What to Know About the New Men’s Shelter

The shelter has capacity to serve up to 250 people overnight.  

This capacity is on the high end of what is considered best practice for shelters of this type across the country. At this level, we can better manage the needs and safety of all guests and staff. 

Several factors influenced the decision to build a 250-bed shelter.  

A staff team consulted with a number of facility operators in other states. They cautioned that larger shelters present added safety and security challenges and make it more difficult to maintain quality services. Their consensus was that a 250-bed facility was on the higher end of the spectrum.  

Cost considerations also influenced the decision to set capacity at 250. The engineering consultant concluded that additional space needed to accommodate more beds and associated bathroom facilities would have required a third floor, which would have significantly increased both construction and operating costs. 

The new shelter was designed to serve a maximum of 250 people. Unlike the current shelter on Zeier Road, which occupies a single-story structure with a large open space and multiple exits, the new two-story facility's layout does not allow it to exceed capacity.  

The purpose-built shelter was designed to ensure greater safety and a more trauma-informed environment in which to support unhoused men. The building provides more space for on-site supportive services, multiple smaller sleeping areas for more privacy and improved shower and bathroom amenities that have not been possible in previous shelter settings.  

The operating budget reflects the cost to support a 250-bed capacity. While the new facility is built to serve 250 men each night, the shelter is expected to serve more than 1,500 different people over the course of the year. 

The new shelter will function differently than shelters in Dane County have in the past. There will be greater emphasis placed on helping guests return to housing. This will not be a drop-in shelter that men use to meet nightly needs. Instead, it will rely upon a bed reservation system that allows the facility to focus on serving the most vulnerable members of our community.   

Once assigned a bed, guests will be able to return each night knowing they have a bed waiting for them. But they will also have expectations placed on them while using the shelter – namely that they are looking to secure housing.

Porchlight, Inc., the local non-profit group that has operated the men's shelter in Madison for over 40 years, will operate the new shelter. While Porchlight will be the primary operator, it will also collaborate with other community partners to bring an array of services to shelter users. A full description of those services is still being finalized and is not yet available.  

The operational changes are designed to place greater emphasis on supporting guests in their search for housing. They are intended to help people get out of the shelter and into housing more quickly so that the shelter can serve more people. These policies align closely with the community's goal of making homelessness brief, rare, and non-recurring.  

The shelter is not housing and is not intended to serve as a long-term substitute for housing. Its purpose is to offer a safe and welcoming — but temporary — place for unhoused men to stay and where they can get help to return to housing. 

The new shelter will have a housing-focused mission. Its purpose is to provide short-term use to guests who need shelter and to help them get into housing. Once registered and assigned a bed, guests can continue to use the shelter as they continue their search for housing.  

Guests will be expected to prepare and work on an individualized housing plan with help from on-site case managers.  If after 90 days in the shelter a guest has not found housing, they will be required to work with case management on a housing plan and to demonstrate progress if they wish to continue using the shelter. If guests choose not to engage with case management, they may be asked to leave the shelter.  

To be clear, no one will be asked to leave shelter just because they are unable to find housing. However, someone who has used shelter for 90 days without finding housing and who chooses not to work with case management may be asked to leave. 

Also, if a guest leaves the shelter in the morning and does not return that evening, that bed will be offered to the next person on the wait list and the person that left will need to re-add their name to the wait list.

Current utilization levels at the temporary shelter on Zeier Road exceed capacity at the new shelter. That means it will not be possible for everyone that is using the Zeier Road shelter to move to the new shelter when it opens.

Porchlight will use a registration system designed to ensure that beds go to those who most need them. Under this system, Porchlight will assess anyone that has used shelter during the past 90 days. The assessments to determine each person's severity of need will use information about that person that has already been collected and is stored in a local database.  

The need assessments will give greater weight to a person's age (with highest consideration given to persons age 65 or above), any specific health or medical needs (for example, dependence upon medical equipment like oxygen tanks, or wheel chairs), how long they have been using shelter, and other related factors.  The registration system will give greatest consideration to older men and those with medical needs.  

Anyone currently using shelter who is not offered a bed when the shelter opens, or who becomes homeless afterwards, will have the opportunity to add their name to a wait list to be used to fill future openings. 

