It’s hard to make something of yourself when you look disheveled and feel dirty.
That’s why Freddy shows up most mornings at the Share Outreach trailers — just across the street from the Share House homeless shelter — on West 13th Street. Share is the primary provider of services to the homeless and hungry in Clark County.
“I want to shower, I want to feel clean, I want to eat a wholesome meal twice a day. I want to look presentable,” said Freddy, who didn’t reveal his last name. He said he’s been looking for work hanging vinyl and Hardiplank building siding, and sleeping in a homeless camp somewhere near downtown Vancouver.
At the Outreach, he can start his day with something like a fresh start: a shower, a hot meal, laundry facilities, a day locker, a mail check, a phone call, a bus ticket.
“This place keeps me alive,” he said.
But economic recession has hit Share hard from a couple of different directions. While the number of people who need food, shelter and hope is way up, some Share resources are vanishing.
Two annual grants to Share from the city of Vancouver, worth a total of $172,000, are gone, according to Diane McWithey, Share’s executive director. “We all know how tight things are for the city right now,” she said.
As a result, Share is planning to severely curtail the downtown Outreach program that helps steer homeless people off the street and provides resources they need to lead a positive, productive day. The Share Outreach trailers almost certainly need to be off the 13th Street property by Nov. 1, which is when a temporary, nonrenewable land-use permit expires.
That could have a big impact on downtown Vancouver, McWithey said. Last year, Share Outreach served 1,474 different people who otherwise might have had no place to go.
Share is also facing the closure of the smallest of its four homeless shelters — a site in the Minnehaha area that houses 13 battered women each night — and transitional housing support for women living in local apartments.
“Women face a higher risk factor living on the streets than men do,” said McWithey. “That is really going to hurt.” She said she’s searching for replacement funding and has gotten a grant from Clark County to buy one four-woman house.
Dedicated funding
City grants for these programs have dried up, McWithey said, and Share’s other dedicated funding streams cannot be reallocated to fill the gap. Power, water and lease costs for the two Outreach trailers run into the tens of thousands of dollars per year, she said.
New grant money to fill the need doesn’t seem likely, McWithey said. “There are not many grants out there that are applicable to this kind of program,” she said.
Building a permanent Outreach facility is a nice idea, McWithey added, but there’s that same problem: money. Share is studying the feasibility of buying the 13th Street property — from Ron Frederiksen of RSV Building Solutions — and putting a manufactured building there, she said, but that possibility is years and hundreds of thousands of dollars away.
What’s not possible is moving the Outreach to the former Timber Lanes bowling alley Share bought on Andresen Road in 2008, McWithey said. Drawing the target population, based mostly downtown, across several residential neighborhoods for daily services wouldn’t be popular with residents and probably wouldn’t work, she said. Offices for administration and client case management, a food warehouse and a volunteer center are planned for the former bowling alley.
Downtown solution
One of the13th Street trailers contains a large meeting room, several small conference rooms, a clothes closet and a bank of lockers. The other trailer is a restroom building with eight showers — four each for men and women.
You can sign up for mail delivery and use a telephone, check job listings from WorkSource Washington, a state agency, and talk with employment counselors, get a bus ticket or check the clothes closet for a clean secondhand wardrobe. On Fridays, you can talk to a volunteer lawyer about your legal troubles. And you can go across the street to Share House for a meal.
But before you do any of that, you must sign in for the day and talk to staff about your plans. And you must agree to take on a chore. A typical task is cleaning up — inside Share House, somewhere downtown or at freeway onramps and offramps.
Street people who have somewhere to go — who have a way to wash, to eat, to take care of basics — don’t wind up loitering on sidewalks or parks and bathing in public or business restrooms, said Amy Reynolds, Share’s program director.
“It really serves the downtown area,” Reynolds said. “If it goes away, people will say, ‘Where did these people come from? Why aren’t you helping them?’”
Even if it loses its Outreach trailers, McWithey said, Share will continue fielding an Outreach team that sweeps downtown streets and is on call when local businesses ask for help handling transients who are making their customers feel uncomfortable. The task force can swoop in to mediate and attempt to escort those folks elsewhere — but now they’ll have no home base as a natural first stop.
“The city has gone to great lengths to revitalize downtown, and without the Outreach program it’s likely that chronic homelessness will return to the area,” says a statement from Share. “With the current economic climate both locally and nationally, it is our belief that homelessness will increase in the coming years.”
Share is assembling a task force of city, business and neighborhood stakeholders to figure out the next step.
“We think it’s a really significant program,” said Lee Rafferty, executive director of Vancouver’s Downtown Association. “Having (transients) wandering around downtown, trying to find things to fill their time, is not good for them and not good for the feel of downtown — the shoppers, the businesspeople, the families.
“We’re hoping there’s a way they can keep those trailers,” Rafferty said.
Beaten up, down
When The Columbian visited Thursday morning, more than a dozen people were at the Outreach — showering, opening mail, talking to job counselors and Share staff.
Starla Hauff, 40, said she’s been living on the street for about a month and has been “beaten up” while out there. She’s been coming to the Outreach to get clean clothes, make phone calls and stay warm. Hauff said she would die without Share.
Todd Dixon, an unemployed journeyman plumber who’s been living at Share House for a year, helps staff the Outreach two days per week. He also works some nights in the Share House office.
“There are people who come in here with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” he said. “It’s a good feeling when they hop out of that shower. It just gives them some dignity and maybe their day will be more positive. It’s not just clothes or food or a shower. It’s a way to regroup.”
Belligerent behavior or people trying to game the system are rare, he said. He estimated that about two-thirds of all the Outreach visitors he sees are “working people the economy has really beaten down.” Many of the people The Columbian chatted with said they were construction workers and eager to find jobs.
