The Ksan House Society’s extreme weather shelter has opened its doors to clients, which means those who need a place to sleep while intoxicated have a place to go.

The extreme weather shelter, popularly known as a “damp” shelter, started taking in clients this Wednesday, Nov. 25.

It will provide clients with a place to shower, get clean clothes and do laundry, sleep for the night, and be fed.

Alcohol and other possessions will be locked up and given back to clients in the morning.

This will be the third winter the program has run in the community, and it will be open for longer this year; clients can now come and stay between 5 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Ksan will be hiring three to four new workers for the damp shelter, as well as using some casual workers. New staff were interviewed last week and will be training this week.

There are 10 beds in the damp shelter, which is Ksan’s old emergency shelter that is now tucked behind the new emergency shelter on Hall St.

The beds have been laid out and are ready for clients.

While there is space available to put mats on the floor if it’s needed, Ksan executive director Carol Sabo said she doesn’t believe there will be as many people using the damp shelter as previous years.

“We don’t think we’ll be as busy this year,” Sabo said, explaining that the new emergency shelter now has a lot of room for overflow clients; previously, the emergency shelter overflow was sent to the damp shelter area.

The emergency shelter has a 22-bed capacity in the regular rooms, with more mats on the floor to be put down as needed.

LeFrancois said the emergency shelter has been running at full capacity lately.

“We’ll get a really clear picture this year of how many there is,” Sabo said of the number of people using the damp shelter.

Last year, there were 100 male individuals, 20 female individuals, and one youth recorded as staying in the damp shelter.

There was an average of five bedstays per night and a total of 722 bedstays for the program running November 2, 2008 to April 4, 2009, with the majority of the stays coming from adult males.

These numbers jumped significantly from the previous year.

During the first year, the damp weather program ran from December 17, 2007 to March 15, 2008, and there were 46 individual males, 13 individual females, and three couples using the damp shelter.

There was an average of five bedstays per night and a total of 490 bedstays that winter.

“A lot of the people staying in the damp (shelter) weren’t drinking,” said Ksan housing director Jan LeFrancois of previous years’ extreme weather shelter numbers.

“(This year’s) damp shelter will really focus on the chronic alcoholics that need chronic detox,” she said.

“It’s trying to keep the alcohol away from people who are trying to stay free,” Sabo said.

She had originally wanted to open the extreme weather shelter in the beginning of November, but did not hear back from the government about money to make that timeframe.