A Roanoke nonprofit that’s been serving unhoused people for 55 years is moving to a new location. In doing so, Roanoke Area Ministries is reinventing how it addresses homelessness. .
Roanoke Area Ministries was founded in 1971, and for the last 40 years it’s has been feeding and clothing unhoused people from a former church on Campbell Avenue, known as the RAM House.
Executive director Melissa Woodson says things got worse during the COVID pandemic: Older people arrived, in larger numbers, with bigger needs. And the RAM House could only do so much.
“We fed people meals," Woodson says. "We gave them hygiene products. They bathed out of sinks. We gave them clothing. And we gave them referral sources to go across town to here and across town to there. I’m not saying what we did wasn’t meaningful, but this is a huge step up.”
And by “this,” Woodson means RAM’s new, 12,000 square-foot facility on Elm Avenue. Not only is there a day shelter, but a larger kitchen and clothing closet, showers, laundry facilities, and places to receive employment assistance, treatment and other services through partners like BrightView, Carilion Clinic and Virginia Harm Reduction.
Woodson says the point is to consolidate all these services in one location.
“Homelessness in itself is a full-time job, just to get from place to place to get basics," Woodson says. "Our goal is to make it easer for people so homelessness isn’t a full-time job, and they can go the next step, to being healed and to being able to get housed.”
The $4.2 million facility has been fueled by a $5.2 million capital campaign that still seeks to raise another $1 million. The 2024 purchase of the property was funded largely with a contribution from Prabhat Jain, CEO of Virginia Transformer Corp., and his wife Vandana.
The RAM House will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, September 25.
