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GREENSBORO — When the winter emergency — WE — shelters open this year, two of the eight sites will focus on veterans and the chronically homeless suffering from substance abuse or mental illness.

Services for women will be consolidated at the YWCA building off Davie Street.

Volunteers still are needed to help keep all eight sites running, according to WE director Sheron Sumner .

She is looking for people who may have just a couple of hours a week. A person who could come in one day and help with the laundry. Someone who could toss a salad or otherwise help prepare a meal starting Dec. 1.

“For 120 nights, we need food and people,” said Sumner, who is holding an information session for prospective volunteers tonight at First Presbyterian Church.

“It takes five or six volunteers a day at each site, or you pretty soon get people who are going to get burned out. There’s something for everybody in the city to do if they are interested.”

The emergency shelters differ from the traditional ones at the Salvation Army’s Center of Hope and Urban Ministry’s Weaver House, which lay down extra mats in their lobbies each winter for anyone who shows up.

The sites, most of which are based in churches, are assigned a set number of participants who are expected to stay at the same site throughout the program. Volunteers provide meals and bedding and work with guests to connect them to resources for finding jobs and housing.

All the sites are referral only.

The program’s $108,200 budget — which is raised annually from donations — did not factor into opening the new shelter for substance abusers and the mentally ill.

It is being set up in a converted clothing closet at the Greensboro Urban Ministry, which oversees the program.

“They really need help, but these are not people we would feel comfortable referring out to a regular WE site,” said the Rev. Mike Aiken , Urban Ministry’s executive director.

Aiken also is looking for mental health professionals who could volunteer their time at this shelter — not for taking residents on as patients, but more for their experience.

“We want them to come and use their expertise to help us understand folks better,” Aiken said. “The short-run thing is to help us get through the winter and keep people alive, from freezing to death and starving to death. We also want to get them to appropriate services.”

Out of this core of volunteers, Aiken does see some potential in eventually putting together a specialized care team for the chronically homeless.

With all the sites, the group will have space for 123 people this year. Last winter, 110 people were assigned shelter beds.

“I first thought we’d only have to do it one winter or at most two, but this is going on our fourth winter,” Aiken said about the program. “We help most of the people staying in the shelters to get into permanent housing, but we’re still full the next year.”

The arrangement also does not at all impact the 50 homeless families on the waiting list at the separate Pathways Center, which is an intensive program for helping families get back on their feet.

The number of people needing shelter normally drops during the summer but has stayed steady. And soup kitchens are serving more meals than ever. Because of this, Urban Ministry is bracing for the worst, Aiken said.

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com