PROVO — A major donor is behind the effort to raise $11 million to build and operate Provo's first dedicated shelter for the homeless.

The Food and Care Coalition has sold its three buildings in downtown Provo to the city and purchased five acres in the city's East Bay business area. The site is across the street from the East Bay Post Office at approximately 300 E. 920 South.

Plans call for a two-story building with 37 rooms for transitional housing, 26 rooms for men and 11 for women, said Brent Crane, executive director of the Food and Care Coalition.

Crane said the donor, who has thus far requested anonymity, approached him with money for a new center on the condition it include the shelter. Plans call for the second floor to house the center's daytime operations — the dining room where the coalition serves meals and provides showers, a dental clinic, a computer lab, a classroom, a barber shop, a laundry room and a Wasatch Mental Health office.

The dorms would be on the first floor.

Instead of building homeless shelters, Provo and Utah County have for more than 20 years had a sheltering program that consists of providing motel vouchers to those who need a place to sleep.

A wide range of local caregivers concentrated on creating transitional housing to move homeless from emergency housing toward self-sufficiency.

"The strategy for the past couple of decades has been to increase services to keep pressure off our sheltering system," said Bill Hulterstrom, executive director of the United Way of Utah County.

Crane said the new Food and Care Coalition center in East Bay doesn't change that philosophy because the facility is transitional housing that fits a national trend. The Bush administration's 10-year homeless initiative calls for doing away with funding for what have been called homeless or congregate or emergency shelters because studies show transitional housing is more effective.

"Congregate shelters are where anybody can come in at night, crash and leave the next day," Crane said.

The 37 beds at the planned center could take emergency cases but would be focused on keeping people for longer periods to help them find stability.

"Nearly $1 million was spent on motel vouchers in Utah County for homeless people last year," Crane said. "The problem with that is it's money just thrown away and it's a bottomless pit. In our center, they can come in for a month, three months, six months."

Living rent-free with access to work training, men and women at the center would deposit income in savings. When they left they would be financially prepared to meet typical apartment down payments of the first and last months' rent and deposit.