After the county had gone months without public shower facilities for the homeless living outdoors, an outreach group set up a mobile shower trailer Sunday afternoon near Living Hope Church.
Following some wrestling to get the trailer’s propane-powered water heater to work, the showers ran for about an hour or so, and about 10 people took a turn, said Jamie Spinelli, a volunteer with homeless outreach nonprofit group Food with Friends, which runs the shower trailer.
“Most of them said it was the first time they’d showered in a while, and it was the longest and warmest shower they’d had in an even longer while,” she said later that evening.
The Share House in downtown Vancouver stopped offering shower services at the end of last July, she said. Although there are shelters in the county that have showers, shelter slots and shower availability, are limited.
Effectively, she said, there weren’t any no-cost shower services for those living on the street after Share’s stopped.
“The goal of our group in general has always been to fill gaps in current services, and so when this became a gap we tried to figure out how we can fill it,” she said.
Food with Friends’ Cherish DesRochers said the group moved to address that gap by fundraising for day-use vouchers to local community centers.
On the side, they started looking into ways to provide showers on their own.
People seemed to like the idea. DesRochers said Food with Friends raised the money for the trailer in less than 24 hours.
After a hefty discount from the builder — food cart manufacturer PDX Cart Builders — and paying for licenses, registration and insurance, the trailer cost about $19,000, she said.
“Food with Friends does street outreach, so this kind of just happened above and beyond that,” she said. “I think it’s the start of greater things to come. This is the beginning of having basic services available for people.”
Sunday was a test run of the two-stall mobile shower trailer, they said.
Spinelli said they had been working to find a host location for the trailer’s first outing.
They called leaders at Living Hope, and having the shower paired with the church’s normal Sunday homeless outreach offerings made a good fit.
Eventually, Spinelli and DesRochers said, they hope to have a plan to help host sites maximize the trailer’s use.
Matthew Holt, who has been coming to Living Hope for church and homeless outreach services, has been using the shelter at St. Andrew Lutheran Church, but said the new shower facilities will be a boon to county residents struggling with homelessness.
“Just being able to have access to that, it’s a blessing, it really is.”
