Winter Welcoming Center Reflects Its Founder’s Lifelong Mission
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Ben Casserd, Manager; Janet Dizick, monitor; Julia, and Lisa Anderson, former Center worker, now Host at the Emergency Shelter. Photo by Paul Heins [/caption]
News by Scott France
Port Townsend‘s downtown seaside Winter Welcoming Center for the unhoused can trace its roots to its founder and current director’s childhood experiences on the gritty streets of New York City, a world away from the Center’s stunning Cascades backdrop.
“I started giving money to the homeless when I was 11," said Julia Cochrane, who founded the Winter Welcoming Center eight years ago in a storefront on Sims Way, and serves as its volunteer executive director.
“I’ve had some relationship with homeless people since I was four,” Cochrane said.
“When I was 14, I used to buy the time of 14-year-old people who sold their bodies on the streets for sex, to set them free. I did that for a long time in my life. I was a bit of a rich kid, and had money from modeling.”
The seed for Cochrane to create a safe, comfortable space for local homeless people to spend daylight hours during the cold winter months began during those teen years growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
“I started giving money to the homeless just before my 11th birthday. I once put a dollar in the pocket of a person, and then realized that he had frozen to death.”
The response of people in her financially comfortable world showed more concern for Cochrane‘s exposure to the streets than for the harsh and dangerous circumstances that the homeless experienced. This further motivated Cochrane to make a life mission in helping the unhoused and less privileged.
“I saw people as people,” Cochrane said. “I’ve been doing this my whole life. At 19, I took my the first homeless person into my home. I had 40 roommates in 15 years, and a lot of them were young adults who needed a place to be.”
The Center provides a place for the unsheltered, offering single-serve microwave food, hygiene supplies, first aid kits, feminine care, harm reduction supplies and clothing.
After the pandemic forced the shutdown of Cochrane's first cold weather shelter in a storefront on Sims Way, the City started providing the Pope Marine Building every winter, along with paying for utilities and Wi-Fi.
The location is ideal for its proximity to the American Legion Emergency Shelter. The Shelter's homeless clients, as well as any other housing-challenged people, may spend time at the Welcoming Center between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. seven days a week. The Center is typically open from November 15th to April 15th each year, though it opened 11 days early this year to accommodate people forced out of the Evans Vista homeless encampment.
In past years, the Center had been open from 8:30 AM until 12 PM. This year, it was financially able to pay an additional four hours of staff time, and now remains open until 4 PM every day.
”We need paid staff because things are unpredictable,” Cochrane said. “We don’t deal with much violence, but small crises happen. I don’t know how to do this with less than two people.”
One of the responsibilities of Center manager Ben Casserd is to receive and manage volunteers. Local organizations that provide volunteers to the Center include OlyCAP, Jefferson Fire Care Team, Bayside Housing, and Jefferson Healthcare.
A high volume of clothing has been donated this season, but the need remains high with months of cold weather ahead, according to Casserd.
Current funding sources for the Center include the Housing Fund Board, the Food Co-ops Bags for Beans program, and it is currently one of the participating organizations in Jefferson Gives fundraising drive. The Center’s fiscal sponsor is the First Presbyterian Church.
A 40-year resident of Jefferson County, Cochrane and her husband helped start the Boiler Room, which was an actual boiler room in a downtown apartment building that they repurposed to provide a safe place for youth to hang out.
Cochrane and the Welcoming Center see a transition ahead, including their coming search for an executive director to replace Cochran. Cochran's primary occupations during her time in Port Townsend have been in architecture and as a paraeducator.
Cochrane does not plan to fully step away from her passion and mission. “One of the things I want to do in the coming year is to establish a homeless Bill of Rights here,” she said.
If you’re interested in learning more, you may email: jeffersoninterfaithaction@gmail.com
Donations to the Center may be made online at https://fpcpt.org/giving
