Franklin County’s largest homeless shelter will get new operators next summer, after the YMCA of Central Ohio and the Community Shelter Board jointly announced on October 21 that the YMCA will transition out of running the Van Buren Emergency Shelter in Columbus. The YMCA will stop operating the shelter effective June 30, 2027, and the shelter board said it will seek multiple operators to take over different parts of the facility through a request for proposals.
The Van Buren shelter, a retrofitted warehouse in South Franklinton owned by the Community Shelter Board and opened in 2014, houses about 520 people on an average night, including adults and families. In winter, that number can exceed 650, according to the shelter board. Guests stay in large rooms with rows of bunk beds and plastic mats, along with some private family rooms.
Tony Collins, president and CEO of the YMCA of Central Ohio, said the change is part of a strategic shift away from emergency shelter and toward homelessness prevention and long-term housing stability. He said the decision is not a reaction to past criticism of conditions at the shelter, which has faced complaints about cleanliness and safety. Collins said the YMCA will work with the shelter board to make sure no one who needs the Van Buren shelter experiences a lapse in service during the transition.
Community Shelter Board CEO Shannon Isom said the YMCA will continue case management services that help people move from shelter into stable housing. Isom thanked the YMCA for a decade of partnership and for making a difference in the lives of thousands of neighbors. The shelter board has coordinated Franklin County’s response to homelessness for four decades.
Isom said the shelter reflects larger forces behind Columbus’s housing shortage, pointing to a lack of deeply affordable housing and high rents in a city once considered an affordable Midwest market, and said Van Buren should remain open as long as those conditions persist. The shelter board and partners such as the YMCA are moving away from large congregate settings like Van Buren, even though emergency shelter still fills a gap for hundreds of people each night.
For the YMCA, the transition is part of a broader plan. Collins said the organization, one of central Ohio’s largest nonprofits, aims to serve one in five people across central Ohio by 2035, and has begun work to expand child care access and develop community center hubs. He said the change will let the YMCA deepen its focus on prevention and helping families build stability earlier.
What happens next is the search for new operators. The board will issue a request for proposals for multiple organizations to run different parts of Van Buren, rather than handing the whole shelter to a single successor. With the YMCA’s departure set for June 30, 2027, the board has more than eight months to select operators and plan a handover that keeps the shelter open without interruption.
Photo: Niagara66, CC BY-SA