SHEBOYGAN — Kathleen LaBonte never expected the news she received over the weekend. The nonprofit she leads is being forced out of its building by April 15.
LaBonte founded Sheboygan Area Pay It Forward to meet the needs of the unhoused population in the area. Her team opened the doors to the center a little over two years ago.
“I worry, we worry, so much about what’s going to happen to our peers with not having a space to go," she told NBC 26.
LaBonte’s landlord said the building is being condemned for a number of electrical and structural issues. The problems are too severe and the repairs are too expensive.
The news shocked the entire community.
“Half the room was crying,” Corvid Lilim Macias said. “The other half was like, ‘Say what?’”
Macias is a regular at Pay It Forward. He says the center is a lifeline for many, providing food, clothes, toiletries, but most importantly, a safe space.
“It makes us feel like we’re not outsiders, you know, that we’re not the undesirables,” Macias explained. “For me, it feels like a family, and I think for a lot of people it does too.”
Watch: Sheboygan’s Pay It Forward day shelter told to vacate property by mid-April
Pay It Forward sometimes hosts more than 60 people at a time. The nonprofit has tripled in size in the two years since it opened.
“I always wanted a really big family…12 kids, and that never happened,” LaBonte said. “But now I have hundreds of them. We have a massive family here.”
With the looming closure, she worries she won’t be able to provide for the community that relies on the center, especially on Sundays.
The Community Cafe and Open Door, two other resources for the unhoused population, are closed that day.
“It’s a real shame what’s happening right now,” Jake Lawlor shook his head.
He says the nonprofit has helped him through his strokes of bad luck with job loss.
“What we’re losing isn’t really a building. It’s a big, central part of the community,” Lawlor noted. “There’s a lot of anger and distress toward homeless people, and this is just a place where we can all be around people who accept us.”
Pay It Forward is set to close after April 6, giving staff and volunteers time to take all their donated items to storage until they find a new location.
But the community remains resilient.
LaBonte: “We’re hopeful that / we can pick right up where we’re leaving off.”
Macias: “Their hearts are bigger than this location.”
Lawlor: “We don’t have the answers yet, but we’re working on them.”
