(Photo by Elvert Barnes)

With a $1.7 million grant, D.C. is building a downtown day center for the homeless in advance of hypothermia season, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office announced in a press release on Thursday. The center will be open before November 1st, when temperatures can start to dip dangerously low for people stuck outside for hours on end.

The day center will be in the Presbyterian Church on New York Avenue NW. It’ll be managed by the DowntownDC Business Improvement District—which has been involved in previous, temporary homeless services centers downtown—and social services will be provided by Pathways to Housing D.C. and other homeless services organziations, according to the release.

Advocacy organizations and the city have both long touted the need for a day center conveniently located downtown, a more easily accessible location than the one in the industrial Langdon neighborhood in Northeast. The closure of the MLK Library last year for remodeling also drove up need: the library was a popular gathering spot for people who didn’t have anywhere else to go during the day, WAMU reported.

Homeless residents will have access to showers, laundry facilities, hot meals, computers, and case managers who can help them find employment, housing, and behavioral health resources. There will also apparently be programming that will provide people with transportation assistance, legal services, and help securing documents people often need to access other homeless services in the city. The release says the center will likely serve about 100 people per day, and it will be open five days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It’s unclear how the money from the grant is being apportioned and how long the city expects it to last. We’ve reached out to the mayor’s office and will update when we hear back.

The announcement for the center comes at a time when Bowser’s office has been facing intense criticism from advocates for the homeless over her rushed plan to close the large family shelter at D.C. General. Demolition started months ago at the site despite hundreds of people still living there, and advocates protested outside Bowser’s home late last month to demand she stop deconstruction until all the families were moved out of the shelter. In rarly August, the city announced that elevated levels of lead had been found outside one of the empty buildings being demolished, and calls for halting work intensified.

The work continues, and residents will be moved out of the shelter by September.