9/14/2022
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The Spokesman-Review
KXLY (Ed. Note: two stories about crime concerns. One blames Camp Hope, but who do the “South Hill neighborhood” folks get to blame?)
Everett Herald.Net
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The Spokesman-Review
By Emma Epperly
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
One of the only residential treatment centers for youth in Eastern Washington, Daybreak Youth Services, will remain open until a judge can review allegations the facility failed to cooperate with a Washington state Department of Health investigation.
The Department of Health issued a notice of intent to suspend Daybreak’s license last month after the facility refused to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into patient safety concerns.
Daybreak, founded in 1978, offers trauma-focused addiction and mental health treatment for youths ages 12 to 18. The Spokane inpatient facility, at 628 S. Cowley St., can treat up to 36 girls at a time and is a mirror to the Vancouver-area clinic that treats boys. Daybreak also offers outpatient coed clinics and counseling in Spokane Valley.
The health department began investigating allegations of misconduct as a result of “patient boundary issues” with a staff member, according to a news release.
The department accuses Daybreak of failing to provide investigators information despite repeated requests.
Tom Russell, Daybreak’s chief executive officer, denied that claim and said the facility fully cooperated with the investigation.
The facility had 28 days to request a hearing on the license suspension before it took effect.
The facility requested a hearing late last month. The request postponed the suspension until an administrative law judge can review the case and make a decision. The facility remained open Tuesday.
The hearing had yet to be scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Department of Health, but will be scheduled by the end of September. Emma Epperly can be reached at (509) 459-5122 or at emmae@spokesman. com.
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KXLY
September 13, 2022 6:22 PM
Updated: September 14, 2022 5:34 AM
SPOKANE, Wash. — Families in East Central Spokane are feeling the impact of Camp Hope, and now surrounding businesses are too. This is a story our team continues to cover.
We told you about two people who had to track down their stolen items, and they found them inside Camp Hope. While there, the owner of a nearby transmission shop, just two blocks away, was eager to share his experience as well.
Don Barden owns A&L Transmission and he says they’ve spent thousands & thousands to offset the damages they’re incurring from the property crime from Camp Hope.
They’ve dealt with broken windows, siphoned gas, drilled holes in diesel tanks, stolen items from customer cars, and fencing that’s been cut open.
“I’m trying to make a damn living here. It’s working, I am doing okay, but not when I have to come in here every day and find something that I have to fix,” Barden told us.
The most glaring crime so far is a stolen vehicle. The next day, the red pickup was found at Camp Hope.
“I mean I am just done. We’re done here. It’s really frustrating trying to run a business and having all this going on around us. It makes it really hard to keep running a business,” Barden, and his employee Kevin Kuntz, explained.
Last week, a new homeless shelter opened in East Spokane. Resources are available for those at Camp Hope, but most don’t want them.
According to Brad Baker, the Director at the new Trent Avenue shelter, they have the capacity for 150 people, and right now they’re at about 75. About one third of those currently there came from Camp Hope.
Back at A&L Transmission, they tell us their last-ditch effort to protect themselves and their property is to put up a fence around the entire area. That will cost them $14,000, and it’s no guarantee.
September 13, 2022 6:06 PM
Updated: September 14, 2022 5:35 AM
SPOKANE, Wash. — Neighbors are frustrated with vandalism and property damage, so they’re trying out something new to keep criminals out of their neighborhood.
Several people living near Cannon Hill Park are dealing with crime. They’ve filed police reports but are now getting involved to keep each other safe.
“I’m more aware,” said Dana Love, a recent victim of crime.
Her family’s truck was plastered with red spray paint in August. It will cost around $10,000 to repair.
“The people who did it need to know that what they’re doing is committing a felony, and so this is a serious crime,” she said.
Love is one victim in the neighborhood, and she’s not alone.
“It’s just gotten to a level that is just not ok,” said Kimberly Grandinetti, who’s also been a victim of crime.
Her pool and patio was hit hard with bags of, “dog poop, up to 30 to 40 bags and threw them into our pool area, all of our pool patio, the furniture, and it’s just disgusting.”
These neighbors are now finding new ways to keep crime out of the community.
“A lot more people are going to work on getting cameras now installed to help,” Grandinetti added. She says neighbors are talking more about issues they’re observing since the incidents.
Block watches also help.
“They realize people are looking at them, and all the neighbors are talking and reporting stuff, the bad guys tend to go where there’s less resistance,” said Patrick Striker. He’s the executive director of Spokane C.O.P.S.
Local C.O.P.S shops will help any neighborhood start their own block watch. Striker says creating a group text or private neighborhood Facebook group is a good way to get going.
“If the neighbors actually do what they need to do which is start that communication, let us come out and talk to you and train you — it 100% makes a difference,” he added.
A positive difference is what these neighbors are looking for and are now working together to create. By starting this block watch, they want to show criminals that crime won’t be tolerated.
“It’s not ok to do stuff like this, and it’s just increasing in our area,” Grandinetti concluded.
If you’re interested in starting your own Block Watch, click HERE. It’s a free resource, and C.O.P.S volunteers will help you get one going and stay in communication with the neighborhood to see what else can be done to keep families safe.
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Everett Herald.Net
The apartments’ residents have a stable home and are using it to improve their lives.
By The Herald Editorial Board
There is no substitute for having a place to call home, says Alison Ahlgrim.
