88-unit South Tacoma homeless shelter Aspen Court closes, falling short of city goals
The city of Tacoma’s first attempt at converting a hotel into an enhanced homeless shelter did not meet specified goals, with fewer residents served and exited from Aspen Court into permanent housing than spelled out in a contract between the city and Seattle-based Low Income Housing Institute.
As of Jan. 8, the 88-unit shelter at 8620 S. Hosmer St. served 253 people since it opened in December 2021. After two years and more than $21 million for programming, closing and acquisition costs from various local government agencies, at Aspen Court 100 people have reportedly exited into permanent housing. The goals spelled out in the contract between the city and LIHI called for 257 people to find permanent housing over the course of 2021, 2022 and 2023.
According to city officials, most people were exited from the program this past December when work began to transform Aspen Court from a temporary shelter into future permanent supportive housing, as laid out in the original plan for Aspen Court. Since the shelter closed Dec. 31, about 20 residents remained there awaiting alternative housing, according to city officials.
As of November 2023, 43 former Aspen Court residents had obtained permanent housing since the shelter opened in December 2021.
The city’s goal was to have 95 Aspen Court residents find permanent housing in 2023, 119 in 2022 and 43 in 2021.
Tacoma Homeless Strategy, Systems and Service manager Caleb Carbone told The News Tribune on Jan. 12 that a “significant” number of Aspen Court residents found permanent housing in December, as well as some Lakewood residents referred to the program, which is why 100 total residents were reported to have found permanent housing in a Jan. 8 weekly shelter update.
That equated to an exit rate of 39.5% for those people served at the shelter. Carbone said it is typical for shelters in Tacoma to have a 30%-40% exit rate into permanent housing. Shelter output goals are usually set by the provider based on reasonably anticipated turnover and information gleaned from previous years or other projects the provider oversees, said city spokesperson Maria Lee.
“When we negotiate the next contract, our assumption is that we keep the goals unless there is a reason to decrease any goals. Otherwise we decrease funding,” Carbone said. “That’s kind of the direction that we go with making sure we’re holding our providers accountable with the goals that they set in place.”
Aspen Court was the city’s first hotel-to-shelter conversation as well as its first enhanced shelter-to-permanent housing conversion, which was a learning experience, Carbone said. The city of Tacoma “did a really good job” using one-time pandemic funding to support the sheltering system “as fast as possible with the resources that they had,” he said.
Carbone said the city would continue having conversations about similar projects but said, realistically, given the amount of funding that went into the Aspen Court program, “I don’t know if we will have another opportunity like this.”
“It is really hard to plan those types of projects because housing projects take two to four years … where sheltering takes significantly less,” he said. “So you’re kind of putting in a long-term timeline with the short-term timeline.”
Other challenges for Aspen Court included addressing the complex needs of the population that stayed there, Carbone said. Often times people who were referred to Aspen Court had been living on the street for years, had significant medical and mental health needs and higher barriers to obtain housing, he said.
“It’s just a harder population [to help],” he said. “And LIHI doesn’t necessarily have control over who comes through there. Those are done through the referral system, with our Homeless Engagement Alternatives Liaison team.”
The Aspen Court property manager with Low Income Housing Institute did not respond to multiple requests for comment about missing the annual goal targets agreed to with the city.
According to contracts with the city, in 2023 the city of Tacoma hoped to serve 238 unique residents, provide 5,200 hours of case management and help 40% of them find permanent housing at Aspen Court. In 2022 the city hoped to serve 238 unique residents and help 50% of them obtain permanent housing, and in 2021 the city had a goal to serve 85 unique residents and help 50% of them obtain permanent housing.
As of November 2023, the most recent numbers available, according to city spokesperson Maria Lee:
▪ 113 unique residents were served in 2023, 20 clients obtained permanent housing and 4,560 hours of case management were provided.
▪ 131 unique residents were served in 2022 and 23 obtained permanent housing.
▪ 29 clients were served in the month of December 2021, and no clients obtained permanent housing.
Case management hours were not logged in 2021 and 2022, she said.
The city of Tacoma, Pierce County, Lakewood and the state Department of Commerce agreed to provide LIHI with about $21 million in funding for programming, closing and acquisition costs at Aspen Court, according to contracts obtained by The News Tribune.
