Cold Weather Shelter Searching For New Location

Cookeville Community Cares is searching for a new location to host its cold weather shelter after its partnership ended with the Cookeville Rescue Mission.

Recovery Kitchen Co-Founder Justin Veals said the winter shelter housed people next to the rescue mission’s men’s shelter until it had to leave a couple weeks ago. Veals said the partnership was not working out because the rescue mission focuses on recovery while the winter shelter is designed just to get people out of the cold.

“Some of these individuals have severe mental illness or they are lost in active substance use or they’re fleeing domestic violence,” Veals said. “There’s all these traumatic things going on in their lives and when you get forty or fifty of them together sometimes things happen that you would prefer not to happen.”

Veals said one church has already reached out to discuss hosting the cold weather shelter. Veals said the group is still exploring its options since the shelter only requires four walls, heating, and some bathrooms to function.

“We can make everything else happen,” Veals said. “Ideally we need to start working on a permanent location for next year so that we’re not at the whim of another landlord to offer this very, very important service.”

Veals said he and his wife are still working with the local homeless population and providing hot meals as they can. Veals said the situation is disheartening but he and his wife will continue to do what they can.

“I had a woman who is on disability, she has a dog so there was like nowhere shelter-wise that I could refer her to,” Veals said. “So I ended up calling a local church who ended up putting her up in a motel for a few days just to give her a break and get her warm.”

Veals said his main concern is that the Cookeville area has at least one week a year where the temperatures get down to the single digits. Veals said he wants to make sure that no one dies or is irreparably damaged by the extreme cold weather, which he said usually comes in January.

“Whether they have homes or not, these people are my neighbors and I care about them and I want to help them,” Veals said.

Veals said the cold weather shelter was originally established to aid the local homeless population during an ice storm that came three years ago.