For homeless kids in crisis, new Eastside Tacoma facility can be ‘transformational’
The facility is a significant upgrade.
Tucked into a secluded wooded backdrop near Tacoma Housing Authority’s Salishan development, Arlington Drive Crisis Residential Center — which opened in June — represents a major improvement for Pierce County’s efforts to curb youth homelessness, and in particular for the kids who depend on it.
Previously, the crisis residential center was run out of a nondescript Eastside Tacoma home owned by THA. Operated in partnership with Community Youth Services, the location was adequate but cramped, limited to housing just six kids at time.
Today, the new center — which boasts an open floor plan, rec room, outdoor basketball hoop and solar panels on the roof — can house twice as many.
According to Community Youth Services, even that modest expansion means it can now serve an estimated 400 kids every year. That will make a big difference in the lives of young people, according to Tiffany Fisher, a Community Youth Services program director.
“It’s an exciting thing,” Fisher said by way of understatement Thursday, after a tour of the new facility.
For years, the need for such a facility has been well-documented. In 2016 alone, there were 1,070 kids without families who experienced homelessness, Tacoma Housing Authority has noted in the past.
Now, with COVID-19 taking its economic toll on kids and families across the region, it’s hard to know how much that number will grow — but safe to assume it will.
Cruelly, the coronavirus pandemic is one thing making work at the new crisis residential center more difficult.
Though the new center would normally have a capacity to house 12 kids, the need for physical distancing has slightly decreased that number.
Even more concerning, Community Youth Services staff suspect that some kids who would normally find their way to the center — through referrals or interactions with child welfare advocates like school counselors — aren’t right now.
COVID-19 has put “all of our outreach systems in flux,” according to Community Youth Services CEO Derek Harris.
“Some of the state systems are a little in flux. Some of the school systems are a little in flux,” Harris said. “In normal times we would have more people and more organizations referring, and that looks a little bit different than it did before.”
In short order, however, Harris said he expects the new crisis residential center to be full — because he knows the kids who need it are out there.
He sees them every day.
A ‘transformational’ development
On Thursday, three kids hung out in the new crisis residential center, which is part of the $22 million Tacoma Housing Authority Arlington Drive campus. The development will soon include 58 apartment units for homeless young adults next door, which will be operated by YMCA of Greater Seattle.
Two of the kids sat in recliners watching a movie in the main room, while another was stationed nearby, working on a computer.
They were safe, secure and supported — which is precisely the kind of environment the crisis residential center is intended to provide.
Acting like an “emergency room” of sorts, the new crisis residential center offers a safe haven for kids ages 12 to 17, many of them arriving directly out of homelessness, abuse, neglect or simply unhealthy chaos, according to Harris.
Over the course of 15- to 30-day stays, staff work to stabilize the young people, Harris said. Sometimes that simply means letting things cool off at home. Other times, it means finding a new place for them to live, whether it’s with a relative or a foster home. It always involves immediate services provided on site, and follow-up services once the child has moved on.
Harris said the newly opened crisis residential center acts as a bridge between trauma and a “long term, safe place,” for kids to “stay and grow and develop like any young person should be able to.”
Overall, Harris said the service model has a success rate greater than 90%.
It’s a project Tacoma Housing Authority Executive Director Michael Mirra has envisioned for many years, and one Pierce County desperately needs, he said.
Back in 2016, when the new Arlington Drive campus was still years away, Mirra touted the need for such a facility, describing the “growing number of homeless youth without families and homeless young adults” in an interview with The News Tribune.
Fast forward to 2020, and Mirra said Tacoma Housing Authority’s interest in developing the new facility was as straightforward as ever.
“Pierce County is in the third decade of a growing child welfare disaster, and the number of young people on the street is what it looks like,” Mirra said. “This was a chance for us to find out where we fit in the solution, and it feels like a very good fit for our mission.”
Strolling the grounds of Tacoma Housing Authority’s Arlington Drive campus on Thursday, Mirra couldn’t help but marvel at the potential of it all.
As he walked between the newly opened crisis residential center and the 58 units of housing for homeless young adults that’s expected to open before Halloween, he said the sky’s the limit.
Together, Mirra said the project will be “transformational for this region.”
“This is Tacoma and Pierce County’s chance to show the nation how to do this right, at scale,” Mirra said.