This included $5 million each from the city and Pierce County, as well as $1 million from the city of Lakewood to purchase Aspen Court and fund programming. The Washington State Department of Commerce also provided $7 million to LIHI through the Rapid Capital Housing Acquisition program.
From 2021 to the end of 2023, the city of Tacoma gave LIHI an additional $2,935,965 for operations and services at Aspen Court, with funding from the Mental Health Substance Use Disorder Sales Tax and dollars from the city’s general fund, Carbone said.
Transition to permanent supportive housing
As laid out in the original plan for Aspen Court, the building is expected to reopen later this year as permanent supportive housing for veterans experiencing homelessness and others, LIHI executive director Sharon Lee told The News Tribune in an interview Dec. 21.
Work is underway to transform Aspen Court’s hotel units into more apartment-like places with kitchenettes, Carbone said. LIHI has told the city it has a projected a four- to six-month timeline for completion and will continue running operations there, he said.
“The hope of this location is to become housing. That is the actual solution [to homelessness],” Carbone said. “That’s [also] the communication that’s really hard to hear, because you hear you’re going to decrease shelter bed capacity … at least for a short period of time.”
Permanent supportive housing follows the housing first model, which prioritizes housing as a basic necessity to first stabilize someone experiencing homelessness and later serve as a platform from which they can pursue personal and financial stability, Carbone said. Permanent supportive housing is designed to support people considered chronically homeless, usually those who have been homeless for more than a year, with resources like case management and subsidized rent, he said.
A recent trend Tacoma officials have been seeing is individuals experiencing chronic homelessness for much longer than a year, even up to five, 10, 15 or 20 years, he said.
“The idea is that when folks come back into housing, they have lost a lot of skills and resources that they once had,” Carbone said. “What [we] found is that if you just put them in there and you give no services to them, sometimes you lose those folks back into the system because they do need some consistent support.”
People exiting homelessness often have barriers to securing housing, including employment history, rental verification, fixed income, age and disability status, Carbone said. Other barriers can include addiction, criminal history and mental health issues.
“All we can do in this industry right now is to be able to provide the resources that we currently have available to them,” Carbone said.”We can’t require them to take that resource.”
As an enhanced shelter, residents were eligible to stay at Aspen Court for several months as compared to temporary day shelters, which often have shorter time limits. Under the 2023 services contract with the city of Tacoma, LIHI was required to provide case management, common areas, daily meals, 24/7 on-site security, operation management and temporary financial assistance to residents like bus passes, ID/license fees and housing move-in costs.
“During all case management meetings with clients, the main focus was planning for their future after Aspen Court,” said LIHI program manager John Brown in an email to the News Tribune Jan. 2. “During our 8-month closure plan, we sent several letters to clients about Aspen Court closure.”
When the program began to wind down, Brown said there was anywhere between seven and nine staff “assisting multiple clients on plans for housing and transitioning out of Aspen Court.”
One of the biggest hurdles LIHI has seen in Tacoma is the price of apartments and the lack of available permanent supportive housing, Brown said.
Program had mixed success, some residents say
The city, LIHI and some residents who found housing through the Aspen Court program say they considered the project successful compared to similar shelter models.
Others still seeking housing say the Aspen Court experiment fell short, despite them spending months or years in the program.
For 69-year-old Mark Lewis and his girlfriend, Aspen Court marked a successful transition out of homelessness and into a unit in the Winthrop Apartments, with a one-year lease and rent adjusted for their monthly income.
Lewis lived at Aspen Court from March 2022 until Dec. 29. He came to Tacoma in 2013, fleeing the heat of the South, and had lived outside for nine-and-a-half years. Lewis said he credits Aspen Court for helping improve his mental and physical health after years of living on the street. Lewis said he lost track of how many case managers he’d had at Aspen Court but said there were resources and help there for those who wanted it.
“We’re all individuals coming from the street and trying to get something together again in your life and sometimes it feels like there’s no end in sight,” Lewis said. “For some it’s really heartbreaking. It’s devastating. I mean, when I came here, I had absolutely no one, and I mean no one, I could call or count on. I didn’t know anyone here. And it’s been almost 11 years and finally now I’ve got into an apartment.”
LIHI paid for the couple’s storage unit, moving fees, furniture-delivery fees, first and last month’s rent and their security deposit for the new apartment, Lewis said. A mental health counselor at Aspen Court also connected him with a psychiatrist and a primary care doctor, which Lewis said he hopes will refer him to a specialist to explore a possible cancer biopsy in the future.
