DESK Preps For Temp Relocation, Major Renovations

A commercial kitchen and health clinic are coming to State Street’s Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen next year — as the long-time homelessness services provider prepares to temporarily relocate so that it can build out its latest location to better support a growing number of people facing housing and income insecurity.

The drop-in center known as DESK will close down operations at its 266 State St. site from July through January — and will relocate its work in the interim to an Olive Street church, with its full staff intact. All of that will take place as DESK performs a $4.2 million overhaul of the three-floor space on State Street.

That’s the latest in the 30-year-old organization’s work to make meals, case management, and safe shelter available and accessible for a growing number of people with no place to go but the streets in the face of an affordable housing crisis.

“Over the last three years the numbers have increased in ways I haven’t seen since I’ve been working in homelessness services,” said Steve Werlin, who has served as DESK’s executive director for six years and who worked at the homeless shelter Columbus House prior to that. ​“We’ve been seeing the numbers going up in the last six to eight months — I don’t know exactly how to account for that. The biggest factor for unhoused folks is just the lack of affordable housing,” he said, observing that even past the pandemic the number of people looking for dinners from DESK has doubled from an average of 100 to 200 per night. 

DESK staff currently cook up and serve hot meals at Center Church on the Green at 311 Temple St. and offer food pantry services at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church at 57 Olive St. That’s in addition to offering a warm space on State Street where people in need can stop by during the day to get out of the cold and meet outreach workers hired to help them connect with housing, employment, income assistance or mental health services.

Originally established in 1987 under the title ​“Downtown Cooperative Ministries,” what’s now known as DESK was an informal partnership of churches aiming to ​“respond to the need that was right outside their front doors during the rise in homelessness in the 1980s,” Werlin said. At that time, he said around 20 to 30 people would gather for meals each night at a different host church.

“It’s really hard to be moving around every night,” Werlin said, and difficult to keep those looking for a meal informed as to where to find one. By the mid-2000s, DESK was providing drop-in resources out of a church basement on Temple Street — which Werlin described as difficult to locate and limited in space.

The group moved into their State Street location in 2021 following the start of the pandemic in a move to create an independent, visible and accessible homeless services hub, with the outstanding aim to renovate the site into a broader resource center over time.

The renovation will rehab the first floor drop-in site at State Street to provide a ​“formal cafe area,” pictured above, to replace the current set up of ​“plastic table cloths” and cramped conditions, as Werlin described it. ​“It provides a little more dignity, it provides a space where people feel comfortable, welcome, and like they’re not going to be asked to leave — it’s an opportunity to build up an atmosphere that foments trust and brings people together in a positive way.”

The basement of the center, which is presently used for storage, will be converted into a commercial kitchen to prepare regular meals on site. The second floor will be leased to Cornell Hill Scott Health Center and converted into a formal medical clinic with rooms for individual health consultations in addition to general case management and support services.

Right now, Werlin said, there is little private, designated space to delineate the various services DESK offers its clients. ​“There are very personal conversations about peoples’ mental health happening around 150 other people,” he said. ​“This will allow us to say, hey, let’s go upstairs and talk about this or look at this thing on your foot.”

Werlin said that most homeless resource hubs that he’s observed begin with medical clinics or harm reduction initiatives that offer groceries and meals as supplementary or secondary services. Because DESK began as a food pantry and meals program, Werlin said he is hopeful that many extant clients have already built the trust often necessary to get individuals skeptical of institutional healthcare to accept medical care, evaluations and referrals.

“It’s a cool model. It’s not something that’s been done in a lot of cities,” he said.

The construction on the project is expected to start in July and wrap in January. During that time, DESK will work out of St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church at 57 Olive Street.

The undertaking is primarily funded through public dollars (read more about that here and check out a list of funding sources for the initiative here.) But, Werlin said, DESK is still in need of hundreds of thousands more to complete the renovations as hoped for.

Individuals and private organizations can donate to the renovation here. 

“This is gonna be a game changer,” Werlin stated.