Part of West 12th Street was blocked off for Open House Ministries’ annual block party on Thursday. The party at the family homeless shelter, which featured a barbecue for the homeless, a resource fair and reunion of former residents, attracts hundreds of people every year, said Judy McMorine, development director at Open House.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office, the Fish of Vancouver food bank and the Human Services Council were among the service agencies lining the street Thursday, connecting with homeless people.
“If we wanted to invite them in and have a conversation about what we’re doing collectively to help with the homeless situation, we couldn’t do that today,” McMorine said. “Right now, we don’t have any one place where we can have the entire house and the entire staff in the same room at the same time.”
There’s just not a space big enough on the shelter’s campus to accommodate a lot of people, and the yearly block party that always takes place outside shows that. However, a planned 15,558-square-foot multipurpose family resource center will change Open House Ministries’ campus, making it a more viable meeting place, McMorine said. The nonprofit plans to get started at the beginning of 2017 on the construction of a three-story building that would have a gym, meeting space, classrooms and offices.
Executive director Wayne Garlington said this has been his dream for over a decade, and it’s finally coming to fruition. An old building that used to occupy the space was torn down, and the land was cleared in 2014. Open House is in the midst of raising $2.6 million to build the resource center.
The new space would offer resident children a safe place to play.
“This neighborhood is sort of dangerous for kids,” Garlington said. He said there’s a lot of crime in the area, and sex offenders live nearby.
There isn’t a play area in the main building where the residents live. Currently, offices and meeting spaces occupy six apartments in the 36-unit shelter. So, when the new building is complete, Open House can move those offices to the new building, freeing up apartments.
“We’ll be able to take more people off of the street,” Garlington said.
While accommodating more residents will require Open House to finesse its budget, which is currently about $850,000 annually, the building will make it easier to meet with and build relationships with those supporting the shelter, McMorine said. Open House is privately funded and is a faith-based shelter housing 86 people.
The average stay for a family is 109 days; their time at the shelter is highly structured, requiring families to go to classes, counseling and work study programs.
In October, Alizz Quarles and her family “graduated” from Open House Ministries, meaning that they’re now self-sufficient, able to pay for their own place.
“When I got here, I didn’t even have a driver’s license. I owed so much money to the county it was crazy. I’ve paid off all of my debt,” Quarles said.
After getting her General Education Diploma at Open House, Quarles became a Clark College student, and her husband works at WheelKraft NW. She still comes to Zumba every week and jumped out of a conversation Thursday afternoon to participate in a Zumba flash mob at the party.
Open House anticipates it’ll take about a year after breaking ground to construct the resource center, which is being designed by Slater Architecture.
The future multipurpose building will occupy the northeast side of the block that Open House occupies. It’s currently a gravel lot and was being used Thursday for a free veterinary clinic put on by Banfield Pet Hospital. Dr. Ashlee Redmond said the Banfield staff was doing vaccinations, microchips, heartworm tests, deworming and nail trims.
“A lot of what we’re providing today is general maintenance care,” she said. “It’s hard to see pets that aren’t able to get the care they need.”
Homeless pets can often get parasites, such as fleas and ticks, she said.
When Ren Autrey was homeless and living out of her van, her dog Cholo was her constant companion. While Autrey now lives in transitional housing, she said she’s grateful for events like this that help her get ahead, since she can’t pay for regular vet visits.
People were lined up along the side of the shelter, waiting to have their pets examined. McMorine noted that once the multipurpose building is in place, an event like this could be done inside rather than outside on a hot day.