Ahlgrim is director of program services for Clare’s Place in Everett and Sebastian Place in Lynnwood, permanent low-barrier supportive housing programs operated by Catholic Community Services and Catholic Housing Services.
A homeless person might have access to aid in the way of food and even shelter for the night, but without a place of their own — somewhere to prepare their own meals, keep their belongings, an address to receive mail, the safety of a lock on the door — it’s nearly impossible, Ahlgrim said, for anyone to confront the problems common to those who have lived with homelessness, including chronic physical ailments, substance abuse and addiction, mental health challenges and lack of living and social skills.
“In all of my nonprofit work, it became clear to me that housing is very essential and crucial to your functioning as a human with dignity and ability to live life and have quality of life,” Ahlgrim said recently, sitting in the courtyard garden at Clare’s Place, where residents tend flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit trees. “When people are housed, all these other issues and problems tend to start falling away.”
Clare’s Place was among the first such low-barrier supportive housing program in Everett to welcome tenants into its 55 studio and 10 one-bedroom apartments in 2019. Others that opened that year were Cocoon House’s Hub, providing 40 housing units to youths and young adults; and Housing Hope’s HopeWorks Station II, with 65 units for families and individuals transitioning out of homelessness.
Launched with the transfer of land near a city fire training facility off Evergreen Way then owned by the City of Everett in 2016, the $10.5 million project was built by the Catholic housing agency with the aid of grant funding. These early efforts have been followed by others, including Everett’s pallet shelter village, which provides simple but private one-room shelters near the Everett Gospel Mission and recent plans to open a second pallet site elsewhere in the city.
More recently, the Snohomish County Council has voted to use nearly $20 million in federal covid aid funding to purchase two motels — a 74-unit motel near Everett Mall and a 55-unit motel on Highway 99 in Edmonds — which will be used for low-barrier housing for those experiencing chronic homelessness and providing “wrap-around services,” including food assistance, medical aid, behavioral health support, addiction treatment and job training.
Even acknowledging that such aid is more cost-effective than continuing to incur expenses to the public that result from chronic homelessness from police and aid calls, emergency room use, court use, incarceration and more, the investment in facilities and the ongoing commitment to programs warrant a look at what one of the first of these programs has accomplished.
Clare’s Place, Ahlgrim said, has provided rental housing as well as supportive services that include access to counseling and a medical office and provider who can administer wound care and other medical treatment, behavioral health treatment and medication-assisted treatment for addiction, such as Suboxone.
Most residents are individuals, but there are eight or nine couples and two mothers with children.
All tenants are there on leases, paying no more than 30 percent of their income, typically from Social Security. There are basic rules of behavior, but no requirement for sobriety. Most, she said, are not sober, but all have reduced their use of drugs or alcohol.
All of its residents had been homeless for at least a year, Ahlgrim said, but some for as long as 10 years, and all dealing with physical disabilities, mental health challenges, substance abuse issues or a combination of challenges.
“Their time on the street, alone, has caused or contributed and exacerbated those issues,” she said.
The pandemic, which hit shortly after Clare’s Place moved in all residents, complicated access to some services. Some community outreach programs, recreation and cooking and other classes were placed on hold until recently, and while the lockdown excluded visitors it helped generate a sense of community and shared purpose among residents.
One resident, Ahlgrim said, owns a van and has become a one-person shuttle service, taking other residents to appointments to receive methadone treatments.
“If you weren’t down at the van, someone was knocking on your door. People are looking out for each other,” she said.
Not all residents participate in treatment programs, Ahlgrim said, but the point is to provide stability and access to those programs.
“People are more able to follow through with methadone once they are housed. When you’re on the streets it’s hard to keep appointments,” she said.
The level of success for each resident is individual, depending on the length of homelessness and their own challenges, but stable housing, she said has made a marked difference between when residents first moved in and now.
About 85 percent of those who arrived in 2019 remain at Clare’s Place. There were three evictions since 2019 that resulted from behavior issues and threats of violence. And some residents, suffering from physical ailments, have died. A few, even with the difficulties in finding affordable market-rate housing, have moved on.
But it’s a long process, she said. The rule of thumb, Ahlgrim said, is that for every year on the streets, it takes a year of supportive housing to reach the point of being able to move on.
But the success she has seen convinces her of the need for more low-barrier supportive housing in the county. She is equally supportive of the county’s purchase of the two hotels, potentially for shorter-term housing and a step toward placement at Clare’s Place or similar programs, as it can work to prepare people and determine when they are ready to move on to a more permanent setting.
“When someone’s been on the streets for years, it can be hard to adjust to life off the streets, and many are not able to function in the community. They are not able to follow rules, to maintain the cleanliness and safety of an apartment” she said. “So if you’re able to get those people housed as quickly as possible, that’s a huge benefit to those people.”
It is a learning process, but the residents of Clare’s Place and similar programs are back in control of their own lives.
“We walk with them on their journey, but they’re in the driver’s seat. They have the agency and control. Sometimes they make choices that are not in their best interests, and we can really wish they’d made a different one, but it’s their life.”
But when they need help to pick up the pieces after a poor decision, she said, they have the stability to learn from those mistakes.
“There are people who will flame out and won’t succeed,” Ahlgrim said. “But a majority are being helped.”
“You can’t make progress on anything without a safe, stable place to sleep.”
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