Day shelter for the homeless closes. ‘This certainly is going to have an effect’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Nativity House closed its day shelter and meal program due to a $1.5M budget gap.
- Closures could reduce healthcare access for unsheltered people with chronic illness.
- Nearby residents observed rising loitering, drug use and noise near the shelter site.
A Tacoma shelter offering meals, laundry and healthcare is reducing its services and cutting staff this fall, leaving advocates and staff concerned about the impact it could have on the community.
Nativity House at 702 S. 14th St. has roughly 170 shelter beds for men and women experiencing homelessness. For years it has also hosted a day shelter for people to do laundry, take showers and receive free meals.
Faatima Lawrence, director of homeless adult services for Catholic Community Services, told The News Tribune the day center often serves 300 people a day, up to 600 in the winter months.
In July, Catholic Community Services closed the day shelter. The shelter has continued to offer meals twice a day for breakfast and lunch. Lawrence said Nativity House typically serves 150 to 350 meals per service.
Mike Curry, the vice president of Catholic Community Services, told The News Tribune the meal program would end at the beginning of September. The shelter will remain open, and services will be available to those with beds there.
Curry said the reduction in services is due to a $1.5 million budget shortfall that is not “recent or sudden.” He said the shortfall was anticipated as pandemic-era federal assistance tapered off and costs began to increase.
According to Curry, the decision to close the day shelter and meal program was made to be able to maintain the overnight shelter and other programs operated by Catholic Community Services throughout the region.
Lawrence told The News Tribune that Nativity House costs a little more than $5 million annually to operate, with the day shelter costing $1,944,900.
She said the agency has had to lay off 19 employees, but she said many of them will be employed by other Catholic Community Service programs.
Jan Runbeck is a nurse who organizes a program intended to give healthcare services at Nativity House. The health issues Runbeck and her team have screened at the clinic range the full spectrum.
She has previously told The News Tribune her team has found leaking cellulitis, what she said was evidence of advanced cardiac failure, infected ulcerations that neared sepsis, and pregnancies complicated by urinary tract infections.
“The people here are really sick people,” Runbeck told The News Tribune in an interview.
During the 2024 survey of those living unhoused in Pierce County, volunteers counted 2,661 people living unhoused in a single night. Of those surveyed, 25% reported having a chronic health condition, and 22% reported having a physical disability.
Runbeck said she is worried that closing the day shelter and meal service will decrease access to healthcare for folks that desperately need it.
During the Pierce County Council’s Health and Human Services Committee meeting June 3, Runbeck said many individuals living unhoused are dying a “prolonged death,” typically resulting from unmanaged chronic diseases such as diabetes, heat disease, kidney failure and CPD. She said the deaths would be preventable with access to primary care.
Runbeck said she anticipates having to increase street-outreach efforts to offer healthcare directly to people living in encampments but is worried some folks might slip through the cracks.
“You hate to think about coming up on a body while doing street outreach, but I am expecting that,” she told The News Tribune.
While Runbeck and other nurses in her program will continue to offer healthcare to those staying at the shelter, she said she is already thinking of ways to make their services more accessible to those in the community.
She said she anticipates the day shelter closure displaced people into the surrounding neighborhood.
“It has to have,” Runbeck said. “When you think about the population of people that were hanging around [in the day shelter].”
Andrea Jourdan is a property manager at an apartment complex across the street from Nativity House. Jourdan told The News Tribune she has noticed a increase in loitering and open drug use on the sidewalks and area surrounding the property in recent weeks.
She also reported there a few recent break-ins at the apartments.
“This certainly is going to have an effect on the community,” Curry told The News Tribune. “There is an unanswered question as to how deeply.”
