City of Rock Hill gives ROC shelter extension through weekend

Less than 24 hours after they faced an imminent eviction, some 20 homeless people sheltering behind a service center in Rock Hill will have a place to stay through the weekend.

For more than a week, several clients of Renew Our Community have been staying behind the agency’s East White Street headquarters, sleeping under a tarp with space heaters for warmth, as they transitioned between the closure of the area’s winter warming shelters and more temperate springtime temperatures.

That was slated to end Wednesday, as the city of Rock Hill and York County, which owns the building, informed ROC they were out of compliance and would have to shut down that night – leaving some of the residents not only without a place to sleep but cut off from their belongings if they couldn’t get back before the center closed for the night.

Instead, the shelter got a temporary reprieve for two nights so the agency could make other arrangements for them.

ROC founder Dale Dove said Thursday the arrangement has since been extended through the weekend, so the residents have somewhere to stay at least through Monday.

Dove said the decision was made based on expected low nightly temperatures for the rest of the week, and he hopes to get a longer extension for the residents without any other good options for where to go.

“Monday’s not a hard stop date,” he said.

This story was originally published March 31, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "City of Rock Hill gives ROC shelter extension through weekend."