This week, the Hermiston Herald launched a series of articles written by reporter Maegan Murray about homelessness in Hermiston. Wednesday’s issue featured a story about Mark Leslie, a local homeless man who is struggling to find steady employment and the challenges — and cost — associated with not having a permanent home. Today’s Herald includes a story about Ryan Williams, a homeless teen with his own struggles and experiences living on the street, including staying in homeless camps in Hermiston.

Leslie and Williams pointed out homelessness in Hermiston is a much larger issue than people might think or expect based on what they see or encounter while going about their everyday activities. While Leslie and Williams’ experiences and circumstances differ greatly, one common thread they share is the Hermiston Warming Station, which is a warm and safe place homeless people can stay overnight when the temperatures drop below 32 degrees in the winter.

While the Hermiston Warming Station sites rotated every month or so to different locations in the city in the past, this year, program organizers were able to arrange for a downtown building to serve as a stationary site this winter. This is, obviously, significant for the homeless population — having a permanent site in the middle of town on Main Street eliminates the need to travel to a different, new location every couple of weeks and the challenges associated with that. It has also been significant in that program organizers are getting better insight into the homeless situation in the community, especially since the number of people taking advantage of the warming station has remained steady.

Even without a permanent location to use as a home base, the warming station program is a wonderful asset to this community.

Most of us can’t imagine what it is like to be homeless and without a warm, safe place to stay when the temperature gets really cold. The warming station not only offers that to local homeless people, but it also provides them with food in the form of snacks, a place to sleep for the night that is undoubtedly more comfortable than one outdoors and a place to store belongings.

The value of having such a program is even greater when you factor in the security, comfort and, possibly, hope the homeless people can derive knowing that other others in the community care about them and their welfare and are willing to volunteer their time and nights away from their own homes to spend it at the shelter.

This is a program that deserves the support of the entire community, and hopefully everybody recognizes the importance and the need for sustaining it. Volunteers are always needed at the warming station, but there are other considerations, as well, that should be taken into account, such as a finding a permanent location for more than one season.

If a warming station is a valuable service even when it rotates, how much more so would it be with a permanent location? The building on Main Street is a wonderful start, and, hopefully, warming station organizers can arrange for its future use. If there is something the rest of us can do to ensure this eventuality, then we should do so.

More than anything, everybody needs to understand that homelessness in the community is a problem, and, if any long-term solutions are to be found, an ongoing dialog at all levels of the community needs to take place. The Hermiston Warming Station and its needs could be a great starting point to launch that conversation.

— Jessica Keller is the editor of the Hermiston Herald. She can be reached at jkeller@hermistonherald.com