Colorado Spring property manager Tracey Porter usually can be found at lunchtime on Mondays feeding street people from her perch inside a mobile kitchen known as Food Trucks Against Homelessness.

But on the first day of December, she was inside an old large gymnasium on the property of The Sanctuary Church dishing up baked ziti, Italian bread and donated Crumbl cookies to more than 100 people who had spent the night on cots.

“They’re a big help. If it wasn’t for them, a lot of us would starve,” said Lacey Sellars, as Porter handed her a plate brimming with the hot lunch.

Sellars lives in a tent with her husband, and she said they were glad to discover the overnight warming shelter.

For the first time this fall, the temperature dropped below 20 degrees in Colorado Springs over the holiday weekend, which activated the Pikes Peak region’s expanded homelessness response plan.

The low Saturday night was 15 degrees Fahrenheit and Sunday’s was about 13 degrees, according to weather services. Another storm is expected on Wednesday, when the low will be around 14 degrees.

The Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management, the city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County nonprofits have added more beds and options for people who usually sleep outside and are safer being inside when temperatures fall below 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Extra precautions to shuttle people inside will be taken this winter when temperatures dip to 10 degrees or below for two days or more to prevent weather-related conditions such as frostbite.

Additions to the response plan include up to 350 more beds, for a total of nearly 1,000 community-wide, along with more transportation, longer daytime hours at the Marian House soup kitchen and motel vouchers.

“I believe as a human we’re supposed to help each other,” said Porter, who founded Food Trucks Against Homelessness nearly five years ago with a card table and said she’s watched the street population grow along with her organization.

In addition to food, people at The Sanctuary Church on Monday could pick up clothing, snacks and hygiene supplies, get a haircut from volunteers at Broken Crayons Beauty and have bicycles repaired by a volunteer bike mechanic.

Not much changes in serving the growing homeless population, Porter said, but her organization lives by an ongoing goal: “Building the relationship with our neighbors offers them hope and dignity.”

The city’s main homeless shelter, Springs Rescue Mission, and the community’s largest shelter for adults with children, The Salvation Army’s Family Hope Center, are open year-round, and an organization called Hope COS orchestrates pop-up overnight shelters during the winter.

The Sanctuary Church hosted 84 people on Saturday night and 106 on Sunday night, said Joel Siebersma, director of mental and behavioral health integration for Hope COS. With more snow predicted on Wednesday, the temporary shelter will be reactivated then as well.

“We start with 80 cots, and we can flex higher,” he said. “It depends on the need.”

Other locations also can be opened, including at the Hope COS office and First United Methodist Church. Drugs, alcohol, guns and other weapons are not allowed inside the facilities, Siebersma said.

“It’s weather determined from fall through winter, whenever it gets cold enough, to 19 degrees and below, to when it’s warm enough to not get that low, you can find us,” he said.

Started in December 2022, the overnight warming shelters from Hope COS operate on a proven system.

“We’ve done it enough that it’s getting a lot more streamlined and efficient and hospitable,” Siebersma said.

The expansion of beds and services is occurring as a result of about $850,000 in philanthropic contributions from a combination of entities, including the city of Colorado Springs, regional grantmaking foundations, local churches and area businesses such as Weidner Apartments, Classic Homes and David Lord.

The community has a shortage of about 200 overnight shelter beds, officials announced in July. The new winter emergency sheltering plan calls for increasing overnight beds by 150 people when temperatures are 19 degrees or below, and by 350 beds in extreme conditions of 10 degrees of less for two consecutive days or more.