The sale of a building that once housed Vancouver’s Navigation Center ends an important chapter in the city’s efforts to address homelessness. That chapter, fortunately, was brief.
Last week, the Vancouver City Council approved the sale of the facility on Grand Boulevard, near Fourth Plain Boulevard, to FVRLibraries. The city had purchased the site in 2018 for $4.3 million; proceeds from the $3.7 million sale to the library district will help reimburse city funds that were used for acquisition and for creation of the Navigation Center.
That brief explanation, however, belies the complexity of the ordeal. In November 2018, the city opened the Navigation Center to provide showers, laundry and a safe place for unhoused people. Operating as a day center, it also was designed to connect people with social services.
The need far exceeded expectations. Organizers initially thought the center would serve about 50 clients a day, but the number quickly grew to an average of 160 — a reflection of the scope of the crisis in the region. The center also drew complaints from local residents and business owners, who noted an increase in criminal activity and sanitation concerns.
Meanwhile, problems arose with contractors and with operational aspects of the Navigation Center. As The Columbian reported in July after reviewing thousands of emails and documents: “The facility was understaffed, and it struggled to attract employees who could cover daily duties while the long-term fate of the day center remained in flux.”
As concerns mounted, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 forced closure of the center. It never reopened.
The Navigation Center was a thoughtful idea, but it created just as many problems as it solved. Now, city officials are focused on developing a handful of dedicated campsites for homeless people. The plan is to provide sanitation services and allow residents to connect with social services. The need for assistance, after all, did not disappear with the demise of the day center.
While city officials are taking a different approach to serving unhoused people and mitigating the impact of homelessness on other residents, it is instructive to review the lessons learned from the Navigation Center. As the summary of a city council workshop in January states: “The city is shifting back to a fairly limited scope in favor of supporting the county in more of a leadership role. We know the best way to help homeless citizens is through mental health and drug addiction services, but those are not services that we can provide ourselves.”
Clark County is, indeed, the lead local agency in dealing with homelessness, but it does not stand alone. Coordination with officials in Vancouver and other cities is essential to addressing the situation.
Although Vancouver leaders warrant criticism for being overly ambitious in creating the Navigation Center, they also deserve credit for seeing its shortcomings. “We recognize that while we had taken a foray into that direct service model … the organizational capacity, expertise capability, wasn’t there,” City Manager Eric Holmes told The Columbian. “The experience of the Navigation Center was very difficult.”
While pundits like to say that only cockroaches and government programs can survive a nuclear war, city officials recognized when it was time to cut their losses. Rather than pour more taxpayer dollars into the Navigation Center, they wisely saw that it was time to move on, leaving behind some important lessons.