Lewis said he has come to believe that programs like Aspen Court can be successful. He said the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness team was instrumental in understanding the stress he was under living on the street and making the call to bring him to Aspen Court.
“It was a good experience being there. Glad to be in the apartment, so is my girlfriend. We can cook now like we want to. It’s going to make a big change, it’s going to make things a lot better for us,” he said. “I’ve got a whole year here at the Winthrop on a signed lease for me to make all kinds of good decisions. Getting me in here, and then going to rehab — two of the best ones I can think of for 2024.”
In interviews with The News Tribune, eight other Aspen Court clients — some of whom asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation or loss of housing from LIHI — said high turnover among case managers limited their ability to search for housing and find community resources. Other issues like mismanagement, delayed mail service and a lack of clear guidance about alternative housing options amid the shelter program’s closure also hindered some residents’ ability to succeed, they say.
Former resident Amber Marcengill, 44, said they’d had five case managers in nine months at Aspen Court before they were exited Jan. 1, which made it hard to get back on their feet. Marcengill, who uses they/them pronouns, said LIHI’s offers of alternative housing didn’t fit their circumstances and mismanagement, as well as dangerous neighbors, worsened their mental health and addiction issues.
Despite asking for assistance from LIHI for a storage unit since October, when they were exited from Aspen Court Marcengill said they didn’t receive any. Marcengill said they became homeless in 2020 after suffering two strokes and a heart attack and are still grappling with mental health issues as well, including complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Marcengill said in the hours before they were exited LIHI offered them housing in Seattle, but they declined because they had no details as to where they’d be going, they’d been seeing a local therapist regularly and already had several surgeries scheduled in Tacoma. Marcengill said they have no car, no connection to Seattle or King County and no knowledge of available resources there and feared they would lose all their belongings if they moved.
Beyond Jan. 3 Marcengill told the News Tribune they didn’t know where they would stay, but said they have felt safer living on the streets than at Aspen Court.
“I feel like this whole program has been set up for failure,” Marcengill said. “The whole part of this program is to help us get some stability so that we can move on to the next part of our life, but they’re not providing any stability. I’m no further along in any type of my recovery from my traumas.”
Carbone said that high turnover in all supportive services, including case management, remains an issue in the industry and isn’t necessarily new.
“What we hear across the system is that keeping case managers, keeping any other supportive services, is really hard because this work is really hard,” he said. “The population has a lot of trauma. You know, they’ve gone through a lot themselves. And so working with them can sometimes bring on secondhand trauma as well.”
Brown said in an email to The News Tribune that Aspen Court’s original staffing structure included four case managers. He said clients were able to receive certain mail and packages, like medication and important documents, and several letters were sent to clients about Aspen Court’s closure.
For 53-year-old Aloma Danley the days leading up to her exit from Aspen Court were chaotic, leaving her anxious about the future and struggling to see a positive end in sight.
“I was told that this program would be helpful, that I really wouldn’t have to worry about too much. I saw it as a blessing,” Danley said. “I just thought, ‘You know what? Finally I’m getting a break.’ And it’s turned out to be the complete opposite.”
Danley arrived at Aspen Court in February 2023 after her leg was amputated due to a septic spider bite in 2022. Although she had looked forward to having access to case management services, Danley said, none of her six case managers were helpful in securing alternative housing and oftentimes there would be no case manager there to talk to. In late September Danley said she asked her case manager for her case file and was told she had none.
Brown told The News Tribune all clients have access to their case files.
“I‘m not saying to hold my hand and carry me all the way through, you know, but just at least point me in the right direction,” Danley said. “I have literally been at a standstill, I don’t know what direction to go into.”
At Aspen Court, Danley said she was not put in an accessible room, was not offered an extended stay beyond Dec. 31 and was not offered any moving assistance. Danley said she has called nearly every housing and homeless provider in the area but hasn’t been able to find an apartment that accommodates her budget, needs and physical disability.
In an interview with The News Tribune Jan. 10, Danley said she was staying anywhere she could to avoid the cold and rain, including friends’ couches and cars.
“I’m just trying my hardest to hang in there, and I’m getting so discouraged,” she said.
This story was originally published January 17, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
