Haven Home survives power outage without generator

Cindy Rios, executive director of The Haven Home, a shelter for pregnant mothers and mothers with young children, put out an appeal for food early Thursday morning. The shelter in Slavic Village has been without power since Tuesday’s summer storm, and without a generator they could not cook for the shelter’s 10 families – including six children under the age of five.

“We started thinking about what we were going to do, how we were going to handle this,” Rios said.

Offers to bring sandwiches and dinner quickly came in.

When the storm hit, the families hid in the shelter’s den and cool basement, but when the power outage continued, they moved to the gymnasium of St. Elizabeth Baptist Church, which is on the same property as the shelter.

Families can’t do laundry or take a hot shower. Most rely on their phones for everything from making doctor’s appointments to contacting family members to keeping the kids entertained, Rios said.

“This is a great group of resilient women,” Rios said. Many have experienced worse, sleeping in cars, outside or in places where they were not welcome before coming to the shelter, which helps families transition into permanent housing. “But at the same time, the longer this goes on, the more patience they wear out.”

Rios had hoped some of the families could be housed at Laura’s Home, another shelter, but they too were without power. Power companies should prioritize restoring power to the shelters, Rios said. She also tried booking rooms at local hotels, but they were mostly full and too expensive.

About half of the residents were able to find a place to charge their devices or stay overnight, but some do not have family.

“If we had a generator for the whole building,” Rios says, “it would be a minor blip for us.” But right now, the shelter cannot afford to buy and install such a generator.