1/28/2023
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The Spokesman-Review
KREM
KXLY
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The Spokesman-Review
Point-in-time count aims to provide midwinter snapshot of unhoused
On a cold January afternoon, Abby Darr, a student at the Washington State University College of Nursing, squatted on the sidewalk just outside of a hospital emergency room while she went through her list of questions.
“Where did you sleep last night?” she asked the man seated in front of her.
“In the forest,” the man re-plied, almost chuckling.
“Where’s the forest?” asked Noel Pitner, a fellow nursing student.
“By the river,” the man said, pointing.
Isabella Romero, a third nursing student and member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, stood to one side, watching as the man they were surveying reached into a plastic grocery bag carrying some of his belongings.
They’d been warned that volunteers had been assaulted in the past, and that it was possible they would be confronted. They had signed liability waivers.
Earlier that day, while they had gone through their list of questions with a homeless woman, a man walked up to them carrying a large knife. He turned out to be the woman’s boyfriend, returning with the knife to cut off something tied around her finger.
By the next day, Romero would reflect that the precautions and warnings had made her more nervous than the actual work.
Over the course of a few cold days in the past week, volunteers dispersed through Spokane in teams of four or more, hoping to tally all those who do not have homes.
This time each year in communities across the U.S., teams like these take part in the annual point-in-time count, working toward a snapshot of the homeless population in the middle of winter.
It’s not a flawless system – the state Department of Commerce’s Snapshot of Homelessness estimates that Spokane’s homeless population in 2022 is more than eight times larger than the point-in-time’s tally. Cities and counties have to perform the count to receive federal funding for homeless services, and it’s still often considered the gold standard for jurisdictions trying to understand trends in homelessness.
Spokane’s count is organized by the Spokane Regional Continuum of Care board in partnership with the city, and its volunteers led by Kimberly Babb, this year’s point-in-time count coordinator, as well as David Ramos III, a social services data administrator for the city.
The point-in-time count isn’t just a count, Ramos is quick to note. Volunteers ask a long list of questions, such as where a person was living before they were homeless and what caused them to lose housing.
Are they veterans? Are they disabled? Do they suffer from mental illness or addiction? Do they use a shelter, and if not, why? Not everyone answers questions, and some don’t give their names. To avoid counting the same person twice, volunteers record descriptions of the people who decline to identify themselves.
Preparing all of that data in the way required by the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development – breaking it down by demographics, scrubbing out duplicates and extrapolating to fill the gaps – takes time, Ramos said.
Although the count takes place in January, the results won’t be published until April.
Some communities perform their count in a single day, but Spokane’s started Tuesday, when volunteers counted everyone staying in a local shelter, and continues through Sunday, with five days of counting those living outside of the shelter system.
To provide the most accurate count of the unsheltered population, the city was split into a grid, with teams sent to each square, sometimes multiple times over the course of the week. It takes more than 200 volunteers to canvas the entire city.
After a few minutes of chatter and self-sorting into groups, Ramos shouted out which square on the grid each had been assigned.
Canvas bags were filled with “incentives” – bottled water, socks, bus passes, snacks – and the building quickly emptied.
Darr, Pitner, Romero and Evan Lien, a fourth nursing student, spent the morning Wednesday wandering under downtown viaducts and overpasses. During the afternoon briefing in a building behind the West Central Abbey, an Episcopal church, they were joined by Lee Taylor, who described himself as a “privileged retired guy looking for good things to do.”
“It’s an important issue with a complicated solution, and this is part of it,” Taylor said, when asked why he volunteered.
Clad in a green vest with “Volunteer” written in bold black letters, the group headed first for the hospital, where they met two homeless people, though one had been counted already. Earlier that morning, the four nursing students talked with a half dozen more. It was a slow day.
Lien and Pitner chatted with a pair of ambulance drivers, who suggested they refocus on the downtown bus depot.
“He said they don’t really go this high (up the hill) unless it’s specifically to go to the hospital,” Pitner relayed.
Not long after they arrived downtown, they had talked with as many people as they had the rest of the day prior.
A lot of what they do is just talking.
Ramos was surprised how many people wanted to not only answer their questions, but share their stories, she said Thursday.
“I thought, especially wearing those vests, people wouldn’t talk to us,” she said. “But a lot of people were talking to us. They were happy that people were out there communicating and advocating for them.”
A lot of the stories were difficult.
The first person they had surveyed had recently lost his mother, and the fingers on one of his hands were visibly frostbitten, Lien said. They called an ambulance and waited until the man was being cared for, and they were assured he would be transported to a Union Gospel Mission shelter.
It won’t be the last time they’re worried about the health of someone they talk to. A man at the bus depot, who said he had been struck with a baseball bat, had an open wound on his face that looked infected, Lien said.
“Hearing some of their stories, it’s things you’d never dream of,” Darr said.
