Anyone who drove down Falk Road on Thursday or Friday would have seen a flurry of activity at a formerly downtrodden house. People were laying dirt and mulch. Others built a new fence. Trucks hauled away garbage and dropped off gravel for the driveway.
Inside, dozens of volunteers, primarily with Home Depot, were quickly improving the house in the Bagley Downs neighborhood that houses 14 people in recovery, including some veterans. It’s one of two group homes that Kleen Street Recovery manages for men trying to get their lives back on track.
Among the volunteers was Justin Crouch, a Kleen Street client. He met the nonprofit’s co-founder Jeff Talbott and housing director Cody Shaw while in treatment at Lifeline Connections. On Friday, Crouch was helping renovate the house with his work partner, Martin Abott, another Kleen Street client.
The pair started Kleen Construction last month. Crouch said he broke his back racing motorcycles, got hooked on painkillers and struggled to get into treatment. He went from being a family man and homeowner to a drug addict living out of his truck. Thanks to his tight-knit group of supporters at Lifeline and Kleen Street his life has turned around.
“You find people who’ve been through it and can help you process, so it becomes a big family,” Crouch said. “I’m able to do stuff like this and help give back and pay it forward.”
According to Clark County property records, the Falk Road home was built in 1950 and expanded in 1986. Eric Latkovich, a supervisor at Home Depot in Vancouver, said The Home Depot Foundation typically grants money to one regional project each year. Using volunteers from 13 area stores, the company partners with organizations that support veterans. Throughout the year, the Vancouver store will do smaller projects such as build someone a wheelchair ramp or install grab bars in their bathroom, Latkovich said.
For the Falk Road home, the plan was to open up the small kitchen and install new appliances, making it large enough to accommodate all the people who live there. A kitchenette was also added downstairs, the walls were repainted, and new blinds, flooring and shelving were installed among other projects. It was a two-day effort involving dozens of volunteers. Other companies donated services and supplies.
The tenants have been staying in a hotel while the work is being done.
“It’s really hard for these guys to ask for assistance or help. They said this is the best feeling they’ve ever had since they’ve been back from Iraq,” Talbott said.
Kleen Street is closing on a third group home near its recovery cafe. The cafe, at 5317 N.E. St. Johns Road, recently became part of the Seattle-based Recovery Cafe Network. It’s a safe place where people can access services, get something to eat or attend recovery meetings or job fairs. The nonprofit received an anonymous donation to renovate and upgrade the space.
That will include installing a commercial kitchen, which will allow the nonprofit to feed more people in need. Someday, Talbott said, he’d like to buy the entire strip mall where his cafe and offices are anchored. The area could use more attention and support. He’d like to open a youth center and a shelter with showers.
Kleen Street was also awarded $100,000 from Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Fund to renovate duplexes at a complex off Carlson Road, where there’s more transitional housing.
“We have so much going on. It’s definitely been great — slightly overwhelming at times — but great,” Shaw said. “People seem to like what we’re doing.”
He said it’s thanks to community support that Kleen Street has been able to grow, but there’s still a waitlist for its housing services.
Kleen Street started nearly five years ago as a safe-and-sober cafe, but grew into a multiservice nonprofit tailored toward people in recovery, especially veterans. Talbott is an Army veteran who began by reaching out to people living on the streets. The mission is to help anybody who comes through the door, whatever they may be trying to recover from.
