Cold heats up homeless debate

Sleeping outside sucks, said Brian Moore.

The 35-year-old has been homeless off and on for three years, but this stint “has been a lot better.” That’s because some nights this winter, he’s slept on the cafeteria floor at Share House, the men’s homeless shelter in downtown Vancouver. Other nights, he’s at the day center at Friends of the Carpenter. He got snowed in at the warehouse in west Vancouver when about a foot of snow fell last month. It was the biggest snowfall since 2008 and among the top 10 snowstorms of the past century, with a deluge of ice, wind and rain that followed.

“Honestly, it was probably the best week ever of being homeless,” Moore said. “What they do for homeless people is pretty awesome.”

The tables in the 1,200-square-foot day center, which is a resource center during the day, are rearranged at night to make room for pads and sleeping bags on the concrete floor. Moore uses headphones to block out noise and fall asleep surrounded by at least a dozen other people.

While it may not sound ideal, such a facility to get out of the elements wasn’t available last winter. The day center and other buildings opened these last couple of months in response to severe weather that caught people off guard and forced the community to scramble to open severe weather shelters for homeless people.

“We were not prepared for this type of winter,” said Andy Silver, executive director of the Vancouver-based Council for the Homeless. “Certainly, I think one of our goals in the future is we’ll be more prepared for unusual weather events.”

Besides the day center, St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Washougal, the former Rise & Stars Community Center in central Vancouver, Life House Fellowship in the Five Corners area and Living Hope Church off Andresen Road all housed people overnight at one time or another. These shelters opened when temperatures dropped below freezing to house people who couldn’t access Clark County’s already-full shelter system.

The Council for the Homeless sent out notifications about which buildings would open. Some days it wasn’t clear until midafternoon which building would open that night as an overnight shelter; other times, there was more advance notice. The day center would sometimes open but not Living Hope Church, or vice versa, and some nights they were both open.

On a recent Friday night at the day center, when the temperature dipped down to 28 degrees, Otha Common monitored a sign-in sheet with 15 slots available on a first-come, first-served basis.

“We’ve been reaching our max,” said Common, a Share House staff assistant. “With my heart, I can’t turn anyone away.”

• • •

In Portland, four people died of exposure in the first 10 days of 2017, but there haven’t been any deaths from hypothermia or weather-related causes in Clark County, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Silver said the lack of local weather-related deaths had just as much to do with luck as it did the community’s efforts to help unsheltered people.

His agency does not own any buildings, and it doesn’t give out money. Coordinating the opening of a severe weather shelter is therefore a multistep process that requires the Council for the Homeless and its partners to reach out to determine a site, find a funding source if needed — and then hope for the best.

“That’s not enough. That’s not an acceptable response from a community,” Silver said. “We can all call each other and say, ‘Do you have anything you can do? Do you have anything you can do?’ But, that doesn’t seem like a very good plan.”

He is working with the city of Vancouver on a more coordinated approach going into winter that covers capacity, transportation and communication. Share was a “huge help” in staffing the day center at Friends of the Carpenter overnight and another warming center at the former Rise & Stars Community Center, Silver said.

“The real key to the response was Living Hope,” Silver said. On its busiest night, Living Hope Church hosted 137 people. “It’s wonderful, and they deserve a tremendous amount of credit, but I also think it shows that we can’t always rely on that to be there. … As the severe weather continued night after night, I think it really took a toll on them.”

The night following its busiest night, the church didn’t open. The community center, with a capacity of 30 people, opened instead.

“I think in the future, we really need to have more of a plan going into the winter on what buildings can we use, how are we going to staff and use volunteers, how are we going to help transport people. I think it was a sort of mixed blessing what happened in terms of the response this winter,” Silver said. “In some ways, it was great that so many people stepped up. In other ways, it showed the lack of planning and coordination that we should have been doing as a community.”

Every winter, there are nights with severe weather, but this winter it was more intense and longer lasting. Silver thinks Portland did a better job than Vancouver in opening buildings.

“They had more sort of foresight in their planning, which is why it almost seems that we were lucky both in having Living Hope step up and in avoiding so far, thankfully, any deaths,” Silver said. “What if Living Hope hadn’t been able to open? What’s the Plan B?”

• • •

Besides death from hypothermia, people staying outside in low temperatures can get frostbite, and that can lead to losing limbs. PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center treated at least one homeless person for frostbite.

In January, the emergency department at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center averaged 240 patients daily, about 40 more than normal.

“Salmon Creek has seen patients who may be homeless who have come in with cold weather-related issues — falls, mild frostbite, bronchitis, pneumonia,” hospital spokeswoman Kelly Love said in an email. “It’s hard to identify all our patients who are homeless because they don’t always self-identify. They may use addresses of family members or old addresses when they sign in.”

For many years, the Vancouver Police Department has given out hotel vouchers, but this year’s weather heightened the need for those vouchers to be used, said Kim Kapp, agency spokeswoman.

