Fulton's Wiley House sees increase in bednights

Average visits up three people per night for July, August

Wiley House, the emergency overnight shelter of Our House: Caring for Callaway's Homeless, has set another record in visitors per night for July and August. The shelter totaled 329 bednights in July and 343 in August.
Wiley House, the emergency overnight shelter of Our House: Caring for Callaway's Homeless, has set another record in visitors per night for July and August. The shelter totaled 329 bednights in July and 343 in August.

Callaway County's emergency homeless shelter saw record numbers of visitors this past summer.

Wiley House, the emergency overnight shelter of Our House: Caring for Callaway's Homeless, saw 329 bednights - one person who stayed overnight at the shelter - in July and 343 bednights in August. That averages to 11 people per night, a "significant" increase from eight people per night last year according to a press release.

Our House Director Brad Sheppard said that Wiley House's annual number of bednights has increased each year since opening in 2009, and this year's numbers maintain a steady pace.

"I've charted some of our data for each year since Wiley has been open, and the first few years we could be real sporadic, like a lot one month, less the next," Sheppard said. "We're just having a more consistent number of people there. We used to sometimes have three or five per night and that's pretty rare anymore."