NATCHEZ — After more than 15 years at its current location, the Guardian Shelter for Battered Families is moving into a new home.

Catholic Charities Inc. Director Martha Mitternight said the needs of the shelter, which is a program of Catholic Charities, can no longer be met by the current facility.

“The building we are currently in is no longer meeting our needs, as far as its capacity and also its condition,” Mitternight said.

The Guardian Shelter has offered a safe haven for victims of domestic violence since it opened in 1991. The shelter offers counseling and support to help victims recover from their abuse and develop healthier future relationships, and takes women through the process of moving on from their abusers.

Mitternight said the shelter has been housed at its current location since 1996. She said the new location will, most importantly, give the shelter’s domestic violence survivors more privacy.

“We are very grateful to have been able to be at our current location for many years,” Mitternight said. “But mostly due to confidentiality and the building’s condition, we just found it necessary to move.”

A newer and improved facility, Mitternight said, will allow the shelter to better serve survivors.

“We’re very excited,” she said. “We think we’ll be able to offer our domestic violence survivors more privacy, confidentiality and be able to serve their needs better.”

Mitternight said the size and design of the new building is also ideal for the shelter.

“We also won’t have the difficulty of dealing with public housing in the same building,” she said.

Mitternight said the shelter currently occupies only the bottom floor of its current building. The top two floors are public housing apartments that are owned by Gleichman and Company, the same company that owned Brumfield Apartments before the city purchased the building in January.

Mitternight said the apartments above the shelter were also managed by Brumfield’s management company, Stanford Management, until February 2011, when the company abandoned both properties.

“Part of the problem was that we had to manage the building,” she said. “We are not building managers, we are social workers.”

Mitternight said some of the shelter’s survivors have lived in the apartments as part of the shelter’s supportive housing program, but she said no current survivors live in the apartments.

The shelter will continue to offer its supportive housing service, Mitternight said, but she said it will not be in the same location as the new shelter.

Mitternight said the shelter staff is presently in the process of moving its equipment and furniture into the new location, which she said is in Adams County. She said she hopes to be completely moved in by March 1.

The current and future locations of the shelter are kept private, Mitternight said, for the protection and safety of the survivors.

All of the shelter’s services and contact information will remain the same at the new location. For more information about the shelter, call 601-442-4579.