Citing low occupancy, Catholic Charities will close its temporary warming center for families on its Rising Strong campus in northeast Spokane Sunday.

Instead, the nonprofit will offer families and single adults vouchers to use at local hotels.

The warming center opened in 2019 and was expected to operate only through that winter. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which created the need for more shelter space as guests were forced to practice social distancing, it never closed.

The use of the temporary family warming center has recently waned, making it more efficient for Catholic Charities and its partners – including Family Promise and the City of Spokane – to offer hotel vouchers, according to Dawn Kinder, Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington’s vice president of stabilization services.

The plans are still being finalized, but those who stay at hotels are expected to receive case management.

Typically, the funding Catholic Charities and other nonprofits rely on to provide services restricts the use of hotel vouchers. But COVID-19 aid is more flexible, Kinder said.

The family warming center has capacity for more than 60 guests, but has recently slept between three and 15 people, Kinder said, partly because almost all of the families it has served have found more stable housing.

It’s also typical, Kinder said, for demand at family shelters to decrease over the winter, while shelters for single adults struggle to accommodate every guest.

“It’s a pretty traditional trajectory … they’re having huge demand and limited capacity,” Kinder said.

Family Promise, which operates the Open Doors shelter for families, has had space available, Kinder noted.

The warming center was located on the same campus, but in a separate building, as its Rising Strong program, which provides housing and drug treatment to families at risk of homelessness. Rising Strong is located at the site of the former Holy Names convent, which Catholic Charities purchased in 2016.