On Tuesday night in Greensboro the temperature is expected to drop into the teens and shelters are expecting to be at or near capacity. Four years ago there was a significant rise in the number of people seeking shelter during the winter months. Greensboro didn’t have enough beds and on many cold nights dozens of people had to sleep on floors. The city responded by opening a half dozen winter emergency shelters for frigid nights like tonight. Reverend Mike Aiken says those facilities opened December 1st and will be packed this week.
"Our capacity at our winter emergency shelters has been at around 90-percent, so about double our normal capacity. So we should have room for about 225 people."
Aiken says the soup kitchens have been serving between 350 and 400 meals daily during the past week. He notes that while the shelters are busiest during the winter months, soup kitchens have fewer mouths to feed because children are in school.
