Hope Gospel Mission’s new facility hopes to help more people with homelessness and addiction

EAU CLAIRE — With people in the community experiencing homelessness and addiction, Hope Gospel Mission program manager Chris Hedlund said creating and providing resources is critical.

As people gathered for the ribbon cutting at the Hope Gospel Mission Resource Center on Wednesday, many celebrated the opportunity to continue and expand the capacity of programs on their campus.

Their new facility began construction in September 2023 and includes approximately 8,500 square feet of space. Hedlund said it’s not necessarily adding any new existing addiction and support services to what they already offer, but it’s designed for growth with 10 years in mind. In addition, he said he is expanding his capacity to be able to help more residents in his program at any given time, from 40 to 50 people to about 80.

“In our last building, we only had one classroom where we could teach one class at a time,” Hedlund said. “In this building, we have three classrooms to be able to teach three classes at the same time.”

As for what they do, Hedlund said Hope Gospel Mission is not a typical homeless shelter.

“One of the components of our program is educational,” said Mark Donnelly, founder and chairman of the board of Hope Gospel Mission. “We get a lot of residents who don’t even have a GED, or some have it but need a refresher on basic skills. That’s what we do here.”

Donnelly, who founded Hope Gospel Mission along with his wife Cindy Donnelly, said they were originally formed in the 1990s in response to a need for resources against homelessness and addiction counseling has implemented job training, finding jobs and many programs. Resources take place in a Christian setting, but are offered to those in need for shorter programs of 90 days and longer stays ranging from 14 to 16 months.

But with expansion that has been continuous for his program since its conception, Donnelly said, “It’s been based on need. We haven’t just expanded for the sake of expansion. As the need grew, so did they made our facilities to be able to help.”

Hedlund reiterated this growing need as the point homelessness count for Eau Claire and other surrounding counties continues to rise. The count itself is conducted by Western Dairyland staff and community volunteers to understand how many people in the community are homeless.

As of January 2024, the number of individuals in Eau Claire, Buffalo, Jackson, and Trempealeau counties was 52. As of July 2024, this number was 104 individuals.

“We anticipate that the problem is going to get worse and that people are going to need our help, so we want to be prepared for that and be proactive,” Hedlund said.

With the Hope Learning Center, Hedlund said, “It helps us because we had reached a bottleneck where we were full. Our building was at capacity which could limit the number of people we could help, because we didn’t have space to help more. This building removes that bottleneck and allows us to keep moving forward and help more people.”

It also creates a safe environment that allows people to focus on improving themselves instead of just surviving. In celebrating the completion of its new facilities, its aim is to continue to act as a resource in this regard.

“I’m really excited, because we’re going to be able to help people more than we were before…” Mark Donnelly said. “This just gives us a much nicer facility and more resources here to be able to help.”