The Bethel Winter House closed on April 6, right after news reached Bethel that the town had its first case of the highly infectious COVID-19.
The two volunteers that staffed the Winter House shelter decided that they could not continue to work with the homeless because they were afraid of taking the contagious virus home with them. One had a new baby, and the other a spouse who was at high risk from the disease.
Jon Cochrane, the Bethel branch manager for Wells Fargo, is president of the Winter House Board of Directors. He said that the two struggled with the decision and decided, just before Bethel’s homeless shelter was set to open, that they could not risk it.
Volunteers who had been providing the homeless with lunches at Bethel’s Evangelical Covenant Church stepped forward to staff Winter House on April 7. The shelter is open and staffed now, including by a member of the Bethel Police Department to help keep things calm when the shelter opens at night. Cochrane said that Winter House is set to be fully staffed for the foreseeable future.