After years of drama, outgoing young adult shelter provider questions Tacoma’s support
The Beacon Center young adult overnight shelter soon will have a new provider. After three years of mounting frustration, Comprehensive Life Resources is preparing to hand over the reins.
As is so often the case with homeless services, the situation surrounding the split is messy. There are complicating factors and community tensions — many of them inherent to running a shelter — all of which makes it difficult to assess ultimate blame.
But if there’s one thing we can’t lose sight of, it’s the young people who depend on the shelter. They matter most. Regardless of who is right and wrong in every festering neighborhood disagreement, the 18- to 24-year-olds who seek shelter at the Beacon Center are the ones caught in the middle. When the agency that’s been tasked with caring for them says they deserve more from the city than they’ve received so far, it’s a message we should all listen to.
According to Comprehensive Life Resources CEO Kim Zacher, that’s the big takeaway here.
The pending separation is a clear sign the city and homeless service providers aren’t pulling in the same direction for the young people who depend on help and guidance, she told The News Tribune.
The critique comes to light because, on May 1, Zacher’s agency and the city of Tacoma will end a partnership at the Beacon Center that dates to 2018. The city recently released a request for proposals and hopes to choose a new provider to run the shelter on Fawcett Avenue by the end of March, according Allyson Griffith, Tacoma’s assistant director of neighborhood and community service. The transition is not expected to result in a lapse of services.
Zacher, on the other hand, is taking the unusual step of publicly issuing a warning on her way out the door.
“I think the city wants to run a shelter,” Zacher bluntly told The News Tribune last week, discussing CLR’s decision to support the city’s effort to find a new provider at the facility, which served approximately 340 young people last year. “I don’t think they want to do what it would take to end homelessness of youth.”
The circumstances surrounding the Beacon Center — where CLR also runs a youth and young adult drop-in center during the day — have been fraught for some time.
As The News Tribune’s Allison Needles reported in 2019, across the street from the shelter some residents of the Midtown Lofts have accused the agency of failing to prevent issues like garbage and late-night disruptions. The apartment building’s owner, Ken Vonderach — who declined a recent interview request — previously said the shelter costs him money.
According to Steve Rhay, who has lived at Midtown Lofts since 2016, many of those issues persist. While Rhay said some things have improved recently, he admitted being somewhat “cynical” that choosing a new provider “will make any lasting change.”
Rhay said he hopes the next provider to run the Beacon Center shelter will have an awareness that “the business of running a shelter is not confined within the four walls.”
Other apartment residents, like Anne Bartlett, disagree with the stance that Rhay and others at the Midtown Lofts have taken, describing CLR’s work as incredibly important and the concerns overblown.
“There have been some assertions there’s a lot of noise and inconvenience and stuff coming from the shelter, and have to say, I do not experience that,” said Bartlett, who has a balcony facing the Beacon Center. “I am really grateful, actually, to have the shelter across the street.”
Zacher said the drama and the push back from some neighbors are a big reason why CLR is getting out.
But what is really at the root of the decision to leave, she said, is how little support the shelter has received from the city.
Historically, the shelter has been underfunded, Zacher argued, to the point that money from the city was only covering about a third of the cost of operations. During CLR’s last fiscal year, the agency spent $577,000 of its own money running the facility, she said, despite being one of the few resources in Pierce County specifically for young adults experiencing homelessness.
More troubling, according to the CEO, was the way she said city staff failed to protect and go to bat for CLR when issues predictably arose at a shelter.
Often, Zacher said, it felt like the city was happy to trumpet the beds the shelter made available but remained more concerned with soothing angry neighbors than the difficult work of lifting youth and young adults out of homelessness.
The reality, she said, is that CLR has been operating a shelter in a location of the city’s choosing, in a building Tacoma owns. If the effort is going to be successful, whoever is running it will need champions at City Hall who are willing to stick up for it when times get tough.
“I really feel like somebody had to have our back,” Zacher said. “If nobody’s going to have the courage to just say, ‘This is where we chose to cite the shelter. This is how it is,’ then I’m out. I mean, it really, truly wore us out.”
Which brings us to the present and the city’s effort to find a new shelter provider to take over at the Beacon Center.
Griffith is optimistic a new provider will be able to pick up where CLR leaves off, and that operation of the shelter will continue to improve. While she was complimentary of CLR’s efforts, she’s hoping the terms of the recent request for proposals will better lay the groundwork for success in the neighborhood for a new provider.
Asked about CLR’s concerns, Griffith said the city is equally dedicated to ending youth homelessness, noting that funding for the shelter was increased last year. Tacoma has provided the shelter and day center with just over $1 million the last two years, according to city records.
“I don’t necessarily think we’re out of step,” Griffith said. “The city’s goal remains ending not only youth homelessness but homelessness in general.”
Griffith also believes lessons can be learned.
“We are always working to improve communication with our providers and make sure that we’re having regular conversations with them to address issues,” Griffith said, noting the city will continue working with CLR to provide behavioral health services to those experiencing homelessness.
“I think (CLR) really did help us to identify opportunities for how we can improve the shelter operations that are on site,” Griffith said. “That’s valuable feedback, and ... hopefully it’s a positive outcome.”
That’s what we should all be hoping for, first and foremost, for the young people who need it.
Like Jonathan, 24, who told me that he became homeless roughly five years ago after a financial struggle led him into couch surfing.
Or Joey, 23, who said he was living in Bremerton — working in fast food and sleeping outside — when he decided to come to Tacoma for “a new start.”
Or Joseph, 21, who shared how he had been caring for his mom in Los Angeles before she died of a drug overdose. After she passed, he didn’t feel like “there was anything good in the neighborhood” where they lived, he said, so he decided to move to the Pacific Northwest.
All of them said that the Beacon Center overnight shelter under CLR’s direction helped them stabilize their lives, while providing hope for the future.
“I’ve persevered through a lot of (expletive) that I feel like would maybe break someone with less of a strong mindset,” Joey said of how he’s managed to survive being homeless since he was 16. “It was like having … a new group of people in my life.
“A lot of them are really supportive, which I wasn’t getting any of that where I came from.”
