4/28/2022
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Spokesman-Review
Mayor shares plan to move House of Charity away from downtown
New Violent Crime Task Force unveils plans
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Spokesman-Review
Mayor shares plan to move House of Charity away from downtown
By Greg Mason
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington plans to relocate the House of Charity shelter to a new location several miles outside of downtown Spokane.
Mayor Nadine Woodward announced the endeavor Wednesday during her State of the City address. Dubbed “House of Charity 2.0,” the project would move House of Charity to a larger, 40,000-to- 50,000-square-foot site.
The move will allow Catholic Charities to grow House of Charity from an approximately 135-bed shelter with services for men and women to one potentially capable of serving 250 to 300 individuals.
“The vision is to significantly increase space for women, provide comprehensive services that will help people become more stable and move into permanent supportive
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housing and offer even greater flexibility with how we give everyone a fresh start toward making Spokane a model for how we support the individual journey,” Woodward said.
The new campus would provide 24/7 low-barrier shelter services, with Catholic Charities touting access to mental health counseling and care, substance abuse counseling, medical respite, permanent housing services, vocational training, case management and peer support counseling. “Low-barrier” is an industry term for shelters that don’t have conditions like sobriety for their guests.
“The reality for us is we want to be able to do more for the homeless. More services. A better path to housing,” said Robert McCann, CEO and president of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington. “And we know the House of Charity is just not going to work in its current location in trying to serve the entire homeless population.”
McCann said the organization has three possible sites in mind for the location of House of Charity 2.0.
He declined to specify those locations, saying the organization still has to go through processes with the city as well as listening sessions with potential future neighbors. McCann estimated an announcement could come in around a month or so.
“The best place to build a homeless shelter, folks, is ‘somewhere else,’ ” Mc-Cann said. “Everybody knows it. It’s a reality, and so we’re going to have to talk to people to get them OK with what’s coming.”
McCann estimated the project could cost anywhere from $11 million to $13 million to get up and running. He said he expects construction to take around a year once it starts.
“We hope that we will use best practice, but keep in mind here a 300-bed shelter is not necessarily best practice,” he said. “The smart thing to do would be to build six 50-bed shelters in areas in and around downtown close to services, but we live in a reality where that is not going to happen.
“We can barely site one shelter in this community,” he continued. “We’re not going to site six.”
The city will aid the Catholic Charities project by helping to find state funding and operational support, Woodward said.
Once the relocation takes place, the current House of Charity will be used for offices and support services for Catholic Charities.
The location would not continue to sleep and feed individuals on a regular basis. However, the upstairs sleeping space will remain intact for the city’s or county’s use in case of inclement weather, smoke conditions, quarantine space or other uses, according to Catholic Charities.
The decision not to house anyone on a daily basis in that facility was “a collaborative move,” McCann said, with the city and the downtown business owners “who don’t want to see the House of Charity downtown.”
“We are realizing that neighborhood with all of the housing we’ve built there, which is great news, does attract a criminal element, which then prey on those people in those apartments,” Mc-Cann said. “We want to try and take some of the density out of that neighborhood.”
House of Charity 2.0 is unrelated to the city’s efforts to locate a new low-barrier homeless shelter on East Trent Avenue. Likewise, Catholic Charities is not applying to operate the Trent Avenue site, the organization announced in a press release.
The city is looking at the East Trent Avenue property as the site of a new a 250-bed homeless shelter. Actions taken by the city to address homelessness have been heavily scrutinized, particularly in the last several months with the emergence of the Camp Hope homeless encampment on East Second Avenue.
House of Charity 2.0 was one of the programs on homelessness Woodward talked about during her State of the City address.
“Homeless Plan 2.0,” touted as an extension of initiatives she announced in July 2020, outlines an approach to these issues centered on eight focus areas, including creating additional emergency housing stock and providing individualized services.
Woodward said the plan was designed out of feedback from providers, nonprofits, private industry and government representatives, notably former Gov. Christine Gregoire, CEO of Challenge Seattle.
“Let me be very clear about one thing: This plan is a chapter,” she said. “It is not the end of a book.” Greg Mason can be reached at (509) 459-5047 or gregm@spokesman. com.
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward speaks during her 2022 State of the City Address on Wednesday at the Centennial Ballroom in Spokane.
TYLER TJOMSLAND/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
By Albert James
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
OLYMPIA – Across the country, states are holding billions of dollars worth of unreturned security deposits, stocks and unclaimed wages, waiting for the money’s rightful owners to appear.
In Washington and Idaho, more than $1.3 billion dollars in cash is being held as “unclaimed property” – money from dormant checking or savings accounts, business overpayments or physical contents from bank safe deposit boxes.
Patti Wilson, unclaimed property administrator with the Washington Department of Revenue, said her office acts as a “custodian” for unclaimed money, helping people find what is legally theirs.
“It’s a consumer protection program that benefits the public,” Wilson said. “Because if unclaimed property didn’t exist, whether it’s here in Washington state or any other state, then these individuals may never know about this money.”
Idaho State Treasurer Julie Ellsworth said people often think of unclaimed property as some kind of scam, but that is just not the case.
“Quite frankly, I would think it was a scam if I didn’t see the credentials of a constitutional officer on it,” Ellsworth said. “It sounds too good to be true - but it is true ... I will stamp the treasurer’s stamp on it.”
