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Medford shelter named after veteran who froze to death Saturday Jan 14, 2017 at 5:15 PM Jan 14, 2017 at 5:48 PM Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune The official opening of the Kelly Warming Shelter Friday came a year after the death of Marine Corps veteran Kelly Eisenberg, who was found frozen in a horseshoe pit at Hawthorne Park. The shelter at the First United Methodist Church at 607 W. Main St. is the first to open under a new temporary shelter policy approved by the city of Medford last week. The shelter was conditionally approved while sprinklers are installed to meet requirements for non-temporary status. Urging by advocates for the homeless, coupled with freezing temperatures, prompted city planning, building and fire officials to implement the emergency shelter option, offering some leniency beyond standard shelter policies. Medford Deputy Fire Chief Greg Kleinberg said the policy and the church warming shelter, operated by Rogue Retreat and the Compassion Highway Project, happened concurrently. Kleinberg said state fire officials provided basic guidelines for temporary shelters, including a maximum of 90 days per calendar year, that a night watch person be present and that those operating the space have an approved emergency plan in place. "One of the things that prompted this is the church approached the city last week, so we started really digging in to how we could make things work," Kleinberg said. "Hopefully, the goal with this is to identify different churches and other shelters that will be a safe place for these people to come into. "I do think there are probably places we don't know about that are inviting them in and hopefully, by getting this information out there, we can make things safer for these people. This is really a way of putting the responsibility on them to come talk to us and we go out and make sure everybody is safe." Kleinberg said the city sympathized with the need for a place to get in out of the cold but wanted to avoid loss of life in disasters such as the recent "Ghost Ship" fire in Oakland, Calif. Church leaders for First United Methodist Church did not return calls to the Mail Tribune. Chad McComas, pastor at Set Free Fellowship and executive director of Rogue Retreat, applauded the city's efforts to enable local churches to provide needed shelter. McComas said that the shelter is named after a community member who succumbed to temperatures not unlike those in recent weeks should show the importance of bringing homeless community members inside. Eisenberg, 58, died in temperatures that dipped below 20 degrees. While the Medford Gospel Mission offers an option for some to get out of the cold, those who don't meet admission criteria often find themselves with nowhere to go, McComas said. Eisenberg was reported trespassing at Providence Medford Medical Center just weeks prior to his Jan. 2 death. Though known for being found intoxicated by local police in his final years, in 2008 he was a lead guitarist for the blues and rock band I-5 North, made up of veterans served at the Department of Veterans Affairs Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center and Clinics in White City, according to a Mail Tribune story. McComas said he hoped the new shelter would offer hope in what might otherwise seem to be hopeless situations. "No matter why someone is homeless, it's not right to make people have to sleep outside in the cold. It hit me the other day that, what I think a lot of folks don't realize, if the homeless get a good night's sleep and they're warm, they're going to cost our community a lot less money because they're not going to get in as much trouble with police and the EMTs won't have to come out to check on them and their mental health will be much better," McComas said. "We're grateful to the city for working with us. We understand the concerns that, without proper codes, people might die, but if we let them sleep outdoors, they will die." The Kelly Warming Shelter officially opened its doors at 7 p.m. Friday. Planned hours are from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. daily, through the end of March. For more information, contact Rogue Retreat, 541-499-0880. Reach Medford freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected].