Forty years is a long time to be homeless. The East End Cooperative Ministry has managed, but its scattered life has become untenable, says board member Phil Hallen.

A nonprofit that serves the 15206 ZIP code with 50 member congregations, EECM will soon launch a $10 million capital campaign to build its first home and bring 14 services under one roof. The proposed East End Community House would occupy 56,000 square feet on what is now a parking lot across Sheridan Avenue from Eastminster Presbyterian Church in East Liberty.

The new Community House design is L-shaped with gabled corners. The design calls for an interior courtyard, a rooftop vegetable garden, a greenhouse, a chapel, classrooms, a library, a computer lab, recording studios, an arts-and-crafts workshop and a meeting room for the East Liberty Historical Society.

In a quiet phase of fundraising, the organization has about $1 million toward that end. Support includes a green-building planning grant from the Kresge Foundation and a $175,000 state grant to research the feasibility of including a geothermal delivery system.

Geothermal heating and cooling -- which transfers the earth's ambient 55-degree temperature from drilled wells -- is one of a mix of technologies, materials and construction configuration the agency plans to use in a bid for platinum LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

"We expect to have almost 50 percent of our energy costs reduced," said Mr. Hallen, the former president of the Maurice Falk Medical Fund (now the Falk Foundation).

Much like some of the clients it serves, the ministry needs to get its act together to argue for its own viability. Mr. Hallen said the new building would help the agency stabilize its operations and reduce costs and duplicative services.

One site the agency uses is in the basement of East Liberty Presbyterian Church, where every nook is brimming with cans of food, bags of toiletries, boxes and indistinguishable stuff. A vanload of food from Whole Foods unloads once a day Monday through Friday; Giant Eagle donations come in four days a week.

A Dickensian shelter of 28 bunk beds is crammed into a dark pocket chapel, with 12 mattress pads for overflow in another room where hundreds of people show up for weekday lunch. In connected rooms, homeless residents, lunch visitors, pantry customers and Meals on Wheels crews co-exist like trains in a switch yard.

"We make it work," said Jim Hart, food services coordinator. "Everything is timed."

The sheltered men have to leave by 8 a.m. The food pantry opens at 10, then Meals on Wheels volunteers are rushing boxes out the door by 11, after which the lunch rush comes and goes in time for the pantry to reopen. The sheltered men can return at 7 p.m.

Across Highland Avenue and north a few blocks, the agency manages a residence at Eastminster Presbyterian Church with capacity for about 15 people on referral from hospitals and other medical and mental-health care providers. Those clients live two to a room, and each room has its own bathroom.

A few blocks to the west, the Crossroads Church is home to computer labs the agency provides for children in after-school programs. "We almost got kicked out and had to work out an arrangement with a new minister, which points out the tenuous nature" of trying to exist as a bunch of little encampments, said Mr. Hallen.

"We have case managers interviewing people in the front seat of their cars. You can't do case management when people have to be out of the dormitory at 8 a.m."

Besides homeless and food services, the agency offers mental health services, job training, tutoring, after-school and summer programs for children.

In the agency's energy-planning grant application, it proposed to have the building under construction by next fall, although $9 million remains to be raised.

A time of double-digit unemployment may seem like a crazy time to take up a capital campaign, said Mr. Hallen, "but this is a good time. People are sensitive to the fact that those among us who have been most vulnerable are even more vulnerable now."

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