The morning boasted spring-like temperatures Monday when I pulled into the drive-through at a fast food restaurant in town, grateful the absolutely ridiculous bitter cold of last week was gone — for the time being.

Also gone from my thoughts, momentarily, were images of needy people scrambling to find a warm place to stay a week ago during nights that hit minus 10 or more and days that barely inched past 10 above.

If the warm weather erased those nagging doubts for me, I was certain that many others in the community also figured the worst of the winter weather hopefully had passed. We could stop worrying about the homeless for now, since many of us figure everyone can surely find a place to stay on blistering cold nights that could be life-threatening.

Paid me right for thinking those fleeting, dismissive thoughts during my drive-through excursion. Right there, as I glanced to the left, was a shopping cart parked next to the fast food restaurant. The cart was likely filled with someone’s earthly belongings used for stays at a friend’s or relative’s house or apartment and pushed by the individual throughout the day.

The shopping cart threw me back into last week’s awful, nasty cold when I sat talking with Barb Shufran and Joe Doriguzzi, co-chairpersons of the Friendship Table, the East Corydon Street soup kitchen in Bradford that provides free, nourishing meals and fellowship to the disenfranchised of the community. Last week it also served as the only warming shelter, per se, during the daytime hours as there are no facilities available in the community during that emergency situation.

Shufran and Doriguzzi opened the Friendship Table early on those frigid days, and welcomed people to stay from morning until early evening, as many didn’t want to go home right away to cold apartments or rooms that were difficult to heat. Some of these people also had children at their homes.

When asked if they thought there are homeless in the area, as some believe is not the case, both Shufran and Doriguzzi adamantly declared the homeless can be found throughout the area community.

They gave the example of a young, homeless man who came into town a couple of years ago and finding that a former shelter located at a church wasn’t opened on that particular night, slept on the church steps wrapped in a sleeping blanket. The following morning, he arrived at the doorstep of the Friendship Table where he received food and was given temporary shelter by a kind-hearted male staff member.

Doriguzzi and Shufran said a number of the homeless also sleep in abandoned, unheated homes until they are ushered out by landlords and law enforcement. While in the structures, the homeless more or less just tough it out until they can get food at the Friendship Table or from food pantries in the community. In the summer, many sleep in tents or other structures in the surrounding woods.

Doriguzzi and Shufran said they believe something needs to be set up in the way of a warming shelter for those who are unable to get a voucher to stay at a local hotel and have nowhere else to turn.

Linda Thompson, housing and homeless services coordinator for the McKean County Redevelopment and Housing Authority, said she knows of the plight of the homeless, as well as those known as the “couch surfers” who have shelter on a temporary basis.

“It’s heart-wrenching,” Thompson said of the homeless population.

Thompson said the former Bradford church that had opened a shelter for the homeless when the temperature dropped to a certain temperature and below was well-intentioned, but couldn’t muster up enough volunteers to help.

“Especially with the world the way it is today, you have to have some type of supervision” at shelters, Thompson said.

She agreed that something needs to be done to help the needy during emergency situations such as occurred last week.  She said the YWCA Bradford shelter is always full, and the shelter vouchers given by churches and ministries such as Destinations-Bradford for a hotel are always requested, which leaves some people in a pinch.

Thompson did note that “anyone is welcome to attend the coalition meetings and be a part of the solution.”

She was referring to the McKean County Housing Coalition which typically meets at 11 a.m. the first Thursday of each month at the Beacon Light office building on East Main Street in Bradford. The next meeting is this Thursday.

“We have a whole bunch of social service people, but we really need it to be the entire community and volunteers who are willing to man a shelter and provide donations,” Thompson remarked.

Until that happens, it appears that some of the homeless may be on their own with no place to turn during the night when the next cold snap hits.

(Kate Day Sager is a reporter for The Bradford Era. She can be reached at katedaysager@bradfordera.com)