Clark County residents have become familiar with the tents that dot city sidewalks, the makeshift homes of those without a sturdy house to call their own.
The housing and homeless crisis has worsened as rental and housing costs increase; the annual Point in Time Count for Clark County observed a 39 percent spike in homelessness, the Columbian reported earlier this month.
So whose job is it to help the county’s most vulnerable get out of those tents and back on a stable path?
Among the many advocates out there is Jamie Spinelli, a case manager at Community Services Northwest, which specializes in helping people with mental health issues as well as drug and alcohol dependencies. The organization has four locations. Spinelli is based at Town Plaza, 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Suite 16.
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But to do her work as a case manager most effectively — that is, the job of overseeing a person’s care, planning, health needs and more — you won’t find Spinelli sitting in the office.
Most of the time, she’s zooming around in her vehicle with a client, trying to get them from place to place. Spinelli has observed that transportation is one of the biggest barriers for homeless people to get where they need to go.
“Getting to the (Washington State) Department of Social and Human Services is hard,” she said, noting that it’s “all the way out” on Northeast 136th Avenue. That’s where people can get signed up for food stamps. “It’s like an all-day event. So I can provide transportation, I can sit with them through an appointment.”
Tom Eaton, Spinelli’s outreach partner, has worked with her at Community Services Northwest for almost five years, he said.
“Ninety percent of the work we do is out in the community. We’re down at a tent city, or we’re out in rural areas … also freeways. We work with the Department of Transportation and do outreach along the freeways,” said Eaton. “We pretty much go wherever the job takes us.”
He said that Spinelli is committed, and especially keen at navigating all the different social service programs. She also helps as a volunteer at Foods with Friends, the nonprofit organization behind the Shower Outreach Project, which provides free showers through mobile trailers to people in Vancouver. Spinelli said that currently, the only other place someone can get a shower at no cost is at the Salvation Army in Washougal.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, she grew up in Oklahoma. Her family moved to Clark County in 2000 and then she went to the University of California Los Angeles for two years. When her younger sister became pregnant, she moved to Vancouver to be supportive.
She didn’t originally plan on working with the homeless population. Now 36, she previously was a psychology major at UCLA before transferring to Washington State University Vancouver to major in human development. She wanted to work with children in Child Protective Services and those in foster care.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree from WSU Vancouver in 2009, she was accepted to Portland State University’s master’s of social work program. While waiting for that to begin, she worked several jobs, including as a case manager for Share Vancouver’s family shelters. She realized she enjoyed working more with the homeless population, especially those who are chronically homeless. After one semester at Portland State, she decided to leave and instead pursued the job as a case manager at Community Services Northwest.
“I think I’ve always been drawn to people who lack community, who feel disconnected, kind of like throwaways,” she said. She said that she’s especially drawn to working with the homeless community because she grew up in poverty herself. Raised by a single mother, she and her family depended on food stamps to eat.
“I’ve just always felt that way, this lack of connection with other people, but it’s something that I’ve always craved on a very deep level, so working with them, it’s kind of like finding your people,” Spinelli said. “But I attempt to bridge that gap, because while I’ve felt that, I’ve also experienced some success. I went to college and I graduated. There are opportunities that a lot of them have not had, but I know they can have it. I know that because I came from there. I can help them get there.”
While there’s a shortage of affordable housing units for people, she said another big obstacle to her job of helping house people is “finding landlords (who are) honestly willing to engage with some of this population.”
“I do understand why, but it’s a big struggle. For every person who’s been outside for the last 10 years, who’s got some mental health issues or some criminal background, even if it’s just like credit problems or a past eviction, there are a dozen people applying for that same apartment who don’t have those barriers,” Spinelli said. “And they’re going to get the apartment every time over my client.”
When she first started working with the chronically homeless, Spinelli said she had something like survivor’s guilt. She struggled with going home after her shifts because of the very fact that she had a home at all and that many of her clients didn’t. But she realized she needed to find an emotional balance to do the job, “because what good am I if I’m burnt out?” She also has a 6-year-old daughter now to care for.
Spinelli hopes to continue until she works herself “out of the job.”
“My hope is that I can be a part of making it so we’re not in a crisis situation, that people who want to have help can readily get it, and I hope just personally, that people outside feel that there’s at least one other person in this world who cares about them,” she said.
