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Albany County homeless shelter expands

 Albany County's SHIP initiative's new facility
Jesse Taylor
/
WAMC
Albany County's SHIP initiative's new facility

An Albany County shelter providing warm beds, meals and a community for homeless people is expanding.

The Albany County Correctional Facility isn’t just a place where inmates serve out sentences, it is also a place where homeless people can find a reprieve from the cold.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple converted an unused wing of the facility into apartments for the homeless in 2020 as part of the Sheriff Homeless Improvement Program.

In addition to providing shelter for the homeless, the Sheriff says the program offers services as well:

“We already have a very robust menu, so to speak of services, everything from substance abuse, mental health, job training, parent training, you name it. And teaching people hot to build a resume teaching people financial information about taking a picture of their check and depositing, setting up a bank account.”

SHIP recently completed construction on another wing of housing which provides an additional 45 rooms – a result of $500,000 of federal funding secured by New York Congressman Paul Tonko.

The Democrat who represents New York’s 20th congressional district says he decided to pursue funding for the program after visiting the facility in 2021:

“Sheriff Apple, you know, invited me over to do a tour and when I saw how this was taking former space that now is in abundance and transforming it into a response to the homeless issue and the addiction issue. It really drew me in.”

The facilities look more like a home than a correctional wing, with couches and mounted televisions in communal spaces where residents can socialize.

The new expansion also features a mural painted by Garrett Ethier who has been working with the Sheriff since he was 18.

The 27-year-old’s mural features the Great Sphinx, The Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower:

“The idea behind this specifically was more so, you know, we’re in a homeless shelter and a jail. It’s not exactly the most bright and loving place to be. So it was more so to give people hope of the things they maybe haven’t seen around the world and inspire them to do something bigger with themselves. I think that’s also, you know, it comes from my experience being with the sheriff, you know what I mean, he’s given me opportunities that I didn’t see, that I could use to advance myself.”

The initiative also works with student volunteers from the South Colonie Central School district.

Students who volunteer with the program hold pizza parties and fundraise to buy products for residents at the facility. The school district’s ICARE student-volunteer program also chose SHIP as their primary charity for the 2024-2025 school year.

Up until now the program only accepted men and a select few women but with the new expansion, women and children will be permitted to stay in the facilities.

Apple says allowing women and children to stay at the shelters is a departure from his thinking as a sheriff:

“When I initially said that we could only house men only, it's because, my gosh, I can't have people co-mingling and everything else. But then I had to kind of get over that stigma that they're not inmates, they're homeless people, and they're homeless people are not criminals, right? So, I started allowing some women in at that point, and that's where the vision came for women and children, because we were getting calls and I'm like, my gosh, I'll stretch it a little bit and have women come in, but I'm really stretching it if I have kids here. So, I wanted to create a safe haven for those kids.”

The Sheriff says the initiative has put 500 men through the shelter with a success rate of 74 and a half percent.

However, he says their definition of success could be something as small as a resident getting identification:

“The ultimate measure of success is to take somebody that has literally bottomed out in life and to watch them build themselves back up. And to be able to go out and to be able to support themselves and to be able to have their own housing and their own car and their own apartment and their own job. And live the life we all live everyday but a lot of things we take for granted. Very small amount of people out there have ever lost everything.”

Cleveland Pringle, former resident of SHIP, says he found the program after his friend told him about it.

Before staying at SHIP, Pringle was homeless living out of cars and abandoned buildings.

Without the program, Pringle says he wouldn’t be here:

“But as I looked at myself today and remember where I was just a month and a week ago and I looked at myself everyday in that mirror. And I see where I am today. And I am very proud and honored to be a part of this program because this program truly helped save my life.”

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