On a sticky, hot day in June, a Virginia Beach church group was busy carting things around the old Roanoke Area Ministries House, readying items to be moved to a new location.
While the volunteer group worked, other employees of the RAM House were busy with their own tasks — which are extensive when moving the contents of a homeless shelter in just two months, without the help of an elevator.
RAM, which usually offers two daily meals and other essentials to unhoused people, is moving just a half of a mile to a new building on Elm Avenue Southwest from its home of four decades — a former church off Campbell Avenue Southwest that the organization rented from the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
RAM Executive Director Melissa Woodson said she hopes to open the new building for basic services in early August, and hopes construction will be complete by mid-August.
Woodson said the cathedral isn’t exactly configured to cater to the population it houses — it’s loud and echoey, she said, which isn’t helpful to those with mental health issues.
“This place did its duty, a wonderful job for us since 1986,” Woodson said in an interview. “But all the stars aligned for us to be able to have a building that was even better configured to serve our needs.”
The new building, painted inside with bright blues and greens, includes a large open area upstairs where people will eat meals. There are three cafeteria-style windows where people can get their food from kitchen staff, then return their dishes.
A large portion of the bottom floor of the building will be completely new services, which Woodson said she hopes will allow the RAM House to serve individuals they haven’t been able to help in the past.
Volunteers and community members took care of much of the moving process, and covered much of the other costs associated with the project, too — $3.5 million of the project’s total $5 million cost was donated, Woodson said.
The Roanoke Jewish Federation donated the money to conduct the feasibility study, to make sure the project was actually viable, Woodson said. The Jain family, the largest donor, bought the building and paid for renovations, Woodson said, but the family does not disclose how much money they spent. “Jain Care Center” appears on the new building’s signage.
Other organizations that donated include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Keller Williams Realty, Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church and North Roanoke Baptist Church, Woodson said.
“It really warms my heart, because from the start this seemed like an impossible task, but we’re very close now, and it’s just an absolute joy to watch this happening,” Woodson said.
Acupuncture therapy, a medical clinic and mixed recovery meetings are among the new services that the RAM House will offer the city’s unhoused population with the opening of their new building.
Without affordable housing, some are left without the basics
Currently, the RAM House offers individuals a place to stay during the daytime, with breakfast, lunch, clothing, basic hygiene items, sink baths and a place to store belongings. People can also work through a day labor program to earn a small income.
Theresa Dunn, sitting in a swivel chair in an administrative office in the old RAM House on a morning in June, said she receives about $900 per month on social security — which isn’t enough for her to be housed and still meet her other needs.
She said she’s been coming to the RAM House on and off since moving to Roanoke years ago.
“It’s almost like I got here and got stuck. I hate to put it that way,” she said.
Dunn is 64, and retired early two years ago, because she couldn’t find work. She said she has an associate’s degree to be an executive secretary from Central Piedmont Community College.
Dunn said she is considering going back to work, but worries she won’t be hired due to her age. She walks with a cane because of vertigo symptoms and a bad knee that was hit by a softball when she was a child. She has high blood pressure, but isn’t on medication because she hasn’t been able to get to the clinic, she said.
Dunn said more affordable housing is what would help her most at this point — she has searched the city and surrounding localities and can’t find anything she can afford. Average monthly rent for one- to two-bedroom units in the city has increased by 50% over the past five years, according to the Blue Ridge Continuum of Care.
Homelessness in Roanoke rose significantly after the coronavirus pandemic — the city saw a 54% increase in 2023, according to Blue Ridge. The increases have since stabilized, but resource centers and shelters are still struggling to keep up — the RAM House alone sees 75 to 100 people on a regular day, Woodson, the executive director, said.
RAM House has been serving those with needs similar to Dunn’s for years — those who, until they can find affordable housing, just need help with the basics.
But with a move into a new location, the organization hopes it can start to serve the unhoused in the city with substance abuse disorders and behavioral issues, too, that it hasn’t been able to offer individualized care to in the past.
Woodson said the shelter can’t accept individuals with severe behavioral issues, out of fairness for the other individuals at the shelter.
“The more they show us that they’re going to respect the boundaries of everyone in the shelter, then we want them here,” Woodson said in a recent interview.
Colocating services: ‘Essential’ to a successful response to homelessness
As the new RAM House brings various services under one roof, many will be overseen by Danny Cox, its director of recovery services.
