East Pierce County homeless have one fewer place to go after COVID cancels shelter program
A group of Puyallup-area churches have been sheltering East Pierce County’s homeless for the past 15 years, but due to COVID-19 concerns, the Freezing Nights program has been canceled.
Freezing Nights organizer and pastor at Puyallup Nazarene Church, Mike Boisture, said there were several factors for the decision, the biggest one being adhering to social distancing rules.
“It’s a little frustrating,” Boisture said. “It’s not what we want to do because we don’t see anything else out there.”
In order to comply with social distancing rules, the churches would have to reduce their nightly capacity from 70 to 40 individuals.
In East Pierce County, Freezing Nights is the sole overnight homeless shelter, and Boisture said churches meet capacity most nights.
From Nov. 1 to March 31, about 15 churches volunteer to participate in Freezing Nights. Every night of the week, a different church opens its doors in the evening to provide a meal and a cot for those experiencing homelessness.
Boisture said between food and volunteer hours, they spent about $400,000 annually.
“That’s an in-kind gift to Pierce County,” he said.
The churches had ongoing discussions for two weeks about whether to continue the program this year with reduced capacity.
“I said check on your people, and they said their people were getting tired,” Boisture said.
A high percentage of volunteers are senior citizens, who are considered a vulnerable population for COVID-19.
“They themselves were saying, ‘I’d rather wait until we get to Phase 3 or 4,’” Boisture said.
Boisture relied on help from at least 80 volunteers to run the Puyallup Temporary Encampment Location (TEL) for two months. The TEL was created by the City of Puyallup in response to a growing homeless population on the Riverwalk Trail. The city built a fenced encampment site for 30 tents and about a dozen parked cars at the Puyallup Recreation Center parking lot.
These volunteers staffed the site, prepared meals and donations.
The church ministries and volunteers were exhausted from providing continual services, Boisture said.
“It worked extremely well, but you can only tap them for so long,” he said.
Boisture hopes to resume Freezing Nights next year, despite the fact the program was intended to be a temporary solution. Freezing Nights wasn’t created as a homeless service provider, but it has evolved into one.
He believes East Pierce County needs a shelter. Boisture said he would send his volunteers out to help as much as possible if an organization built one.
“I’m getting tired of pushing this rock up the hill for 15 years now,” the pastor said.
While the overnight shelter is canceled, Freezing Nights volunteers will continue to offer meals to the homeless during the winter months.
Ripple effect
Without Freezing Nights, Boisture said some from the Puyallup-area will stay around the Riverwalk Trail and others will leave for Tacoma, where most homeless service providers are.
Gerrit Nyland, with the largest homeless service provider in Pierce County — Catholic Community Services — said with Freezing Nights out of the mix, many will be exposed to the elements.
“Without new shelter options on these cold nights, people will die,” he said.
It’s unclear what Tacoma service providers will do to bolster their capacity during cold and wet weather while complying with social distancing.
Tacoma Rescue Mission executive director Duke Paulson said the mission is working on a plan. He hopes a partnership with Bellarmine Prep will allow them to continue to use the gym to expand the current 80-person capacity to 130 at the men’s shelter.
The TRM’s women’s shelter that opened earlier this year has a normal capacity of 100, but COVID-19 concerns has reduced the maximum capacity to 72.
Paulson said there will be an impact at his shelter now that Freezing Nights is canceled. When Boisture closed the program a few weeks early in March, the Tacoma Rescue Mission saw an influx.
If Bellarmine reopens schools at some point in the winter months, Paulson said he will have to turn away 120 people a night, who he normally would be able to squeeze into common areas.
Pierce County’s Human Services Department oversees the federal CARES funding for homelessness programs. Spokesperson Kari Moore said the department has set aside $10,000 to house people experiencing homelessness when the temperature gets below freezing.
“We have not finalized who will be managing the funding but that decision will be made soon,” she said in an email. “We are also applying for a state grant that will increase the number of emergency shelter beds in Pierce County.”
The state grant could be as much as $4.7 million.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
