We’ve already reported today on the effort of a prominent Waynesboro Democrat to prevent the city from providing a $500,000 grant toward an affordable-housing project.
Here, we’re going to report on the efforts of a local nonprofit that provides shelter for the unhoused, and how busy it was in the most recent cold-weather season.
These two stories need to be told together.
ICYMI
Waynesboro Area Refuge Ministry reported this week that it served 198 adult men and women over the course of the 18-week cold-weather season for 2025-2026 that concluded on March 30.
Those 198 people used WARM’s shelters for a total of 4,308 individual stays – so, an average of 21.8 stays per person, or about once a week for the season.
Approximately 13,000 meals were provided by host churches, partner churches, restaurants, businesses, civic organizations and individuals through the WARM program.
That adds up – working out to three meals per individual stay.
The data show a 26 percent increase in the number of unhoused people served in the 2025-2026 cold-weather season over the 2024-2025 cold-weather season, and a 12 percent increase in unique stays.
But the important thing is, a retired local attorney and business executive thinks the city should structure a grant toward a 96-unit affordable-housing project as a loan instead, and is willing to block the whole thing from happening to prove her point.
You see why I’m exasperated here.
“The dramatic increase of unsheltered neighbors choosing to stay with WARM during is representative of how inflation and the lack of housing available continues to impact low-income or those living on disability in the Staunton, Augusta County and Waynesboro area,” says Alec Gunn, executive director of WARM.
“All over the area new housing is being constructed, but none of it is affordable to those who work for minimum wage or receive assistance due to physical or mental health diagnoses. Homelessness knows no zip code; our unsheltered neighbors don’t consider themselves from Staunton, Augusta County, or Waynesboro. ‘Home’ is wherever they can find a place to stay,” Gunn said.
How you can help
It’s bad enough that our median household income here in Waynesboro is about 65 percent of the state median; even the average person here is struggling to get by.
Those on the lower rungs have literally no alternatives in a rental market with a vacancy rate at a miniscule 1.8 percent.
We should applaud city leaders for trying to find solutions, instead of threatening lawsuits that could throw cold water on the efforts to get more people into housing.
As it is, we have WARM, which began operations in the winter of 2012, and exists entirely because of the support of a network of local churches that themselves have to fight battles with their members and neighbors to open their doors to the less fortunate among us.
“WARM owes a debt of gratitude to the area faith-based community for opening their doors to our unsheltered neighbors,” Gunn said. “Typically, the shelter runs from evening to morning, many of our church partners kept our neighbors all day when temperatures outside got extremely dangerous. Lives were saved.”
Planning for the 2026-27 cold-weather season has already begun, Gunn said.
“WARM’s goal,” he said, “is to ensure that none of our neighbors should die cold and alone, ever.”
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Chris Graham
