FORT WALTON BEACH — “G.W.” spent Tuesday wandering around Fort Walton Landing. When the winds got too gusty, the 62-year-old homeless man ducked in front of the Emerald Coast Science Center.
About 3:30 p.m., he headed to the night’s cold night shelter at Gregg Chapel AME Church on Carson Drive. He was early, but a shelter organizer noticed G.W. in the parking lot and invited him inside out of the bone-numbing cold.
“It feels so good to come inside,” G.W. said Tuesday evening.
As temperatures reached only to the 30s the past few days, local cold night shelters opened their doors to the homeless.
In south Okaloosa County, six churches each take a day of the week to host the shelter.
More than 30 people stayed overnight Tuesday at Gregg Chapel.
Each church has their own way of doing things, volunteer William Castro Jr. said. At Gregg Chapel, homeless men and woman are given a hot dinner, hot breakfast and coffee and cookies throughout the night.
They spend the night on blankets and pillows provided by the Okaloosa Walton Homeless Continuum of Care.
After a day riding his bike through icy wind, 64-year-old Greg Owens said a respite like Gregg Chapel was welcome.
“You can’t wait to get into a place like this,” he said.
Most of the homeless spend the cold days shunted from spot to spot, Owens said.
“There's no place for the homeless to go,” he said.
With no church assigned to open tonight, the Emerald Coast Rescue Mission on Hollywood Boulevard expects to house more people than usual.
On Monday, the mission relaxed its regulations to allow men not enrolled in the its recovery program to stay overnight without penalty to their 3-day shelter allowance for the month, said Brian Ekedahl, the mission’s executive director.
The mission also brought in a woman monitor to help women set up in a separate dorm.
At 35 degrees or below, those who have been drinking also are allowed to stay as long as they are not belligerent, Ekedahl said. They are not allowed to continue drinking at the mission.
“We don’t want anybody to have physical injury or, God forbid, somebody dies because of the weather,” he said.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Delgado at 850-315-4445 or ldelgado@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenDnwfdn.