The Jimmie Hale Mission plans to build a $4.4 million emergency shelter in Birmingham.As Birmingham and the entire metro area continues to struggle with persistent homelessness and encampments on public property, one of the city’s oldest missions has designs for a new project.
“We hope to break ground next year in 2026,” said Perryn Carroll, executive director of the Jimmie Hale Mission. The plan calls for a 98-bed facility, which will be built at 3401 Second Ave. North, across the street from the current Jimmie Hale Mission men’s rehabilitation center east of downtown.
The mission is hoping to secure a commitment of $1 million over the next four years from the city of Birmingham and plans to do additional fundraising to pay for the rest of the project.
“We have just started our fundraising,” Carroll said. “The city of Birmingham has committed $1 million over a four-year period to help fund the shelter.”
Construction could start “as soon as we get the money,” Carroll said.
“It’ll be a new facility and be open year-round, to provide not just a hot and a cot to those in need, but services and resources to help them change their situation,” she said.
The facility would include two family rooms, showers, laundry facilities, dining room, and consultation rooms for mental health counseling and other medical treatment and social work services.
Last week, Homewood passed an ordinance that will allow that city to crack down on homeless encampments in public parks.
A crackdown on the homeless in Homewood may have a ripple effect in neighboring cities, most likely in Birmingham, where homelessness remains rampant.
“Do I think that this will help the problem? Maybe for the residents of Homewood, but it’s not going to help homelessness.”
Mountain Brook, Hoover and Vestavia Hills have routinely brought the homeless in their cities to Jimmie Hale, she said.
“That’s what I’d rather they do – connect those in need with resources that can help them to escape that situation,” Carroll said.
“Criminalizing homelessness does not meet any goal,” she said. “It’s not good for the individual and it’s not good for the city. That’s not an appropriate use of your jail, of your city funds. It doesn’t do anything to help the problem.”
In Birmingham, “different providers are working more collaboratively than in the past, and we’re working very hard,” Carroll said. “We do not currently have the resources available to address the magnitude of the issue.”
The Homewood ordinance was approved with an 8-0 vote with little debate and it drew applause from many in attendance at the Oct. 13 City Council meeting.
It was modeled on a similar ordinance in Mountain Brook.
The ordinance will ban camping on public property without a permit, or storing personal property on public property.
In 2022, Jimmie Hale Mission took over the role of providing a warming station for Birmingham’s homeless on cold nights, at the request of the City of Birmingham.
For years, the city had opened Boutwell Auditorium to the homeless on cold nights.
Now on cold nights, Jimmie Hale Mission offers emergency shelter at its Shepura campus in the old Thomas School, 3420 Second Ave. North.
Jimmie Hale vans offer transportation from Linn Park, Brother Bryan Park, Kelly Ingram Park and the Faith Chapel Care Center downtown on warming station nights.
The downtown men’s shelter moved from Third Avenue North downtown to the campus near Sloss Furnace in 2007, with an increased emphasis on long-term rehabilitation.
Birmingham is tackling the homeless problem with several strategies, including purchasing tiny-home emergency shelters to be set up at Faith Chapel Care Center and hiring a non-profit agency, Urban Alchemy, to deploy teams of counselors to meet the needs of homeless people on the streets.
Fifteen new tiny pallet homes, or micro-shelters, should be set up by the end of this year in downtown Birmingham, ready to house homeless people by January.
On any given day, Birmingham has more than 350 homeless people on its streets.