Cox, previously a conflict resolution facilitator with Anderson Treatment, brings experience with substance abuse recovery and was unhoused at one point himself. He said programs took him off the street and put him into housing before he was able to maintain his health and his recovery — which he called “irresponsible.” It’s necessary to address recovery in a holistic way, he said.
“Our niche is to get people ready to be housed,” Woodson said. “Because the truth of the matter is, if you don’t provide the means for people to improve their lives, putting them into housing doesn’t make sense.”
RAM House’s new services will include:
- An office for the city’s Homelessness Assistance Team to work part time to help people get set up with identification cards, as well as an employment lab. Woodson said she is seeking donations for computers — along with a few other appliances, like washing machines — so those using RAM House can apply for jobs in that lab. A staffer may be hired, too, to help in the lab, which Woodson said the house is also accepting donations for.
- An office for BrightView Health, a Roanoke addiction treatment center that accepts Medicaid, and that can help Cox get people set up with their services. That includes setting people up with Suboxone, a drug that helps manage the symptoms of withdrawal and treats depression and anxiety. Cox said he will also help to set up telemedicine appointments with doctors at Carilion Clinic to get people similar medications. He can help to advocate for patients during these appointments, he said, and is able to help transfer information back and forth from patient to doctor.
- Acupuncture therapy through Calm Clinic, which has been used to treat substance abuse disorders for three decades, according to an article in the National Library of Medicine.
- A new medical clinic with blood pressure testing. The Rescue Mission, which offers similar services to the current RAM House but is open overnight, will visit the new RAM House once per month to use these services. The RAM House has invested over $22,500 this year to have a RADAR bus that transports people between the RAM House during the day to the Rescue Mission at night, Woodson said. The Community Foundation Serving Western Virginia has also contributed $50,000, Woodson said.
- Brain injury screenings through local nonprofit Brain Injury Solutions. Long-term methamphetamine use causes brain damage, Cox said, and oftentimes, people in recovery have been navigating traumatic brain injuries without even knowing it.
- Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous and mixed recovery meetings. A new peer recovery specialist will offer meetings in the building, as well as peer groups that might focus on topics like music therapy and anger management, Cox said.
- Office space for the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition, a local organization that offers safer-use supplies, wound care, HIV testing and other services. Danny Clawson, executive director of the VHRC, and a current candidate for the city council, said that colocating services in one building is “essential” to a successful response to homelessness. Rather than having to bus around town for services, unhoused people can now access multiple services by walking down the hall.
- Six stackable washers, three showers and three bathrooms. Clawson said one of the key tenants of behavior change is starting small, and that an individual “needs to be able to demonstrate to themselves that they are capable.” Sometimes, a shower and a clean change of clothes is all that’s needed to jumpstart those life changes,” they said. Clawson said that ever since The Least of These Ministries — another resource for the city’s unhoused — was suspended in the spring due to zoning restrictions, people knock on VHRC’s doors “at all hours of the day” asking to use a restroom.
Woodson said the new building will also better cater to seniors, which is a rapidly growing demographic of the city’s unhoused population. “I don’t think that most Roanokers have any idea how many elderly people are in the system right now,” Woodson said.
The building will be handicap accessible, and one of the new showers will be handicap-friendly, Woodson said.
Continuing to prevent further homelessness
There were 401 unhoused people in the Roanoke region in one night at the end of January, according to the Continuum of Care’s 2026 Point in Time Count — and 97% of those individuals were located in the city.
Of the total 401 unhoused people, over 350 were staying in homeless shelters, the report states.
About one third of the RAM House’s funds goes straight to landlords and utility companies, Woodson said, to prevent homelessness for those facing utility shutoffs or eviction.
“RAM House is a huge contributor to keeping the homeless population from absolutely exploding,” Woodson said.
She said the organization keeps thousands of Roanokers in their homes, who would otherwise be homeless. In 2023, according to RAM House’s capital campaign newsletter, over $300,000 was spent to prevent over 1,500 people from becoming homeless.
This year, the RAM House has spent over $280,000 on financial aid, Woodson said. This is over $50,000 more than what was spent the year prior.
This funding is first-come, first-serve, according to the RAM House’s website, and funding is determined with case managers case by case. Woodson said the organization can only offer emergency funding to someone once per year.
Cox, the recovery services director, said the funding is also used to get people into recovery housing — he said RAM House can give someone $300 to pay for two weeks of rent in a recovery house.
Cox said this is “just enough” to change the trajectory of someone’s life, and that he’s seen that play out countless times in his experience working with addiction recovery.
