The house volunteers fixed up behind the First Christian Church of Lawrenceville isn't a shelter for the homeless.

Gwinnett doesn't have one of those.

It's going to be a day center for families who need a place to wash clothes or maybe take a shower, said Brent Bohanan, network director for Family Promise of Gwinnett County.

Bohanan's group formed in 2005 from a coalition of 23 churches around Gwinnett to help provide a safe, homelike shelter where families can stay together when they find themselves without it.

"We don't call ourselves a traditional shelter," he said. "We focus on families becoming self-sufficient again."

The group plans to hold an open house for the day center on Sugarloaf Parkway on April 20.

The foreclosure crisis and the recent economic downturn has thrown the concerns of social service organizations into sharp focus. Gwinnett's shelter advocates conducted a homelessness survey in January, attempting to count people living in shelters, stacked together in temporary lodging, or on the street.

Without a permanent shelter, organizations rely on expensive alternatives, such as short-term stays in the area's extended-stay hotels, said Suzy Bus, helpline director for the Gwinnett Coalition for Health and Human Services. Few groups can afford to put people up in hotels for very long, she said.

"You may be able to give them one night in a hotel, but that's not going to end their homelessness," she said. "Forclosures are adding strain as well."

The Gwinnett Coalition is working to launch a program to use four or five apartment units as a standing shelter and service center for homeless families, she said. Called Housing First, the program operates in other counties, she said.

Without a permanent shelter for Gwinnett families in distress, serving the homeless has been a challenge, Bohanan said. Eighteen of his group's member churches provide temporary shelter for families with children, but the group has to rotate people between churches every week to make room for new cases, Bohanan said.

"It's difficult for us, when we get a referral we have nowhere to send them," he said. Too often, he said, Family Promise ends up referring people to shelters in downtown Atlanta, which are often unsafe for children and too far from work and school to be useful to families. "There's nothing worse for people who want to help to have no resources."