The impact of Vancouver’s Safe Stay Communities is easily distilled. As The Columbian explains in an article about The Outpost: “It has sanitation services, portable toilets, handwashing stations, meeting spaces and a communal kitchen area.”
For most unhoused people in our community, a functioning toilet and a place to wash your hands is a luxury, as is a garbage can. Such simple amenities, which most of us take for granted, can mean an opportunity to live with dignity and a sense of security.
That is the goal of The Outpost, at 11400 N.E. 51st Circle, which recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. The facility has 20 small housing units that can accommodate 40 residents and is staffed around the clock by Outsiders Inn. The city of Vancouver has budgeted for five Safe Stay Communities; two have opened, and a third is scheduled to open in downtown Vancouver early this year.
Since opening on Dec. 23, 2021, The Outpost has served 79 residents, including 33 who have moved on to permanent housing. That represents incremental progress in dealing with the region’s homeless crisis.
After touring the facility in October, Gov. Jay Inslee told The Columbian’s Editorial Board: “What you see here is very successful for a lot of different reasons. One, when you do tiny home villages like this, you can house two to three times more people for the same dollar. So we’re getting two to three times more people to get out of the rain, to get in a secure environment, so they can work on some of their other challenges.”
Indeed, the Safe Stay Communities have been successful. They have provided stability for community members who otherwise would be living in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Equally important, the sites have been effectively managed. Officials say 21 residents have been asked to leave The Outpost or have voluntarily left, and one operator said: “Sometimes, substance use has been a reason why a person has left. When people leave under those circumstances, we do everything in our power to let them know that they’re welcome back when they’re ready.” In addition, police calls to the areas surrounding Safe Stay Communities have declined from previous levels.
Those metrics will be key to assessing the effectiveness of the coming downtown Safe Stay Community, which is planned for a vacant lot that previously housed the New Heights West Church along West 11th Street.
Some local residents and businesses opposed the selection of the site, and their opposition is understandable. If poorly managed, the sites can invite blight to an area, and one nearby business owner told The Columbian in September: “We have talked to all of the neighbors around here. Every single one of them is up in arms about it. Personally, I’m ready to have a nervous breakdown.”
City officials must see that regulations are enforced, including a prohibition on camping within 1,000 feet of the site. They also must work with police to diligently apply laws regarding drug use and public behavior.
If effectively managed, a Safe Stay site can be a win-win situation for residents and the community. It can be preferable to the indignity of living in a tent near a roadside, and it can mitigate the lack of security that accompanies unregulated campsites.
Vancouver’s Safe Stay Communities will bear watching, and if the program is ineffective, it should be abandoned — as the city rightly did with a Navigation Center near Fourth Plain Boulevard. But the early results are encouraging.
