Shawn Vestal announces the City’s new RFP for an emergency shelter!
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The Spokesman-Review
Spokane’s homeless system may be growing
State budget includes ‘significant’ funds for homeless
AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS IN SHORT SUPPLY, HIGH DEMAND
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The Spokesman-Review
Spokane’s homeless system may be growing
By Shawn Vestal
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
The homeless encampment along East Second Avenue, near Interstate 90, has been growing all year.
By Thursday morning, more than 300 people were living there, said Julie Garcia, who runs the camp through her Jewels Helping Hands organization. Tents and vehicles cover the full block between Ray and Ralph streets, on property owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Called Camp Hope, it grew into existence following protests at City Hall and after the city closed its temporary warming shelter at the convention center in early January, which was its last effort at any kind of warming shelter this winter. The tents, the campfires, the RVs and cars, the tarps – the whole existence of Camp Hope has been a sign of a broken system.
Now, seemingly suddenly but actually following months and months of effort, collaboration and conflict, a long-overdue change at Camp Hope – and in the city’s overall shelter system – seems imminent.
The city has asked for bids for a shelter operator, and while there hasn’t been an official announcement of the specific location, the plan is to add a 250-bed facility to the system, with room for more when needed.
If the plan holds up – and doesn’t come with cuts elsewhere or other poison pills – the increase would be a major addition to the system’s capacity.
New state funding targeted at creating outreach teams to help move people off WSDOT property and into housing may also help facilitate change at Camp Hope.
“We do believe there are conversations going on where the city may be closing in on a facility,” said Mike Gribner, regional administrator for WSDOT.
WSDOT has not acted to remove the campers because there has not been anywhere for them to go, Gribner said.
Though the presence of the camp has raised concerns among neighbors, without sufficient shelter during some of the coldest months of the year, the agency has been unwilling to simply drive the people away.
As soon as that changes, however, the agency does want the camp to be cleared.
“It will be done in the most humane way possible, when we know they have a place to go,” Gribner said.
‘We’re OK with that’
One tool available to help facilitate that may be funding in the just-passed supplemental state budget, which includes $45 million to create outreach teams that connect with people camping on WSDOT rights of way and help them develop a plan to move into shelter and services.
It’s one piece of a massive increase in funding aimed at reducing homelessness and expanding affordable housing throughout the state. The outreach project is not intended as a simple sweep, but an effort that ensures people are “transitioned” off of public property and into housing.
“It’s not just a question of shutting down the camp,” said Lisa Brown, director of the state Commerce Department, speaking generally about the program and not specifically about Camp Hope. “It’s, ‘How can the people in the camp be moved into better circumstances?’ ” Camp Hope has persisted because there simply have not been better circumstances. Gribner said his agency is not equipped to handle such an encampment, but plans to move people away were repeatedly scratched in recent months, because of insufficient shelter.
As soon as there is space, though, the camp will need to go.
“And we’re OK with that,” said Garcia of Jewels Helping Hands, who praised the agency for its patience. “They’ve been unbelievably understanding. They could have chased us out on the first day.”
Garcia has been putting pressure on City Hall to do a better job on this issue for years.
Meanwhile, a group of downtown business owners has been putting a different kind of pressure on City Hall – one focused primarily on treating homelessness as an issue of blight and crime, attacking the City Council for somehow preventing police from addressing the problem, and loudly opposing the expansion of services.
Following months of conducting its own private study, though, that group, which calls itself Hello for Good, seems to have evolved.
It recently sent city officials its ideas for addressing the problem and the report from a consultant, which included a wide range of proposals.
While there remains an emphasis on the ways that the issue affects those who aren’t homeless, it also includes the recognition of the fact that more services are needed, including additional shelter, outreach teams and treatment for behavioral health and addiction, as well as improvements to the coordination of the current system.
Garcia – who was on the opposite side of that group for a long time – now says they’ve come up with a positive plan. “It’s good,” she said.
Hope for an end?
The city of Spokane has issued a request for proposals for an operator for a low-barrier, 32,500-squarefoot overnight shelter with 250 beds, and a capacity to shelter more when needed.
The RFP, which does not identify a specific property, also says the facility will provide daytime services, such as bathrooms and showers, meals and access to a range of services.
Brian Coddington, spokesman for Mayor Nadine Woodward’s administration, said the city isn’t ready to make any announcements about a location, but it’s hopeful about being able to do so in the near future.
Such proposals are often exceedingly difficult to finalize, because they involve different parties and interests, and because there are so many challenges associated with opening a new shelter.
