow shelter" for men at the end of October. It is negotiating with the Salvation Army to use the Army's former women's residential drug treatment program rooms as an overflow to take women and children because families, especially, have been showing up at the shelter more. The four family rooms at St. Anne's are already holding three families each, just women and children.

Canter said the goal is to help the people who use St. Anne's deal with the winter as well as make it clear to them that there is no reason they have to sleep out of doors. That was why, she said, she was actually worried that giving out blankets and coats might send the wrong message. She was worried people would use the coats and blankets to try to stay warm outside.

It appears that Tuesday night, at least, many of them did just that. The dorms were full, as usual, but only a dozen slept in the overflow of the lobby. Canter said Tuesday night was a special circumstance, Some people are always reluctant to sleep inside, but she thinks the timing of the storm made more stay away.

The shelter serves lunch at noon, so everyone was gone by 2 p.m. at the latest. People aren't allowed back in to sleep until 6 p.m., but the worst of the storm hit Ogden at 4 p.m. Rather than wait around for two hours, Canter said, a lot of people probably huddled up in vacant buildings or other places, or camped out while the storm front went through and then just stayed the night where they were.

The lobby floor is open to anyone, Canter said. Normally, the shelter won't allow people who have been drinking or who don't have identification to sleep in the dormitories. But anyone, no matter what, can sleep in the lobby. The Ogden Rescue Mission also was full. Workers there said Wednesday about 20 people slept in the chapel in addition to the 14 the mission can take in.

The National Weather Service said the worst of the storm, which included blizzard warnings, was past but cold weather would continue this week. Today is expected to be partly sunny with a 20 percent chance of snow in the morning, then clearer with a high temperature of about 21 degrees. Tonight's low will be about 6 degrees. Friday and Saturday will be slightly warmer and clearer, but another snowstorm is predicted to hit Sunday.

Homeless people weren't the only ones the storm sent looking for shelter earlier than normal. Utah Highway Patrol said an analysis of Tuesday's highways found that there was a 1 percent reduction in traffic volume. In addition, so many left work early to beat the storm, which was predicted to hit Top of Utah right at the start of rush hour, that peak traffic volumes were two hours earlier than usual.