Ready for What's Next

Providence ends partnership with Interfaith Works at the Community Care Center. 

Interfaith Works has been striving to increase access to services for those experiencing chronic homelessness for more than 25 years, and on a much larger scale since 2014.

We provide 24/7 shelter, peer support based case management services, and until last week, we were a founding partner at the Providence Community Care Center.

The unprecedented collaborative effort at the CCC included 16 different partners from local mental health, primary care, and shelter and housing services. There are countless stories of success from this model, particularly for people in our community who have the most complex challenges related to their physical health, mental health, and substance use.

Interfaith Works employees Dave Wade and Chris Harnish working the front service desk at the Community Care Center.

As we have said many times before, this work is not easy. It takes a toll mentally, emotionally, and politically. In the world of providing for the basic needs of people regardless of their circumstances, it doesn't always look pretty from the outside, and the complex realities of homelessness are often misunderstood and misrepresented.

Without leaning into the painful places and bearing witness to human suffering, one will never get to experience the transformation in yourself, in others, and in our community that comes from taking the time to accept people exactly as they are without judgment and strings attached. We thank Providence for the time, resources, and energy they have spent leaning in with us over these past three and a half years.

Last week Providence decided to terminate the role of Interfaith Works and SideWalk in the CCC partnership and shift the program model to be primarily appointment based. We are deeply saddened by this decision and very concerned about the additional gaps this will create in our already struggling local safety net. We are concerned not only for the people we serve but also for the business community and other downtown organizations that become defacto hygiene and day centers in the absence of dedicated places for people to be.

Further, in today’s vitally important conversation about dismantling structural racism, community policing, and alternatives that center the safety and support of Black and Indigenous people and all people of color, we now must recognize that one of the primary spots for people to come to daily, for the CRU team, law enforcement, Familiar Faces, the clinical providers at the CCC, the hospital discharge planners to find people and to bring them to connect to services will no longer be a tool in our tool belt in the same way -- particularly not for houseless people who are most disconnected from traditional services. People of color make up 35% of people experiencing homelessness in Thurston County. That is nearly twice the rate of the prevalence of people of color in the general population.

We stand ready and willing for what’s next. We hope you'll join us.

Today is a beautiful sunny day -- one of the few we’ve had all year, and all I can think about is winter. It’s mid-July, and we have no plan for a day center, no plan for additional shelter capacity for the cold-weather season for the single adult population, a likely decrease in shelter capacity once construction for the new IW/LIHI shelter and permanent supportive housing development at Martin Way begins, no real plan for providing safe parking alternatives for the dozens of people on Deschutes parkway and Ensign Road…. But you already know this. For everyone in our community interested in this issue please contact Thurston County and the cities of Lacey and Tumwater to share your thoughts on the intersections of race, class, and housing issues. I hope our community will not miss this moment to meaningfully connect the dots that racial justice and housing justice are intrinsically linked.

Today I am grateful for the collective and diverse lived experiences that exist within Interfaith Works because we are resilient, creative, and will do what it takes to continue building a community that allows dedicated space and care to every person regardless of their circumstance! We hope you will join us in that effort to find a place where people who are unsheltered and living in substandard housing can go, can be their full selves without judgment, and can get their basic needs met regardless of their circumstance.

Thank you to all our amazing service partners at the CCC, particularly the core partner group -- Providence clinical mental health team, Valley View, SideWalk, Community Action Council, Behavioral Health Services, and The Olympia Free Clinic. We would also like to thank the office of Thurston County Public Health and Social Services, the Olympia City Council and city staff who have put countless time, energy, and resources into making the CCC what it was.

Meg Martin, MSW, CPC
Executive Director

Community Care Center Model

​Please check out this beautiful video highlighting the unique model of the Community Care Center that we are very proud of co-founding.