If the Rev. David Knudtson knows of a homeless person who needs a shower, he invites them to come to Arnada Abbey. The house in west Vancouver hosts informal religious gatherings and also houses those in need.
But Knudtson and others at the abbey — which Knudtson describes as a religious ministry, not a formal religious institution — look to bring shower service to more homeless people. The group is working on converting a 16-foot Prowler fifth-wheel travel trailer into a portable bathroom trailer dubbed the Lean Mean Hygiene Machine.
The trailer was bought through Craigslist for $600, and a Ford F-150 to tow the trailer was donated to the abbey.
On Friday morning, volunteers took advantage of a break in the rain to work on demolishing the old trailer, which had old linoleum floors and dry rot. The plan is to strip the trailer down to its steel frame, said Knudtson, deacon at the abbey.
Jessica Fetters sorted scrap metal that could be sold to help pay for the hygiene machine. Fetters rents a room at the abbey now, but for 1 1/2 years the 32-year-old lived on the streets. Most recently, she camped in the tent city that grew last summer outside Share House in downtown Vancouver and has since been disbanded.
“They allowed women to shower at the Share House, so I would shower there or the river,” Fetters said.
She didn’t get to use an actual shower as often as she wanted to because the shelter only had so many time slots for showers, and there weren’t many other options.
“You had to fight for a spot,” Fetters said. Mostly, she bathed in the Columbia River.
For women living on the streets, sleeping soundly at night is difficult, so getting up early enough to secure a shower spot doesn’t always happen, she said.
Knudtson got the idea for mobile bathrooms from San Francisco-based nonprofit Lava Mae, which turns decommissioned city buses into showers for the homeless. Like food trucks, Lava Mae has a schedule of where the buses will be parked in the city and when. The bus draws water from city fire hydrants.
Those buses have to be operated by a licensed commercial driver, which adds to the expense, said Knudtson. Rather than hook up to any utility system, he wants the Lean Mean Hygiene Machine to be self-sustaining. The trailer would carry about 250 or 300 gallons of water, a propane system to heat the water, and the water pump would be powered by solar panels.
“If we’re not hooked up to the grid, we’re not subject to a whole lot of regulations,” he said.
The abbey plans to work with groups feeding the homeless, Knudtson said, so that people can shower and get fed at the same time. Even though the project is still in the early stages, he’s gotten requests from people in Portland and Longview who say the showers would be useful there.
Knudtson plans on setting up two bathrooms, each with a shower, toilet and sink. Exactly what the setup would look like is dependent on weight. A gallon of water weighs a little over 8 pounds, so Knudtson wants everything else to be as bare bones as possible to maximize the amount of water that can be carried without overloading the rig.
The abbey is still ironing out the details, such as where to get the water and where to dump it. For now, the focus is on raising money to buy the necessary parts.
