Grays Harbor County is nearly ready to fund the purchase of a permanent, year-round homeless shelter, possibly mending what government officials and care providers have identified as a weak point in the local system to address homelessness, and initiating a siting process that has plagued temporary shelter efforts in recent years.
The Tuesday agenda for the Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners included a discussion and possible action item to seek applications for the shelter funds, but the item was tabled after requests from a board member and county legal team to review the document outlining expectations for the shelter.
The document is slated to appear on the agenda of commissioners at next Tuesday’s meeting.
According to the request, which is being administered by Grays Harbor County Public Health, up to $500,000 is earmarked out of the county’s homeless housing fund for “interested and qualified agencies to purchase or designate a physical asset and obligate such real property to be used to provide emergency shelter for an indefinite period of time.”
That means the county funds can only be used for buying or renovating a building or a property “for the sole and specific purpose of providing an emergency shelter,” and not for operations of the shelter or any other existing shelter.
The county’s request also states the shelter will operate under a “low-barrier, high-intensity/co-located service model,” and the providing agency must work toward including substance use and mental health treatments at the site, along with access to other resources.
Once applications are submitted by an April 30 deadline, commissioners will decide on which shelter proposal receives the award.
During the meeting’s public comment period, Aberdeen City Administrator Ruth Clemens said that “Aberdeen is ready, willing and able to be a partner, to bring healing to all of our communities in the region.”
Clemens urged the board to issue the request for applications in a timely manner in order to leverage funding from the current state Legislative session.
“This is an important step, not only for Aberdeen, but for all of the communities trying to manage this issue,” Clemens said. “I think it’s fair to say that all communities that have homelessness as an issue are at a loss of how to solve or manage it.”
Clemens confirmed via email that the city of Aberdeen would be applying for the county’s shelter funds “in hopes of acquiring a piece of property” but declined to disclose its location.
“This funding will be instrumental in securing a site which will bring some resolve to the long-standing issue of homelessness in our county,” Clemens said.
District 2 County Commissioner Kevin Pine said after Tuesday’s meeting the request is “just the first step to finding a location” for the shelter. He and former Aberdeen Mayor Pete Schave said for much of 2023 they were searching for a permanent shelter site, with Schave stating in August they had found a site “about as perfect as you can get” just outside the city limits of Aberdeen.
That search for a permanent shelter came after the county board heeded requests of Schave and the Aberdeen City Council to reject a temporary winter shelter within the city limits. An alternate winter shelter site near the Bishop Athletic Complex was ultimately abandoned, while a shelter in Westport received pushback over a shelter expansion proposal.
Before the county board issued a request for temporary shelter proposals for last winter, it voted to require that providers include approval of the shelter by relevant city government with application materials. No shelter providers stepped forward in 2023.
Tuesday’s draft request document requires that applicants must have an outreach completed and/or outreach planned to engage relevant municipality about proposed use of space. That includes a letter from the city granting approval of the shelter and a public hearing regarding the proposal.
District 3 County Commissioner Vickie Raines, who has been largely supportive of the county’s shelter efforts in the past, said she wanted to review the request document to make sure the county wouldn’t be accountable for law enforcement or fire department response to the shelter. That would require, if a proposed site was outside the city limits of a municipality, for the government to annex the property into the city limits, Raines said.
Raines added that the location “has to be a place that they can get to easily and that they will go to.”
Commitment to a permanent shelter marks a shift from 2021, when Pine and District 1 County Commissioner Jill Warne passed on an opportunity for nearly $1.5 million in state and federal funding to develop a homeless shelter in Aberdeen, stating they were not in favor of providing a “low barrier” shelter that did not mandate sobriety or treatment for an overnight stay.
Pine said Tuesday the goal of the permanent shelter is to provide “safe, secure location for the unhoused, so they have a safe place to go, eventually would lead to them finding mental health services, to treatment services.”
Warne added, “One of the key things is to allow the police to do their job in enforcing all the vagrancy,” referencing federal court decisions that have restricted governments from enforcing public camping ordinances if adequate shelter beds are not available.
Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.
