UPDATE (Friday July 14, 8 p.m. MT): Interfaith Sanctuary's Jodi Peterson-Stigers reports that air conditioning is working again at the Red Lion Boise Downtowner.
Original story:
Interfaith Sanctuary is working to get its most vulnerable unhoused residents into cooled spaces after air conditioning at the Red Lion Boise Downtowner Hotel failed earlier this month.
Interfaith and the City of Boise use the hotel to house unsheltered families in Boise; currently 87 people are occupying 43 rooms. The city has funded those hotel rooms after Ada County’s funding was exhausted and not renewed.
Occupants include families with young children and several ‘medically fragile’ senior citizens, according to Interfaith Director Jodi Peterson-Stigers.
As first reported by the Idaho Statesman, Peterson-Stigers put out a call for community help.
“Quite rapidly, our community totally stepped up, donated AC units to us and donated funding to a page we’d set up,” she said.
While they received the portable AC units they were asking for, installing them led to another issue: the hotel’s power circuitry could only handle one unit for ever four rooms.
“We had to strategically figure out which rooms were the hottest and which rooms would get the AC units,” Peterson-Stigers said.
The cash donations this week were about twice what Interfaith had asked for, and some of that funding allowed the shelter to move several of its most vulnerable residents to a different hotel location for a couple nights to ensure they’d be in an air conditioned space. A few families housed at the Red Lion were also able to relocate temporarily to larger conference room-type spaces where the building’s AC was still functioning.
Peterson-Stigers said a local HVAC company heard the call-out too and reached out with help finding a replacement part the hotel needs to fix its AC units. That means a fix could be days away instead of weeks. A call to hotel management Friday was not returned by deadline.
City of Boise spokeswoman Maria Weeg said the city and staff at Our Path Home were assisting Interfaith Sanctuary to ensure that anyone who needed to relocate due to the heat could find appropriate space.
The Boise Rescue Mission announced any of its shelters are open to those needing assistance or relief from the heat. The organization said men, women and children are welcome at its men’s shelter any time temperatures reach 95 degrees.
