Folsom's winter shelter traffic shrinks

Fewer Folsom homeless came in from the cold this winter, authorities announced last week. The Folsom Homeless Assistance Resource Team presented a 2026 wrap-up of winter shelter efforts to the City Council on April 28. The HART of Folsom winter shelter program provides emergency, rotating services for the unhoused in collaboration with local churches. The program offers temporary overnight beds and meals at multiple city locations, operating January through March. In her fifth year in the role, Winter Shelter Director Beverly Seiss said Folsom HART shelters were open last winter for 59 nights with 47 individual guests from Jan. 2 to March 1. With an average of 12 guests per night, there were 693 total stays, she said. In comparison, last year HART reported 66 shelter nights hosting 64 guests with 695 stays and 10.5 guests per night. The city did, however, suffer a high number of 46 "very cold" nights in 2025. "Forty-seven is a very low number for us," said Seiss. "But they stayed the same number of nights as last year. So there's fewer people but they're staying longer." The oldest guest was 72 last winter and the youngest 22. Eleven percent of visitors were military veterans, and guests that were in Folsom before last winter totaled 73 percent, said the director. Once in the program, unhoused people can connect to HART support partners like Dignity Health, Jake's Journey Home, Powerhouse Ministries and HART transitional housing. The director said the program now has more resources than ever. For example, this is the first year HART had a substance use resource person with hospital nursing directors visiting weekly. There was also a new HART housing case manager regularly on the scene. "We start with about 110 volunteers. We work for the entire season, including 22 leaders that begin work in August," Seiss explained. "Then, folks sign up for weekly shifts, doing different jobs for us once or twice a week. We do this so it's spread widely, both for safety, to make the load light and make it happen so that nobody burns out. People are fresh and ready to help these folks." Ten host churches and groups provide overnight facilities, including Trinity Folsom, Reflection MCC, Muslim Community of Folsom, Lakeside Church, Bridge Community Church, Latter-day Saints, OHC Folsom and the Rotary clubs of Folsom, Folsom Lake and Historic Downtown. Local restaurants and groups like Bacchus House, Chicago Fire, Lazy Dog, Mas Taco Bar and Annapoorna Foundation provide dinner once a week. "Annapoorna is not a restaurant but an outreach group of the Indian community of Sacramento," Seiss added. The shelter manager praised the work of Folsom Police and firefighters as partners, especially the homeless outreach, or HOT teams. "They're both professional and compassionate," she said. Compared to the last five to seven years of the developing program, Seiss said, "I think we have become more focused." Although less overall than last year, the director sees a growing percentage of women coming in with an increase from 33 percent to 37 percent. "We're on kind of a trajectory for more women as the years go on," she said. Guests have to be 18, and the program can't accept children. Guests also have to be ambulatory, using a cane at most, she said. Of all the overnight guests seeking more help, three got jobs, four were seeking work, two went to rehab programs, two went to full-time shelters in Sacramento, two to transitional housing and three moved up to other housing, staff said. "We don't do exit interviews as the guest leaves the shelter or anything, but these are the things that we know of," said Seiss. Meanwhile, HART of Folsom is working to support more than 60 college students in Folsom registered as unhoused. HART broke ground in March to build the Community Student Village on the Oak Hills Church campus. "This building project will allow us to provide even more unhoused students with the physical and emotional foundation they need to change their lives," HART announced on social media. Locals can donate to HART at hartoffolsom.org.