Garcia is concerned that a big warehouse might not be the right solution for some of the people who are camping out, or that it might be accompanied with cuts elsewhere in the system. She is going to propose an alternative or complement to the city, she said, based on using pallet shelters, which are something like tiny homes.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people are living in tents and vehicles at Camp Hope. It’s no kind of solution. It is tangible, visible proof of a lack of one. If there is something in the offing that would give the people there a place to go – rather than just being urged to go away – then it would truly be progress. Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or at shawnv@spokesman.com.
A cluster of tents at Ray Street and Pacific Avenue has been dubbed “Camp Hope” by those who occupy the makeshift homeless encampment. It moved to the location in late December after the campers had surrounded City Hall and were asked to leave.
JESSE TINSLEY/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
State budget includes ‘significant’ funds for homeless
By Shawn Vestal
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
As part of its massive new supplemental budget, the state Legislature passed unprecedented outlays for programs combating homelessness and bolstering affordable housing. The spending, which totals $829 million, includes a wide variety of efforts, adding funding for existing programs and creating new initiatives. A key change in this funding – some of which is doubtlessly one-time money, based on this year’s budget surplus – is an additional focus on covering ongoing operating expenses for housing facilities, as opposed to just the capital cost at the front end.
“It’s a significant investment,” said Tedd Kelleher, senior managing director for housing assistance for the Department of Commerce. “In the future, they’ll really look back to this year and say, ‘Wow, that was a real pivot.’ ” Many of the projects require communities or nonprofits to compete for the funds through a grant process; the philosophy is for the state to work with local communities to support plans tailored to their particular circumstances.
“It’s going to look different in Spokane than it does in Yakima or Tacoma, or than it does in Chehalis,” said Jim Baumgart, policy adviser to Gov. Jay Inslee. The funding includes $114 million for the Housing Trust Fund, which finances affordable housing projects for low-income people, and $240 million for Rapid Capital Housing Acquisition, which funds the purchase of properties that communities can use as shelters or supportive housing. Together, that funding could add 3,890 housing units statewide.
The rapid housing fund has already been awarding grants for the purchase of properties, such as abandoned motels, for communities to turn into housing for homeless people. Many local leaders were frustrated last year that no Spokane government sought those funds, as other cities were opening shelters.
Lisa Brown, Commerce Department director, former congressional candidate and Spokane resident, said that she hopes leaders here try to take advantage of the additional resources from the state.
“I’m still concerned that our local governments in Spokane County have not stepped up enough to take advantage of that and to lead the effort to identify properties, bring nonprofits in and make an application,” she said last week.
She and Kelleher emphasized that the inclusion of more operating funds will go a long way toward helping local governments take advantage of the programs.
Among the other parts of the housing and homelessness budget is the Apple Home and Health plan, which would allow people who receive Medicaid to apply those funds toward support services that will help keep a person stably housed, such as behavioral health care or assistance in a crisis.
A large part of Inslee’s goal going into the session was to work to prevent homelessness and keep people housed, Baumgart said. That includes funds for renters to prevent evictions and for landlords to offset certain costs and losses.
All told, it’s a lot of spending – but it’s also a huge problem. Baumgart said that our housing shortage is a $45 billion problem, if not bigger. It’s not all the state’s burden, of course, but the unprecedented outlay will only address a small part of it.
“We’re putting (almost) a billion dollars toward a multibillion dollar problem,” he said. It’s all oriented toward a simple notion: The best first step for fighting homelessness is a roof.
“The key to ending homelessness is to give people housing,” Baumgart said.Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or at shawnv@spokesman. com.
A homeless tent camp popped up on an empty lot in east Spokane on Dec. 16, after homeless protesters at Spokane City Hall were warned to vacate the area by that morning.
JESSE TINSLEY/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS IN SHORT SUPPLY, HIGH DEMAND
By Carolyn Thompson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The return to classrooms for the nation’s schoolchildren has not meant a return to work for many of their parents who, with workdays that outlast school days, are finding crucial after-school programs in short supply.
School-based providers list difficulties hiring and retaining staff as the biggest reasons they have not fully rebounded from pandemic shutdowns and they say they are as frustrated as the parents they are turning away.
“We’re in a constant state of flux. We’ll hire one staffer and another will resign,” said Ester Buendia, assistant director for after-school programs at Northside Independent School District in Texas. “We’ve just not been able to catch up this year.”
Before the pandemic, the San Antonio district’s after-school program had 1,000 staff members serving more than 7,000 students at its roughly 100 elementary and middle schools. Today, there are less than half that number of employees supervising about 3,300 students. More than 1,100 students are on waiting lists for the program, called Learning Tree, which provides academic, recreational and social enrichment until 6:30 p.m. each school day.
It’s difficult to conclude how many parents of school-age children have been unable to resume working outside the home because of gaps in available care. But surveys point to a cycle of parents, mostly mothers, staying home for their children because they are unable to find after-school programming, which then causes staffing shortages at such programs that rely heavily on women to run them.
