ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A St. Augustine shelter is expanding to help more people experiencing homelessness after several years of setbacks.
The St. Francis House is known to help individuals and families with children, while also helping them find permanent housing in the long run.
The new shelter, which will be called the Goff Family Shelter, is on Washington Street in the Lincolnville Historic District. It is two doors down from the St. Francis House, which is the current shelter.
The new shelter is set to open in early 2026, although a specific date has not been determined.
The Goff Family Shelter is on pace to be bigger and house twice as many families with kids.
The St. Augustine Society runs the shelter along with the Port in the Storm Homeless Youth Center.
The society’s executive director, Judith Dembowski, says the new shelter will have 37 beds for families with kids compared to the current capacity of 16 beds.
The St. Francis House has 26 beds for men and 14 beds for single women.
Beyond emergency housing, they help with job connections, medical care and mental health services.
“A lot of them are may be staying with grandma until the landlord puts them out or maybe they are couch surfing or breaking up their families,” Dembowski said of the circumstances many people face before staying in the emergency housing shelter. “They have a child to go with an aunt, a couple of children with grandma and the adults are living with a friend. They are searching for housing, trying to get their families back together. It is a huge need in our community.”
According to Dembowski, they have seen a 30% increase year to date in the number of families and a 72% increase in children in our family shelters this year.
He said building the new shelter has been in the works for a while, but damage from Hurricanes Matthew and Irma in 2016 and 2017 delayed construction, and the COVID-19 pandemic also put things on hold.
She said after the city got a $1.2 million federal grant in 2023, that helped speed things up.
“This gives parents the opportunity to stay with their children,” Dembowski said. “They do not have to when they are experiencing homelessness. Parents will opt to maybe put one child with an aunt or a couple of children with grandma, and then they themselves are couch surfing with friends, trying to find somewhere to live all the while this is very stressful. It is very stressful on the children. This keeps families together. Not in the backseat of cars or not in tents in the woods.”
One addition to the new shelter is that people will be able to do laundry for free.
A laundry facility is going to be built on the first floor of the Goff Family Shelter.
The St. Augustine Society is trying to raise $10,000 to get that work done, and the community can participate.
The society is hosting a “Fall Fling” on Sunday, Sept. 28, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
It will be at the St. Augustine Rod and Gun Club at 401 Gun Club Road.
Admission is $20 for people 11 years old and up. $10 for kids 4 to 10 years old, and free for those 3 and under.
According to the society, there will be food trucks, games for kids, face and pumpkin painting, vendor markets and hay rides.
Dembowski said having the free laundry facility in the same place where nearly 40 families with children can have emergency housing is going to lift a burden for them.
“It will be a place where kids will get clean clothes for school in the morning,” she said. “Parents that we are working with are working hard. A lot of them are economically homeless in this community. They are working two jobs. They are working three jobs. They don’t have time to run to the laundromat before jobs with their children and trying to get homework done and things like that. So they can make sure their uniforms are clean in the morning. They can wash ”blanky" when milk spills."
The St. Francis House is going to remain active even after the Goff Family Shelter opens.