Winter Haven women’s shelter to reopen after nonprofit steps up to buy facility from Salvation Army

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. - A Winter Haven women and children's shelter that closed earlier this year because of lack of funding is getting a second chance. Talbot House Ministries has purchased the old Salvation Army of East Polk County's 65-year-old shelter property to revamp the inside and bring it back better than ever before.

The Salvation Army made the difficult choice to shut it down in the early spring, stating that the non-profit was $124,000 in debt trying to keep it running.

Talbot House Ministries Director of Programs, Deborah Cozzetti, said their non-profit was already looking to expand to the Winter Haven community.

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"The economy has gone up, everything is more expensive, including houses. Wages haven’t met that increase. So the people who were just barely making it, paycheck to paycheck, one paycheck away are now finding themselves in hotels, living in their cars," she said, "But also what makes it hard for Polk County, we are, depending on the census you look at, we are the second-largest growing county in the nation. There’s all of these people coming here which puts a strain on the resources that we have here."

She said their emergency shelters are almost always at 120% capacity.

"With the residential beds, we have 66 beds for men, 26 for women. That’s for those that are in the program. We have emergency beds; 56 emergency beds. But we usually have between 100 and 120 guests come in at night," she said.

The new Talbot House women and children's shelter will have the same mission, but with a different design.

"We’re redoing the whole inside, kind of splitting it up, where these units are going to be," she said, "We’re going to have ten mini dorms for women that has four beds in it. So that’s women with children. There’s going to be five rooms with six beds and then we’re going to have an area with just single women themselves, that’s going to have 12 beds."

In total, that's 82 beds in comparison to the 24 that the old shelter offered.

Single women and children are a group Cozzetti feels a personal connection to.

"When my kids were very little, I had to stay with my folks for a little while and to get back on my feet. I was a single mom at the time with three kids," she said. "I’ve walked that as a single mom and know how scary it is and how stressful it is."

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Danielle Ginn, a Talbot House resident, said if resources like this were available for her sooner, things would be a lot different.

"I put myself into rehab because I had no place else to go and that’s actually how I lost my daughter. I went into a rehab in Brooksville, Florida and they didn’t take children."

She said she is grateful women in Winter Haven will have this lifeline, adding, "I see so many times that there are people in the streets go to jail or get taken away for not taking care of their children properly, so I think that would be great."

Talbot House Ministries hopes to open the shelter in January.

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