New homeless shelter-access hub aims to do something Pierce County has never done
In a former school building in the Parkland-Spanaway area, a local organization working to fight homelessness is planning something Pierce County has never had before — a centralized hub to coordinate shelter for anyone who needs it.
Family Promise of Pierce County leased a floor of the building at 12108 Pacific Ave S. in Parkland through a $1 million Homeless Shelter Access Hub grant awarded by the county.
“This place will serve as the single intake building for anyone experiencing homelessness in Pierce County,” CEO of Family Promise of Pierce County, Steve Decker, told The News Tribune while giving a tour of the building.
Decker said the shelter hub begins operation Nov. 1.
The county previously had no centralized location to bring folks who need immediate shelter, he said. The new facility will allow families and individuals to arrive at any hour day and staff will look to coordinate with local shelters to find them a place to stay, Decker said.
He also said the shelter hub will give first responders and law enforcement from any jurisdiction in the county a place to bring families and individuals in need of shelter when they encounter them.
The building has seen better days. It is in need of roof repair; paint is peeling off the walls; the carpet is starting to uproot in certain rooms; it awaits a much-needed furnace repair.
Decker is confident that it will serve its purpose well. Family Promise of Pierce County is a relatively new organization that has been focused on getting families and children experiencing homelessness off the streets. It started out about a year ago as a small team working out of a previously unused portable owned by the Bethel School District.
It used the portable as an administrative building and a day center to allow families a place to be while Family Promise worked to find them shelter or housing. With the growth the organization has had in the past year, Decker said, the portable was becoming “unusable” with increasing demand.
In the last year, the Parkland Community Association saved the 116-year-old school building from demolition. It now serves as the Parkland Community Center.
The Parkland Community Association agreed to lease approximately 5,000 square feet of space to Family Promise of Pierce County for what Decker quoted as $8,250 per month — what he regarded as a fantastic deal.
The hub has administrative offices where individuals can come in to be interviewed by case managers for their intake and classrooms where families and individuals can stay while they wait for shelter.
“We want to create a family friendly space,” Decker told The News Tribune. “We have big dreams.”
Not to be used as shelter
Even with the expanded opportunity provided by the new space, Decker expressed frustration with the limitations put on him by the county.
He told The News Tribune the contract prevents the facility from being used to prepare food, provide beds or offer hygienic amenities such as showers to folks who are waiting for shelter.
“The contract allows this to be a place where people can sit down and be out of the rain until shelter opens up,” Decker said. “But in some cases it will be a lengthy wait. If they show up at 10 p.m., no one will take them.”
He said single people can get referred to a shelter much easier than families, as shelter options for families with children are sparse in the region.
Laura Mapes works as a case-management specialist for Family Promise of Pierce County. She was living in her vehicle with her child before Family Promise helped get her into a more stable situation.
She told The News Tribune that the lack of available shelter space across the region was the largest limiting factor to getting families off the streets.
“Sometimes it is frustrating,” Mapes said in an interview. “You can’t help everyone.”
Decker criticized the county’s lack of support in allowing Family Promise to do anything with the space that could help supplement the shortage of shelter beds in the county.
“It really ties my hands,” he told The News Tribune. “Because the contract says we can’t do anything that looks like helping people here.”
Decker said he was told by the county that it does not approve the use of any of the grant dollars to purchase chairs for people to sit on and wait in the new building. He said he would have to ask for furniture to be donated, as many of the rooms are empty.
Kari Moore, a spokesperson from Pierce County’s Human Services Department, who administered the grant funding, said the contract allows Family Promise to purchase administrative supplies.
“Their ask was not for office chairs, but for furniture such as couches and recliners,” she told The News Tribune in an email.
When asked why the department was so intentional about preventing the building from being used to give a place for people to stay when there is no shelter, Human Services said it is the county’s fiduciary duty.
“The building is not zoned for any of those uses,” Moore told The News Tribune in an email. “Again, the contract is to provide shelter hub services which do not include overnight stays, day center, hygiene, or food services.