According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, a majority of unclaimed property is in the form of money from inactive bank accounts, uncashed checks and lost insurance payments. Sometimes, states are also responsible for physical items like safe deposit box contents and even gift certificates. Real estate, vehicles and most other forms of physical property do not count as unclaimed property.
As people move around, they lose contact with the banks, doctor’s offices and insurance companies that they have done business with. After a certain period of time holding onto dormant property, organizations and businesses are required to turn it over to the state where the owner was last known to live. It then becomes the responsibility of the state treasurer’s office or another government agency to connect the unclaimed property with its true owner.
The unclaimed property departments in Washington and Idaho, along with those across the country, maintain online public databases of the property received, who owns it and how much it is worth. When an individual files a claim for the listed property, the office will work to confirm they are the legitimate owner of the property before disbursing it.
“It’s all about, as a custodian, making sure that we are holding the money and when we return it, that we’re returning it to the rightful owner,” Wilson said. “And if the owner is deceased, making sure those that are coming forward are the rightful heirs to that owner or are entitled to claiming that property.”
According to the Department of Revenue, Washington state has returned over $1.2 billion in cash to people across the state and has over $1 billion in its possession. Of that billion dollars available, $66.5 million belongs to people whose last known address was in Spokane County. The county is in the top five with large amounts of money to be returned - King County leads the way with $539.2 million awaiting its owners.
In Idaho, the numbers are smaller, with over $13 million returned and almost $152 million waiting for its real owners - with $15.5 million belonging to people whose last known address was in Kootenai County, the third largest amount in the state.
Ellsworth said the statistics fluctuate as more money is reunited with owners and as new unclaimed property is turned over to the state. The population of a given area also plays a role in how much unclaimed property is available, she said.
A big part of connecting people with their property is outreach. Ellsworth said she promotes Idaho’s unclaimed property initiatives whenever she meets with people and government officials across the state. Wilson said the Department of Revenue will be at this summer’s Hoopfest with a booth and sponsoring two courts to promote their services and efforts to get money out the door.
Individuals looking to see if they have unclaimed property can go to their state’s official unclaimed property website: claimyourcash.org in Washington, or yourmoney. idaho.gov in Idaho. Both Ellsworth and Wilson said anyone who previously lived in another state should check that state’s official website as well.
They also said it is worth it to regularly check the databases. Even if a person has little to no money ready for them right now, records are always being updated and could reveal additional amounts of money in the future, they said.
“They may not have any unclaimed property today, but we’re adding names to the database pretty much year round, and we receive new reports every fall,” Wilson said. “Or even if you have claimed it before, there might be more property that’s reported for someone.”
“It’s little bits here and there, or sometimes a big, huge one, so it’s worth your time to always check it out,” Ellsworth said. “If it’s not worth your trouble, leave it for a while and check back in a year. It can accumulate, then we can do all one claim at once.”
Olympia intern Albert James can be reached at albert.james@wsu.edu.
mailto:albert.james@wsu.edu
New Violent Crime Task Force unveils plans
By Greg Mason
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Mayor Nadine Woodward and Spokane police Chief Craig Meidl fleshed out how the new Violent Crime Task Force will function at the mayor’s State of the City address Wednesday.
Woodward announced plans to formulate a task force following a rash of shootings across just a few days earlier this month, with the goal of cracking down on repeat offenders.
The police department will assign two sergeants and five other officers to start, Meidl said.
“Their job every day is to wake up and look at who are these repeat offenders that continue to go out and victimize the community,” he said. “Their job is to go out and stop that and get ahead of it before they can victimize the community again.”
The effort is similar to Seattle’s “High Utilizer” initiative, a Seattle City Attorney’s Office program aimed at aggregating numerous misdemeanors into felony charges for more than 100 people collectively suspected of thousands of misdemeanors in the past five years, according to the Seattle Times.
Meidl said the police department was deliberate to not eliminate any other SPD units to bring together the task force. He said SPD hopes to refill those units as more officers are hired in the coming months.
“The task force is built on philosophies and successes of other specialty teams that the SPD has put together before,” Woodward said. “And we’re looking at approaches other cities have taken to quality of life crimes by packaging misdemeanor crimes into felony charges for those responsible for dozens and dozens of offenses.”
The formation of the task force comes amid complaints from the police department that individuals arrested on certain crimes are quickly released.
Meidl said the task force will follow these defendants from the point of arrest to their appearances in court.
“A lot of these judges aren’t getting the rest of the story of what’s happening with these individuals and the type of one-person crime wave they are,” he said, “so our goal is not only to arrest them to protect them, to keep the community safe, but also to really demonstrate to the judge this person is doing a lot of damage. They are a big threat to the community.”
With 40 shootings in the first three months of the year, Spokane was on pace to top the 151 shootings recorded last year.
Meidl said the string of shootings seen in the city stems not only from gang violence and drugs, but also domestic violence, property crime and other incidents.
“The intent is to, one, get them off the street. Get those guns off the street,” he said, “but also send a message to the rest of the community that Spokane is not going to tolerate this.
“If you’re going to go out and commit a crime, especially a crime with a gun, we’re not going to tolerate it. We’re going to come after you.” Greg Mason can be reached at (509) 459-5047 or gregm@spokesman. com.