Aurora to Operate Its Own Warming Shelter This Winter with Increased Funding

Aurora is taking direct control of its winter warming shelter this year, marking a shift from previous arrangements where the city contracted with local churches and nonprofits. The city will hire and pay staff directly to manage the shelter, alongside relying on volunteers. This change is expected to cost just over $150,000, a 15% increase from last year, when the city paid Becoming Oswego church $135,000 to operate the shelter, according to Nicole Mullins, Aurora’s chief community services officer.

The increased cost for this coming winter assumes the center will operate for 90 days with an average of 30 guests per day. Staffing will include 17 temporary employees, such as a manager, six leads, and 12 aides, along with paid security and volunteers. The city plans to continue operating the shelter at 712 S. River St. in Aurora from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. when temperatures are at or below 32 degrees for at least six hours.

Advocates from Becoming Oswego, the group that previously ran the shelter, said they always intended to hand control over to the city. Now, those advocates say they have more time to expand efforts in Kendall County, which has stirred some controversy, along with filling resource gaps for people living unhoused in Aurora.

“The Aurora-based warming center was born out of churches needing to come together to fill the need until Aurora could really have the time to really invest fully into it,” said Annie Fish, who was executive director of the Aurora Winter Warming Center last winter when it was operated by Becoming Oswego.

Before having Becoming Oswego operate the center last winter, Aurora contracted with Wesley United Methodist Church in Aurora, which ran the warming center the previous year. Before contracting with Wesley, the city operated its warming center at the Aurora Transportation Center, starting in 2014.

Mullins said the city aims this year to better meet its established protocols, documentation requirements, fiscal controls, contractual boundaries, and a consistent standard of accountability at the warming center in Aurora. She said meeting these standards posed challenges when contracting with nonprofits in previous years.

“When you have a people-centered organization wanting to meet the need and they see all the need … it’s not always realistic or appropriate for the city to fill all of those things,” she said. “That really was at the root of a lot of the issues.”

Mullins also said she hopes having dedicated staff at the warming center can help better distribute the workload and alleviate a sense of burnout volunteers felt in previous years.

“They were heavily reliant on volunteers,” she said. “There was a significant amount of burnout from the last two contractors.”

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