“There’s no doubt really that these after-school programs – the lack of after-school programs at this stage – are limiting women in particular being able to re-enter the workforce,” said Jen Rinehart, vice president for strategy and programming at the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance, which works to increase programming.
“If women don’t return to the workforce then we don’t have the staff we need for these after- school opportunities, so it’s all very tangled together,” she said.
An Afterschool Alliance survey found an alltime high of 24.6 million children were unable to access a program at the end of 2021, though cost as well as availability was a barrier. Of more than 1,000 program providers surveyed, 54% had waiting lists, a significantly greater percentage than in the past.
Wells Fargo reported that labor shortages in child care, where women account for 96% of the workforce, are more acute than in other industries also struggling to find reliable employees. Employment was 12.4% below its pre-COVID-19 level at the beginning of March, leaving an estimated 460,000 families forced to make other arrangements, analysts concluded.
“Access to affordable child care has been shown time and again to boost labor force participation among mothers,” the report said.
A Census Bureau data poll in January found that 6% of parents with children 5-11 years old were not working because a child was not in school or day care. Data analyzed by the Pew Research Center found that in the last quarter of 2021, 6% fewer jobs were held by parents of children age 5 to 12.
Erica Gonzalez of San Antonio secured after- school spots for her second- and sixth-grade daughters after going into the school year on waiting lists. That allowed her to maintain her schedule at the nonprofit where she works and her husband, a teacher, to also coach.
Anticipating a crush for spots, Gonzalez had made sure to enroll her children for Learning Tree as quickly as possible and she kept in touch with their schools as each child inched up waiting lists.
“We were really just kind of hoping and praying that spots would open up for them and fortunately they did,” Gonzalez said.
Without the program, Gonzalez said she and her husband would have had to figure out how to get their daughters from their schools to her husband to wait for him to finish work.
“I would have had to probably change my schedule to go pick them up, drop them off and come all the way back to work,” she said. “We would have figured something out but it definitely would have been a challenge.”
Rico X said the schoolbased before- and after- school programs he oversees at the YMCA of Middle Tennessee have had to cap enrollment because of staff shortages, leaving capacity at about 70% of what it was before the pandemic. One of its 105 sites used to have as many as 85 students; now it’s fewer than 60.
“In some of our waitlist sites, we have some parents that are just in desperation,” he said, “and there’s not a whole lot we can really do unless there’s a spot that opens up.”
The YMCA, which sends staff into the schools to run the programs, is considering another pay raise in hopes of attracting more applicants, he said. The provider already raised the minimum pay for site directors from $13 to $16 an hour, and gave other employees a $2 an hour raise, to $13.
“For a good portion of our families, this is a lifeline for them, and it gives them the ability to be able to work but also have the peace of mind that their kids are in a safe and engaging environment. It’s 100% a lifeline,” X said.
The Afterschool Alliance survey found that 71% of programs had taken action to attract and retain staff. The most common was raising salaries, in some cases using federal pandemic relief money in the form of child care stabilization grants. Some also have offered free child care for employees as well as signing bonuses or paid time off.
“We came into the pandemic with tremendous unmet demand for after- school and summer programs and of course, like almost every other challenge out there, the pandemic only made that challenge worse,” Rinehart said.
Kasey Blackburn-Jiron, expanded learning coordinator for the West Contra Costa Unified School District in California, said providers the district relies on describe applicants skipping scheduled job interviews or even going through the hiring process only to vanish after landing the job, presumably to work at some place that pays more and demands less. “My best guess is we don’t pay them enough money. We don’t offer them enough hours,” said Blackburn-Jiron, who said the program serves far fewer than the 5,000 students enrolled before the pandemic.
“We’re asking these 17-, 18-, 19-dollar an hour people to work miracles,” she said. “Most of them don’t have bachelor’s degrees and yet we’re saying we want you to be an amazing youth development practitioner.
“You need to be able to teach and model social and emotional skills. You need to be able to teach 21st century skills, you need to be able to deal with young people who come from generations of trauma.”
She said state lawmakers recently increased funding for the program, which could lead to better pay, but the money will not get to programs until near the end of the school year.
“Working families need school-based after-school programs, and we just haven’t been able to meet the need,” Blackburn-Jiron said, “and it’s heartbreaking.”
Rico X poses at his home Monday in Hermitage, Tenn. X, who oversees the before- and after-school programs run by the YMCA of Middle Tennessee, said enrollment has had to be capped as parents return to work after the COVID pandemic because of staff shortages, leaving capacity at about 70% of what it was before the pandemic.
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS
Lesly Mendez works with children on Wednesday in a before- and after-school program operated by the YMCA of Middle Tennessee in Nashville.