Porchlight will provide written notification to men who, based on Porchlight's needs assessments, will be registered and assigned a bed at the new shelter when it opens. Those notifications will start to go out well before the new shelter opens, but they will not all happen at the same time. It may take a month or more before everyone receives their notification. 

Once the new shelter opens, Porchlight will develop a notification system that it will use to contact people on the wait list when beds become available. 

The cost to operate the shelter in 2026 on an overnight basis is about $3.5 million. That figure includes both the cost to operate the temporary shelter on Zeier Road until the new shelter opens and the cost to operate the new facility, once it opens, for the remainder of the year.

The budget provides funds to pay for staff, meals, laundry, cleaning, utilities and building maintenance. Funding to support shelter operations comes primarily from the City ($1.7 million), County ($1.4 million), Porchlight ($200,000) and the State ($150,000). 

There is additional cost associated with operating the new shelter on a 24/7 basis. Specific budget estimates are still being prepared. The added costs of the full-day operation will need to be paid for from non-government sources. Efforts to raise those funds are being coordinated by the Shelter Friends of Dane County. 

For 35 years, the men's shelter in Dane County operated out of church basements in downtown Madison. Their combined capacity reached about 165 men during the most extreme weather conditions. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the deficiencies of those spaces and ultimately forced their closure. City and County leaders moved quickly to set up alternative temporary spaces, utilizing emergency federal funding. 

This public health emergency convinced City and County leaders to commit to work together to design and build a new shelter that could serve unhoused men safely and with dignity.  

In designing the shelter, officials sought input from the community, from homeless service providers and shelter staff, and from people with lived experience about features they believed most important to a successful shelter. Many of their suggestions are reflected in the new shelter — both with respect to the building's design and its ability to help connect guests to housing-focused services. 

The construction of the shelter was a collaborative effort between the City of Madison and Dane County. The City acquired the property at 1904 Bartillon Drive and the Madison Common Council designated it as the site for the shelter in April 2022.  

Working with Dimension IV, a local architectural consultant, a project team comprised of staff from the City, County and Porchlight spent the next year gathering community input and designing the building. The Common Council approved design plans in December 2023 and construction began shortly after that.  

The project cost, including land acquisition, building design and construction, totaled about $27 million. The project was financed with funds from the City of Madison ($13.5 million), Dane County ($10.5 million), and the federal government ($3 million). 

The one-story, 30,000 square foot structure on Zeier Road that has served as a temporary men's shelter since 2022 will be replaced by a two-story, 42,000 square foot building on Bartillon Drive.  

In designing the new shelter, the project team put together a significant outreach effort and incorporated results from a Trauma Informed Design Report to ensure the space can provide quality services in a healthy and dignified way. Some of the key features of the new shelter include: 

• A combination of single and bunk beds, which will be divided among six rooms. This is different from the current model in which all beds are placed together in a single large space. The use of smaller rooms, each of which will contain 40-50 beds, will help reduce noise and make the spaces more manageable.  
• Full bathroom and shower facilities. 
• Each bed is equipped with a locker, where guests can secure their belongings, and electrical outlets. 
• Meeting rooms in which shelter guests can work with service providers on their housing plans. 
• Secure outdoor spaces. 
• A commercial-grade kitchen in which the operator can prepare meals and also provide employment training opportunities.
• A geothermal heating and cooling system and solar panel array that will reduce energy costs. 

The shelter on Zeier Road was set up to be used only until the new shelter could be built. When the new shelter opens this spring, the Zeier Road shelter will close. The Zeier Road shelter will not close until the new shelter is open. 

The City of Madison does not have funding to support both the new shelter and the continued use of the Zeier Road facility. Also, the Zeier Road property has been open longer and used by many more people than what had been expected. As a result, the building is in need of maintenance and repairs that would need to be made before its continued use could be considered. There is no money budgeted for such repairs. 

There has been some discussion about creating an overflow shelter to serve people unable to get into the new shelter. Dane County's 2026 Operating Budget includes $440,000 to support an overflow shelter. Since that level of funding is not sufficient to support a year-round overflow shelter, if one is established, it would likely operate only during cold weather months.  

The County has issued a request for proposals to learn if there are local organizations willing and able to set up and run an overflow shelter. There should be more clarity about an overflow shelter by the time the new shelter opens.