 While for over 30 years, a local homeless shelter has helped those in times of crisis. Our Mel Meyer has more on that tonight. The Bemidji Area Shelter Village of Hope proves that it takes a village to end homelessness. For 30 years, ours to serve House of Hospitality has served families experiencing homelessness. In 2011, the organization built a multi-tenant building to house six families in individual apartments. But the shelter helps tenants by going beyond just housing. We wanted to create an environment where families could really thrive. Where they just don't come to stay, but they thrive. During intake, they're asked about their situations and the barriers they need to overcome. For some, this includes substance abuse, being unemployed or losing their homes. It's just amazing how just a piece of paper with a few questions can really get you to know a lot about a person. And things that they are afraid to share. From there, they can create plans to solve these problems. And we just sit down and we just make a structure plan to help them out of, you know, those bad habits until productive habits. As Sandy Hennem explains, the families do want to overcome these problems but might not know how to. Most of the families want the same things that I want. They want healthy, happy children. They want a healthy home. They want to contribute to society. They may just aren't quite sure how to do that. For some, their situations, such as losing custody of their children, happen in cycles that they can break with the help of a job and housing advocates at the shelter. It's pretty amazing to see these families actually get united with their children again, full-time. And that's breaking a cycle, too. On average, the families are at the shelter for 52 days. During that time, they're working to find a permanent home. It's amazing to see our success rate just because these people come in here with no hope and they leave with homes. With this week's community spotlight in Bemidji, I'm Mal Meyer, Lakeland News. And Village of Hope has an open house tomorrow from 4.30 to 6.00 p.m. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.