It’s time for a homeless shelter in the North End. Race, power, wealth are preventing it
It’s the latest installment of a familiar argument, and Catherine Ushka has been through this before.
The Tacoma City Council member from Tacoma’s Eastside knows all too well where concerns being expressed by a contingent of her longtime neighbors — about plans to temporarily move and expand a homeless micro-shelter site from Hilltop to 60th Street and McKinley Avenue — come from.
While the pushback is far from unanimous on the Eastside, and many residents are prepared to welcome the new shelter, Ushka also knows her neighborhood has long been home to more social services than other areas of Tacoma.
Put more bluntly?
Homeless shelters and most other social services simply don’t end up in largely white and affluent neighborhoods like the North End, and everyone knows it.
That’s a problem, whether every current Eastside fear is justified or not.
It’s also why Ushka says she sympathizes with her neighbors, even though she’s confident the new shelter will not bring a wave of crime, drugs and other problems to the Eastside.
It’s complicated, in other words.
Maybe, though, it’s really not.
“There seems to be a broad sentiment in other parts of town that all these (services) must be provided, but very few hands are raising in those areas to actually provide those services,” Ushka said Monday, ticking off a long list of low-income housing developments and other human services that have been funneled toward the Eastside over the years.
“What if we all carried equal amounts of water for the people in need?”
Searching for ‘willing’ partners
Allyson Griffith is the assistant director of Tacoma’s department of Neighborhood and Community Services department. City leaders are well aware of the historical failing Ushka describes, she says.
There’s no doubt that Tacoma needs to find ways to more equitably spread homeless services throughout all parts of Tacoma, Griffith explains, describing it as an undertaking the city is “committed to.”
It also remains a work in progress, Griffith acknowledges.
For instance, the city’s temporary shelter ordinance originally limited the number of homeless shelters per police sector, a stipulation that the council included to ensure a more equitable distribution of services.
In November, however — after struggling to keep up with an increased need for shelter space — the City Council tweaked the ordinance to instead allow up to 150 shelter residents in each sector.
The move was intended to make it easier for nonprofits and faith-based organizations to partner with the city and open shelters, but it also opened the door for areas like the Eastside or Hilltop to take on even more of the shelter burden
Recently, the city’s efforts to increase shelter have largely focused on building partnerships with churches and nonprofits, Griffith explains, because the city simply doesn’t have adequate property to go it alone.
That includes working to identify potential shelters spaces where they haven’t existed in the past.
The catch?
So far, at least in the North End, that quest has yet to yield results.
“Frankly, it’s been finding a willing property owner, first and foremost,” Griffith says. “Generally, (the city) is very limited about what we have available that’s large enough to accommodate something and doesn’t have some other primary use. … We are working with other partners.”
As unsatisfying as it might be, this is the simplest way to explain why the micro-shelter site will be moving to the Eastside, Griffith says.
In the Tacoma Housing Authority, the city had a partner at the table, offering the site at 60th and McKinley for free through the end of next year.
The city tried to find alternate locations, according to Griffith and Ushka, but THA’s offer was there, waiting, at a time it was needed. The city’s deal to operate the micro-shelter site on Hilltop was soon expiring, and the COVID-19 pandemic complicated efforts to find new locations.
Like it was on Hilltop, the city’s deal to operate the micros shelter on the Eastside is temporary, Griffith says.
She’s confident the new site will also be just as successful, and quickly alleviate community concerns.
Griffith also says that every part of Tacoma — including the Eastside and North End — need more shelter beds.
In the background, the search to identify additional shelter spaces throughout the city also continues.
“Every (potential) shelter site is considered with the same level of seriousness,” regardless of where it is, Griffith assures.
Race, power and wealth
Ask Ushka what prevents homeless shelters from being built in places like Tacoma’s North End, and her answer veers beyond straightforward policy decisions.
It also quickly gets to the meat of the issue.
Fixing this historical disparity will take more than well-meaning ordinances and vocalized commitments to equity, Ushka says.
If the city really wants to address the historical disparity — as it has repeatedly pledged to do — it will mean finally grappling with a long entrenched race, power and wealth structure that has effectively insulated places like the North End from providing services.
“I think it’s consistent with urban development and the culture that we have across the country. It’s not new at all. Why don’t (homeless shelters go in the North End)? I think that we have systems of power that ensure the places that have the greatest economic challenges and the greatest diversity carry the most water,” Ushka says.
It will always be easier — politically and financially — to build homeless shelters in places like the Eastside, Ushka argues.
If the city wants to address, it will mean committing to do what’s more difficult.
Ultimately, it will mean finding a way to actually develop homeless shelters and other important services in places like the North End.
“Concerns about things being always placed here are valid. You see that kind of thing happen time and time again. It’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because it’s the way America has always done it,” Ushka says..
“That’s not simply a policy change. That’s a societal change.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "It’s time for a homeless shelter in the North End. Race, power, wealth are preventing it."
