By Robb Murray, Mankato Free Press

MANKATO — The Reach, a new drop-in center for homeless youth, is set to open downtown in this town.

It is an effort more than a year in the making. Lutheran Social Service has sought financial help through grants and held fundraisers to make the center a reality. And this week the nonprofit agency will be able to direct the youth they’ve already been working with in the basement of Bethlehem Lutheran Church for years to its new center across the alley.

The new center is on South Front Street, across the street from the Mankato Department of Public Safety, in an office building occupied by several tenants, including Southern Minnesota Independent Living Enterprises and Services.

Amber Statz, LSS’s senior youth worker, and mental health practitioners Craig Hinkle and Rachel Johnston will staff the center. The idea was to provide a visible location where homeless youth can come and get access to the services homeless adults get via traditional homeless outreach organizations.

The Reach is not a homeless shelter. But it will be a gathering place, a place to talk to people who can help them address their problems, and a place to go when they have nowhere to go — or nowhere to bathe.

“This was the big selling point,” Hinkle says, referring to The Reach’s shower room.

The true extent of youth homelessness is hard to pin down.