Not everyone will seek out shelter, and that’s where outreach workers come in to help people shelter in place. Silver said the community would’ve fared worse without help from small, grass-roots organizations that added to the number of people doing outreach work during severe weather. These groups don’t have offices or paid staff and may not even be officially registered nonprofits, but they want to find a need and swiftly meet it. Most of the people involved have regular, full-time jobs.

They’re all relatively new, use social media to coordinate efforts and focus on meeting the short-term, tangible needs of people outside. While they may not be solving homelessness, they’re making the immediate lived experience safer and more tolerable.

• • •

Nearly a foot of snow fell between 7 p.m. and midnight on Tuesday, Jan. 10, blanketing and in some cases flattening tents of people who live outside.

The next afternoon, Kleen Street Recovery Cafe set up a coffee stand, offering warm coffee, food and clothing to homeless people near Share House. Around the same time, Jamie Spinelli with Food With Friends came by to pass out hand warmers, gloves and coats. Spinelli is a caseworker with Community Services Northwest and spends her free time doing additional outreach work.

Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados, who heads Food With Friends, tries to put together supplies that are specific to the needs that night, whether it’s hand warmers and gloves, or Sternos, propane and firewood or blankets and warm clothing. Last year, several people she worked with experienced frostbite and had toes amputated.

“The first night it snowed, I raised money, and we went and bought 30 pieces of long johns at Costco,” DesRochers-Vafeados said. “I’d like to think that we helped people stay warm.”

Volunteers with Break Every Chain Foundation shuttled people to warming centers and doctors appointments, gave out motel vouchers and supplies.

“It is just a difficult winter. I don’t think we’re done with it yet,” said founder Chuck Goneau. “I think we are darn lucky that no one has died of hypothermia in Clark County.”

Break Every Chain Foundation’s regular outreach includes serving food in Leverich Park once a month and hosting Laundry Love, where people can do a couple of loads of laundry for free.

“Especially during the wet and cold and freezing times, getting something warm in their bodies is our goal,” Goneau said.

• • •

Cousins Jessica Corzine and Vanessa Bowers of Helping Hands Vancouver WA drove out to people in Bowers’ Dodge Durango during the sketchy weather.

“We slid and we had some dangerous moments, but we made it happen,” she said.

They started Helping Hands about three years ago after an inspiring church sermon.

“Our pastor talked about just being a light into the world and just trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” Bowers said.

“He was like, ‘people talk about doing something all the time. You can sit there and talk about what you want to do and talk about making a difference and all these things. But, when are you actually going to get up and do it?’ ” Corzine said.

They feel they’re making a difference, even if it’s not the difference of getting housed.

“It’s something I always refer to as ‘silent hope.’ When you give somebody a coat who’s been cold for two weeks, they look at you and think, ‘OK, I do matter to somebody. I’m not garbage on the side of the street. I matter to somebody. They gave me their coat. They looked at me and called me by my name,’ ” Bowers said. “It’s those little victories that add up.”

Helping Hands often works with Concerned Humans Against Poverty, or CHAP. These independent outreach groups are starting to band together.

“The snowstorm kind of took everybody by surprise,” said James Tolson. “It highlights the need that’s already there. It helps bring it into focus.”

Tolson and his organization, CHAP, have 30 ambassadors — “salt of the earth, big hearts” people, Tolson said — who supply, feed and transport people to the warming centers.

“They recognize that there’s a problem,” Tolson said. They want to see what their “energy goes to immediately.”

• • •

While Silver points out that it’s easy to get excited about new efforts — new warming centers opening, new outreach organizations forming — the Winter Hospitality Overflow or WHO shelters have been around for 14 years and have seen less support recently. Every winter, WHO hosts people overnight at St. Andrew Lutheran Church and St. Paul Lutheran Church nightly through the end of March. This year, the program has struggled to get enough volunteers and funding.

“We keep talking about all this new stuff, but part of our core structure is really in danger,” Silver said. “It’s at the point where there are conversations of how many more years can this go on unless something changes.”

He believes WHO is needed more now than when it started. Severe weather shelters or warming centers are, in a way, the overflow for the overflow program.

“You can just see from that how insufficient the year-round shelter system is,” Silver said.

There are discussions around increasing the number of year-round shelter beds, possibly using money collected through the city’s new Affordable Housing Fund. People have looked at buildings, including an old fire station, that might be a good fit for a permanent shelter. Having more shelter capacity would ease pressure on the emergency shelter system. And if a new, bigger day center is built, like the city of Vancouver is proposing, that could double as a severe weather shelter.

In November, voters approved Proposition 1, the tax levy that created the Affordable Housing Fund. Money may begin being granted out in July, Silver said, but it’s unclear how far out a new shelter is and when the community will see relief.

Likewise, the severe weather response is not likely to change in the near future. If it was to snow or freezing rain was to pour this week, Silver said, “I think, unfortunately, nothing would be done differently.” The city and Share agreed.