Charitable and religious leaders push for overnight warming center in Belleville
Local charitable and religious leaders are asking the city of Belleville to allow them to operate an overnight warming center for homeless people and others who don’t have a place to stay during frigid weather.
City Council members tabled a vote Monday night, saying they need more information before making a decision that could have not only local but regional implications.
Under the proposed plan, the center would be open from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. when temperatures are 20 degrees or below, according to Kara Moore, board member and director of development for TOCO, or Tapestry of Community Offerings, which is spearheading the effort.
“We want to give people a safe place to go overnight, just a few nights a year, to keep them from dying on the street,” she said.
Cathedral of St. Peter Catholic Church has offered the use of McCormick Center, a large venue with a gymnasium, for the warming center. It’s downtown at 301 S. First St.
The Rev. Godfrey Mullen, Cathedral’s pastor, also is serving as Catholic Diocese of Belleville administrator until a new bishop is appointed. He said “it doesn’t take a genius” to see that there are people in the community who don’t have a place to live.
Mullen pointed to a fundamental church teaching that every human being has dignity, and he quoted Jesus saying, “What you did for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did for me.”
“We have space (at McCormick Center),” Mullen said. “We have heat. And so I think the idea is, when God has given us the gifts that we have, we’re to share them for the good of all, for the common good, and that’s really what’s at the heart of it.”
TOCO also is collaborating with St. Vincent de Paul Cathedral Conference and other organizations that have been part of a Homelessness Assistance Programs Network.
Representatives have been meeting with city officials, including police Sgt. Sam Parsons, who is in charge of code enforcement, for the past two years about how to alleviate problems with homelessness in Belleville, according to Moore and Maria Maloy, a TOCO volunteer.
Request for special-use permit
In January, TOCO applied to the city for a special-use permit to operate an Emergency Weather Overnight Center. The Belleville Zoning Board of Appeals held a hearing Feb. 7 and voted 4-2 to recommend approval.
A City Council vote on the permit request was placed on Monday night’s meeting agenda, but alderpersons tabled it 15-0. Ward 5 Alderman Ed Dintelman was absent.
“I’m not saying I’m for or against it,” said Mayor Jenny Gain Meyer on Tuesday. “But I can tell you that I’m on board with the alderpersons when they say we need a lot more information. We need a viable plan in our hands and not just, ‘Well, we might do this,’ and ‘We’ll probably do that.’ We need to know what’s being proposed.”
Meyer said homelessness is a regional problem, and solutions must reflect that reality.
Requests for special-use permits go straight to the Zoning Board, not through City Council committees. A few aldermen attended the Feb. 7 hearing, but others received only a brief synopsis.
Meyer said several aldermen and city staff members expressed concern about the proposed warming center before the meeting, and she recommended that they “slow down,” meet with the parties involved and get all their questions answered before making a decision.
On Monday night, the motion to table was made by Kathy Kaiser, alderwoman for Ward 5, where the warming center would be located.
“I have numerous questions ... about the logistics and the location,” she said Tuesday. “It just didn’t seem like they had a very concise plan for what all this will entail, not just for Belleville but also regionally.”
Prescreening for public safety
Moore and Maloy, who spoke at the City Council meeting in support of a warming center, said the organizations do have a plan, and it emphasizes public safety.
They said people who regularly participate in TOCO programs would be prescreened to keep sex offenders and those with criminal records out. People with no heat because of storms or other emergencies could be approved through the city’s General and Community Assistance program.
Moore estimates that the warming center would be open 10 nights a year at most. The plan calls for a maximum of 20 visitors, as well as volunteer supervisors, with at least one trained in CPR and first aid.
“When it’s 20 degrees or below, that’s when the body starts to break down,” Maloy said, noting that homeless people have frozen to death in Belleville. “It’s very dangerous for the human body.”
When the warming center closes at 8 a.m., visitors would be required to leave and, if needed, given a bus pass or walking directions to a daytime warming center, according to Moore.
Belleville has four places designated as daytime warming centers. They include both branches of Belleville Public Library, Southwestern Illinois College and The Salvation Army.
The charitable and religious organizations staged a “dry run” on Jan. 21 to see how a warming center would operate. Cathedral hosted an interfaith service followed by a soup supper and overnight “lock-in.”
“It went extremely well,” Maloy said. “We had seven people stay (along with 10 volunteers). The city had given the cots to us. We had donations of pillows and blankets, and students at one of the schools had written cards with words of encouragement. In the morning, every one of the people who stayed helped us clean up.”
The Salvation Army St. Clair County Corps operated a homeless shelter in Belleville for about 30 years. It closed in 2009 after the City Council passed an ordinance requiring people to provide identification to police so they could do background checks.
Officials argued that this step was necessary because the shelter had housed sex offenders and people recently released from prison. The organization rejected the requirement, citing client confidentiality.
Moore and Maloy said a warming center would be completely different from a homeless shelter because of its operation only at night and only when temperatures were 20 degrees or below.
This story was originally published March 5, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