One man could not recall what year he was born. A woman told the group that her partner is in jail for stabbing a man who smoked meth near him, and she was panhandling to make bail.
Another man told them about the impact of cheap drugs on the streets of Spokane.
“We talked to a gentleman who opened up and said you can get a fentanyl pill for $5, or some meth for $1,” Lien said. “He said he had used meth to keep warm.”
All the while, they collect important information about the issues bringing people into homelessness and keeping them there.
“I’ve learned that there’s a lot of underlying reasons for these people being homeless,” Pitner said. “And we’ve run the gamut of seeing all of those reasons today.”
Many of the volunteers Tuesday and Wednesday were WSU nursing students set to graduate in May who were earning their community health clinical hours for the day. Masterminded by associate professors Kay Olson and Sarah Griffith, this was the first year such an arrangement had been made in Spokane.
“I teach community health. We look at populations, and the homeless population is hard to ignore right now,” Olson said.
“The students graduating in May will be taking care of a lot of these people.”
Seventy-five students and five faculty took part between Tuesday and Wednesday, Olson said.
The WSU campus in the Tri-Cities has collaborated similarly in the count in recent years, and she hopes to coordinate with the Yakima campus next year, she added.
“We found it to be such a valuable experience, and we’ve seen a lot of transformation,” Olson said.
In classes Thursday, Darr said she and the other students were asked whether the nursing school should repeat its volunteer outreach next year.
“I know there was a lot of – everybody had been kind of nervous about doing it, but the majority of the class said yes, this should definitely happen again next semester,” she said. “It was an amazing experience.”
Emry Dinman can be reached at (509) 459-5472 or by email at emryd@spokesman.com.
Agreement brings ‘a little safety, security’ to residents
An 11th-hour agreement presented to a federal judge Friday prevents the city of Spokane from clearing the homeless encampment known as Camp Hope unless it seeks to do so under state law.
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward signaled Friday afternoon that wouldn’t happen until after talks with the Washington Department of Transportation, which owns the land where the encampment was established more than a year ago.
The agreement was presented to U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian by an attorney representing three of the residents at the encampment that has become the flashpoint for the housing and homelessness discussion in Spokane. It essentially eliminates the dangling threat of an imminent camp sweep, said Jeffry Finer, the attorney representing the residents.
“That was our primary goal,” said Finer, “was to bring a little safety and security to a population that doesn’t have any safety and security.”
Bastian appeared in Spokane on Friday to hear from the attorneys representing the residents at Camp Hope, the city of Spokane, Spokane County and Washington state about an existing order preventing law enforcement from clearing the camp. The city, in recent weeks, had sought to remove that order and in legal filings suggested a U.S. appellate court case out of Idaho finding that such encampments could not be cleared unless shelter beds were available was wrongly decided.
Instead, Finer and the city’s attorney, James King, told Bastian they would likely be able to finalize a settlement agreement to the federal lawsuit in the next few days, possibly as early as Friday.
The tentative agreement, a copy of which Finer provided, does allow the city to pursue what’s known as an abatement for a nuisance property in state court in the future. Finer said he expected the city would take such a legal action, but noted that the size of Camp Hope has continued to dwindle as state officials and the nonprofits Jewels Helping Hands and Empire Health work to get people staying there housing, identification and jobs.
“Whatever it was in June and July, when it was packed – as you would expect, it was an unruly bunch – that’s been partly moved to Trent, and they have to work some of that out,” Finer said.
Of the likelihood of a city legal action in state court, Finer said: “I’m expecting that will get started. I don’t know where it will go.”
Spokane County this week elected to drop its lawsuit making similar allegations, citing a desire to negotiate with the Washington Department of Transportation, which owns the land, on efforts to close the camp.
The city of Spokane had indicated in written communication to WSDOT and Jewels Helping Hands that it would seek an abatement, but hadn’t filed anything in federal court.
Brian Coddington, a city spokesman, said Friday morning that the city had always been pursuing the abatement process and that the federal order would clear the way for that to continue.
But the city would also have the ability to negotiate with WSDOT about a future for the camp as it continues to establish the shelter it runs on Trent Avenue.
“This action clears the way for the City to follow the standard nuisance process through Superior Court, which requires judicial review before action is taken,” said Woodward in a statement Friday afternoon. “As with any neighborhood concern, we will continue our ongoing attempts to work with the property owner on a plan to remedy the situation before seeking court action.
“Our immediate next step will be to work with the state to finish getting individuals outside and out of the elements and restore the neighborhood that has been impacted,” Woodward continued.
“We understand the urgency to meet both interests.”
Julie Garcia, a camp manager and director of the nonprofit Jewels Helping Hands, said after the hearing she was pleased both by the agreement and by apparent progress in working with Spokane County on a solution for those living at the camp.
