A new cold weather shelter has opened up in Lexington to service people who may not have a warm place to live during the winter months.

The Hope Center is operating the facility, which sits across from its location on Loudon.

In the past, city leaders have opted to put people in hotels but took a different approach that they said will hopefully lead to people finding permanent housing.

And the worst thing that all of us could do is wake up and find a headline that someone has frozen on the streets of Lexington because they didn't have a place to go.

We have a place for folks to go.

We have been in need for a long time in Lexington and a more comprehensive response in the winter for people who have nowhere to go.

And, you know, throughout the pandemic, we've worked with hotels and it's been kind of a mishmash of different solutions.

But we started planning back in March of this year.

You know, what can we do that would be better produce better results, produce better outcomes for the people?

We have a need each season to add additional capacity to provide a safe, warm and stable place for folks to stay who might not seek shelter during times of the year when it might be warmer.

This is a definitely needed resource.

It is something that for some persons might mean life or death.

This shelter can accept both unaccompanied men and women over the age of 18 will not be accepting children here.

We also do have a limited number of households made some personal spare parts that can technically be a barrier to persons accessing other shelters.

So we want to make sure that that was also something that's included in this package.

And this would have approximately 160 additional beds to our inventory.

Now that folks are going to be here and are going to be here for a more sustained period of time.

We have a space here on site where all the different service providers in town can come and set up shop and hold and sort of hold court and meet with people and meet them where they are literally for mental health needs, health care needs, job needs, education needs.

Anything they need, we're going to be able to bring here on site so that hopefully with the goal being as many of these folks as possible when we closed this in March, they have a place to go, a permanent place, an apartment or somewhere where they can go so that they don't need us next to one or so.

This structure that is built now for those folks who are out there right now to come into just fills my heart with joy.

I know it doesn't sound like I'm joyful right now, but I'm so excited and I'm so blessed to serve the first District.

City officials said the YMCA lent the city the land to build the facility on Loudon.