11/3/2022
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KREM
KXLY
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KREM
The governor says that effort will go into action as soon as the state has some other housing plan lined up.
SPOKANE, Wash. — While touring a homeless shelter in western Washington Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee was asked about the I-90 homeless encampment in Spokane, otherwise known as "Camp Hope."
"The state's position is we want to close and folks to move into better housing away from Camp Hope as soon as possible," Inslee said.
People have been camping on the WSDOT property for ten months. With millions of dollars earmarked to help the homeless, Inslee says there has been "significant progress."
"The number of people there I think has come down from about 600 to 400 or in that range," Inslee said. "We are very, very aggressively looking for other housing solutions for them."
Local leaders say that work isn't happening quick enough. Spokane County has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation and local leaders plan to clear people out by Nov. 15.
The city of Spokane says outreach work will continue at the Trent Shelter, which the mayor says is a safer, more humane alternative to sleeping outside.
"Four weeks from now, that Trent Shelter, no matter who runs it, is going to be full," Jewels Helping Hands Executive Director Julie Garcia said.
The city is now working with the Salvation Army to create more space at the Trent Shelter and Catholic Charities could open the former Quality Inn hotel as soon as Dec. 1. However, Gov. Inslee worries that putting speed ahead of placement could have even worse consequences.
"Now, some people in the community don't want to see them just pushed into another park in Spokane, they want them to have some other housing solution so that this doesn't just create a Camp Hope 2 and that's what we're doing," Inslee said. "Very dedicated to that as humanly possible."
The most recent numbers put the state's homeless population at 83,000 people. Nearly half of them live in King County.
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KXLY
November 1, 2022 2:54 PM
Updated: November 2, 2022 7:38 PM
SPOKANE, Wash. — The Washington Department of Social and Human Services has brought a Mobile Community Services Office truck to Camp Hope.
The truck, along with eight DSHS staff members, will help connect people living at the encampment to various services and programs, including Electronic Benefits Transfer Cards, which serve as debit cards for people looking to get food or other financial assistance.
“Our primary service that we’re trying to connect people with is food assistance, we are equipped to process entire interviews and actually issue EBT cards on the spot. So people can come onto the truck and if they qualify and have all of the requirements met they can leave with their EBT card ready to go,” said Melissa Knox with DSHS.
People living at Camp Hope can also enroll in a Medicaid Savings Program, which helps cover some Medicaid costs.
“We also help people with age, blind, or disabled cash assistance, referrals for Medicaid, and a lot of other social referrals, we can give a lot of information out, and we also do “identicards” which is a referral service to drastically decrease the cost of a new ID, which is very important for people,” Knox said.
They will be at Camp Hope for the rest of the week and return the following week.
The Department of Health and the Department of Licensing will also be returning to Camp Hope on Wednesday to assist those who need help with getting or replacing birth certificates and identification. So far, 213 state ID cards and 78 birth certificates have been given out to people living at Camp Hope.
RELATED: WA Department of Health helping people at Camp Hope get their birth certificates
A federal lawsuit was filed last week against the City of Spokane, Spokane County, Spokane County Sherriff Ozzie Knezovich and Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl to prevent Camp Hope from being cleared. City officials want Camp Hope to be cleared by Nov. 15.