“It’s what we’ve always wanted,” Garcia said. “Instead of burning bridges, we’re building bridges.”
Finer said negotiations began around 3 p.m. Thursday to settle the case, on the eve of the hearing on whether to lift the existing order barring a sweep. That order barring a law enforcement sweep will remain in place while the settlement agreement is negotiated, Bastian said from the bench Friday.
Kip Hill can be reached at (509) 459-5429 or at kiph@ spokesman.com.
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KREM
The treatment center will relocate 16 patients at Western State Hospital who are taking beds for mentally ill inmates sitting in jails across the state.
CENTRALIA, Wash. — Gov. Jay Inslee and DSHS Secretary Jilma Meneses were among the state officials who opened the Civil Center for Behavioral Health at Maple Lane on Friday with a ribbon cutting ceremony in Centralia.
This is the state’s first treatment center located in a community setting to treat people who’ve been charged with a crime but had the charges dropped after being found incompetent to stand trial. Instead of getting released, this population has been ordered by a judge to undergo what’s called civil commitment until they’re deemed safe to go back into the community.
Prior to this facility, civilly committed patients were ordered to stay at a state-run psychiatric hospital, such as the immense Western State Hospital in Steilacoom. Inslee said the center at Maple Lane aligns with the state’s goal set in 2018 of de-centralizing these services from huge hospital settings and instead treating people in their communities.
“I could not be more excited about what this represents, which is one of the first steps in the transformation of how we provide mental health to our families and our communities,” said Gov. Inslee at the ceremony.
The center will operate around the clock for 16 people at a time. The first patients will be transferred from Western State Hospital next month.
One of the goals in opening the facility is to help alleviate the current crisis, brought to light by the KING 5 Investigation "Mentally Ill, Waiting in Jail," of a record number of mentally ill inmates waiting in jails across the state for a bed at Western or Eastern State Hospital. These are defendants who don’t understand the charges against them and need treatment to restore competency to stand trial.
Approximately 870 people are waiting for competency services without treatment or the ability to move forward in the criminal justice system. Some inmates are waiting up to 10 months and longer, which is in violation of state law and federal and superior court orders.
“This (new treatment center) will help that problem because it will allow more beds to be available for those people who need competency to be restored. So it’s not just for the civil side, it’s not just for our neighbors who have a problem, but it also relieves the pressure on people who are on the (criminal) side of the situation.
The Civil Center for Behavioral Health cost $20.2 million and includes a host of state-of-the-art features including solar power, natural daylight throughout, native landscaping that doesn’t require irrigation and enclosed outdoor spaces.
In addition to this facility, DSHS is working to open more new beds to meet the growing demand:
58 new beds at Western State Hospital, to open in 2023
30 additional beds on the Maple Lane campus for people found not guilty by reason of insanity, to open in 2023
48 beds in Clark County near Vancouver scheduled to open in 2024
“Our deeply held value is to provide person-centered care, recognizing the humanity in all of our patients, and we will use this approach in all aspects of patient care,” said DSHS Sec. Meneses.
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KXLY
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Like the cost of just about everything, the cost of rent in Washington continues to rise.
Some state lawmakers say they are now trying to ease that pain.
Right now, multiple bills are moving throughout the state legislature, aimed at curbing rent increases and protecting tenants from added fines.
On Friday, there was a hearing for Senate Bill 5435.
If passed, it would cap annual rent increases to the rate of inflation or to 3 percent, whichever number is higher, with a maximum increase of 7 percent.
Locally, the Tenants Union of Washington in Spokane testified in favor, saying that Spokane has seen some of the highest rent spikes in the country, after the eviction moratorium ended.
Terri Anderson, Spokane Office & Statewide Policy Director for the Tenants Union says this wouldn't be considered "rent control". She said the bill, if passed, wont tell landlords how much they can charge for rent, but will limit how much they can raise rent after each lease.
"Adding a cap and limiting how much rent can be increased on an annual basis," Anderson said.
The bill, if passed, would cap annual rent increases.
The Landlords Association of the Inland Northwest says they're worried, the cap could scare landlords into taking their homes off the market, leaving renters with less affordable housing options.
"How does this bill make it more affordable? If people exit the industry and then there's less housing stock. Because people are going to sell single family homes and they could get sold to you know, an owner-occupier, and then that unit goes off the market," said Daniel Klemme, President of the Landlord Association of the Inland Northwest.
Klemme says that instead, there needs to be a bigger supply of properties to rent.
"I just don't see this being a good thing for landlords. but I actually think it's going to be more negative for tenants," Klemme said.
But Anderson maintains, this bill will keep people housed.
"No matter what you want to say about rent stabilization, one thing we do know for sure, rent stabilization stops tenants from being displaced," Anderson said.
The bill would also allow renters to recover additional money spent if their landlord overcharged them.
No votes happened Friday, only testimony.