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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Groups rally for day center for the homeless

Friends of the Carpenter teams with area governments, neighborhood groups, businesses

By , Columbian City Government Reporter
Published:
2 Photos
Friends of the Carpenter executive director Tom Iberle explains how this 1,200-square-foot space in his agency&#039;s west Vancouver warehouse will be transformed in the next few weeks into a day center for the homeless.
Friends of the Carpenter executive director Tom Iberle explains how this 1,200-square-foot space in his agency's west Vancouver warehouse will be transformed in the next few weeks into a day center for the homeless. (Photos by Natalie Behring/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

The business community is stepping up to build showers, bathrooms and a laundry facility at a day center for the homeless that’s slated to open next month in west Vancouver’s Fruit Valley neighborhood, giving the project a needed boost as the city grapples with its homeless problem.

“It’s such an amazing thing for them to even approach us as a city and say, ‘What can we do to help?’ We think we can make this work,” said Peggy Sheehan, the city’s Community and Economic Development program manager.

Open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting Dec. 14, the 1,200-square-foot space at 1600 W. 20th St. in the Friends of the Carpenter’s warehouse will be run by Share, a local social service agency. Clark County and the city of Vancouver are each contributing $122,500 to fund the day center’s operations, and the Vancouver Housing Authority is contributing $30,000 toward rent and utilities, for a total of $275,000 for the first year. Other local nonprofit groups will help with mental health counseling, general education classes, case management and job searches.

The day center is critically needed at a time when homeless shelter space and affordable housing are scarce in Vancouver, and camping in public is banned except for between 9:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

Identity Clark County, the Southwest Washington Contractors Association and RSV Construction are leading the effort to raise money for the $85,000 shower facility that will be connected to the building’s exterior. Anticipated to be finished by March, the 450-square-foot facility will include four showers, four restrooms, and a commercial washer and dryer. It will be an improvement on the shower trailer and portable toilets the city had planned to install, Sheehan said.

The city of Vancouver will cover any gap in fundraising for the shower facility using federal Community Development Block Grants. But businesses already are lining up to participate. Shur-Way Lumber has offered to donate all of the lumber needed for construction, and Catworks Construction will donate all of the site grading and preparation, utilities and excavation.

“I look for opportunities to help, and this happened to be one that popped up,” said Mike Nieto, owner of Catworks, based in Battle Ground. “The truth is, there’s no silver bullet for the homeless problem. This, to me, is kind of a maintenance issue of life. … If we can have a place for folks to go that’s safe and dry, every little bit helps.”

The city is creating a flier to distribute to the homeless notifying them about the day center, Sheehan said. An open house will be at Friends of the Carpenter from noon to 1 p.m. Dec. 11.

Community outreach

The Friends of the Carpenter warehouse is filled with lumber, woodworking tools and machinery. As homeless clients learn woodworking skills, staff and volunteers attempt to make connections with them, offer them hope, share the Christian message and refer them to social services. Some people fulfill their community service hours there. Many of the people whom the day center will target already are clients at Friends of the Carpenter, said Tom Iberle, the agency’s executive director, who already has seen an increase in visitors since the weather turned cold.

In recent weeks, Sheehan has visited Hough, Esther Short and Fruit Valley neighborhood association meetings to talk about the day center project.

“Everybody’s been really supportive. We totally anticipated having to explain more than we’ve had to explain,” she said.

A few people have expressed concerns about homeless people pitching tents in the neighborhood. City officials have pointed out that camping is illegal in city parks, and there’s no other public property in the vicinity of Friends of the Carpenter, which, aside from a couple of residential streets nearby, is mostly in an industrial area bordered by a rail yard to the east. The Friends of the Carpenter facility itself is surrounded by a fence with a locking gate.

“We’re going to keep a very close eye on (camping),” Iberle said, adding that the topic will be addressed with clients visiting the day center.

Some Fruit Valley residents are comfortable with the day center, saying it’s not much different from what Friends of the Carpenter has been doing for more than a decade.

“Friends of the Carpenter has been just down the street from my house for a number of years. It might bring a little change in the volume of traffic, but the nature of the mission … hasn’t changed at all,” said Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association president Eric LaBrant, who was elected a Port of Vancouver commissioner this month.

“I think it’s going to work out fine,” said Dale Bjurstrom, vice president of the neighborhood association. “It’s not a bad thing. If they (homeless people) have a set place to be, they don’t just wander around our neighborhood and camp in our parks.”

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Other Fruit Valley residents say they fear the day center will create crime and safety problems in their neighborhood, which they’ve been striving to clean up. Howard Gehrke, 53, said he represents 20 to 30 people who are concerned about the day center drawing migratory homeless people from Seattle, Portland, Eugene and California.

“I love the good intentions, but especially now, we’re very concerned about what this is going to bring,” Gehrke said. “You can put all the provisions in the world you want … but that doesn’t matter to these people. We’re still going to get an influx from all over the place.”

Gehrke said he and his neighbors don’t feel the city’s outreach has been adequate, and they feel disconnected and out of the loop. (They don’t attend Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association meetings, he said, due to what can be boiled down to neighborhood politics.)

“As much as this is a feel-good thing, they didn’t really give us due process,” he said. “Everyone’s having a difficult time with it.”

Vancouver Police Officer Greg Raquer said he wasn’t concerned that the day center would compromise neighborhood safety. It will be open during the daytime, when children usually are in school, he said. Overall, he doesn’t anticipate any problems, Raquer said.

Ibere emphasized that Friends of the Carpenter wants to be a good neighbor and use this as an opportunity to build a closer relationship with residents.

“We want people of Fruit Valley to feel safe and a partner in this whole operation,” he said.

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Columbian City Government Reporter