Jefferson County Expands Collaboration Efforts to Address Rising Homelessness Challenges
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Caswell-Brown houses roughly 20 residents and doesn’t have nearly enough capacity to help all of the unhoused population of Jefferson County. Photo by Scott France. [/caption]
News by Scott France
As forces contributing to homelessness in Jefferson County increase and accelerate, forces are also emerging to meet these challenges in order to support the needs of homeless people.
“We are moving from a feeling of competition to one of collaboration,” Greg Brotherton, Jefferson County Commissioner, said of the various people, organizations and resources that exist in the homelessness universe. Brotherton is the facilitator of the Jefferson County Shelter Coalition which is working to provide solutions for the needs of the increasing homeless population.
Solutions to reduce or eliminate homelessness are difficult to develop and execute around the country as well as in Jefferson County. Perhaps our area’s most prominent approach to providing shelter for unhoused people is the Caswell-Brown Village near the Port Townsend Paper Mill.
The Village was established with an agreement in 2022 between Jefferson County and Olympic Community Action Program (OlyCap) that initially provided rent and RV space for about 20 residents.
In 2022, Community Build, a local non-profit that builds tiny homes with volunteer labor for low-income people, built ten 8x12-foot tiny wooden shelters to offer residents warmer and more secure temporary housing. An additional ten shelters were completed in May 2023, along with a three-sided covered washing station equipped with on-demand hot water for residents' use.
The overnight shelter at the American Legion in downtown Port Townsend will permanently close in several months, and OlyCap is anxiously awaiting the arrival of overdue funding for replacement units at Caswell-Brown Village to fill the gap.
“The County is considering a larger role of homeless services. “We have made huge progress in recent years.”
— Greg Brotherton, County Commissioner
Peggy Webster, housing project manager at OlyCap, said that the Washington State Department of Commerce has allocated funds to support the project, but the money is overdue and Webster is not sure if or when it will arrive. OlyCap had earmarked $110,000 to construct 15 living units at Caswell Brown, $70,000 for materials and $40,000 for electrical connections for the 8x12-foot units.
Units would not be considered houses, so they will not have plumbing. A 3,000-square-foot congregate building will also be constructed on the site, and will contain five showers and one kitchen with a microwave. The building will also have a laundry that may be used by unsheltered homeless and sheltered homeless.
Debbie Steele with Community Build said that even though the money to build the shelters has not yet arrived from the state, the organization has begun building units with its existing funds. All of Community Build’s living shelter units, as well as tiny homes on wheels that they build for families with low income, are built with volunteer labor.
“This is an act of faith,” Steele said.
Jefferson County Coalition, known as COAST, is an outreach program that provides support to disadvantaged single adults by offering a warm place to stay, hot meals, and personalized social services in partnership with OlyCAP. The shelter operates the nightly shelter in the basement of the American Legion Hall.
COAST also donated beds to Caswell-Brown.
The fragmented nature of support for homelessness needs is understood by everybody, but is difficult to solve. Brotherton said that the county has a responsibility to fight for the marginalized, adding that it falls to the County and City of Port Townsend to determine the level of priority to allocate to the needs.
“The County is considering a larger role of homeless services,” Brotherton said. “We have made huge progress in recent years,” he said, mentioning successful affordable housing projects such as Seventh Haven, a 43-unit affordable housing complex in Port Townsend, and various projects developed by Bayside Housing & Services.
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The Winter Warming Shelter has been a crucial part of helping unhoused people over the last several months. Photo by Scott France. [/caption]
Brotherton and Webster both say that the homeless issue is largely a housing supply issue and that more permanent housing is needed, but that building in Jefferson County is extremely expensive given the cost of labor and materials. The city and county have been working hard to find policy approaches and funding mechanisms to ameliorate the problem, but building developers need to make a certain profit on each unit in order to undertake any project.
As the state of Washington has recognized the costs of homelessness to the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of the homeless, as well as the challenges they have of living a dignified life and meeting the challenges of their everyday needs, it has formed a kind of one-door to the various services.
The State Department of Commerce has developed what it calls a Continuum of Care, (CoC), a Housing and Urban Development program designed to promote a communitywide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness by providing funding for efforts by nonprofit providers and state and local governments and promoting access to and effective utilization of mainstream programs by individuals and families experiencing homelessness.
The CoC program is aimed at serving people in the following situations:
Residing in a place not meant for human habitation
Staying in a temporary housing program
Exiting an institution
At-imminent risk of homelessness (within 14 days)
Fleeing domestic violence
This state effort aligns with how Brotherton used the charge of the county to provide a “floor of support that is good for everyone.” He cited recent Court decisions that strike down the criminalization of camping on public land if no other means to house people are available.
