﻿Winter Warming Center Update

Winter Warming Center Update

2/26/2017

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful the risk it took to blossom..."
--Anais Nin--

The Interfaith Works Emergency Shelter team has been operating a Winter Warming Center every day for the past 4 months. After several initial weeks using the facilities of two generous downtown faith communities, on December 19th we took a big leap and relocated our program to 408 Olympia Ave. in the old Alpine Experience building. This is the first time we have operated emergency services for our neighbors experiencing homelessness in a commercial, non faith-based building. We are grateful for the unified support of Thurston County and the cities of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater, who came to unusually quick consensus that the Warming Center was a critical public health and safety need. We are grateful to our landlord, the Hyer family for providing us with an affordable space to be, fighting stigma and believing in serving vulnerable people. We are grateful for the businesses and organizations surrounding the Warming Center for remaining communicative with us through this process which has not always been easy.

Interfaith Works 2016/17 Winter Warming Center. Photo by: Brian, Shelter and Warming Center Support Staff

So far this season we have served an average of 163 people per day at the Warming Center. We are protecting people living with significant medical, mental health and substance use challenges from the elements and death. We are able to provide a place for people to seek respite and a safe place for people without nightly shelter to rest during the day. People are safe here, receiving compassion, care and and have a stronger safety net for the moment.

Our resourceful and skilled guests popped up and operate their own bike repair shop in the old bike shop area of the former store, we have games and movies, coffee like it's nobody's business and basic first aid/hygiene supplies, gloves, hats and socks for whoever need them. Generous community members have donated lunches, blankets, hand warmers and so much more to help make this program function.

In this new location we are much better able to connect with support service providers to get people living on the streets more access to their programs. We partnered with iCount Thurston and served as the hub location for this year's Point in Time Count, the Olympia Free Clinic has been operating weekly on Mondays to provide primary care support to our guests and Tuesdays for a wound care clinic, this year's service portion of the annual HipHop4The Homeless event was hosted at the Warming Center, case workers from SideWalk and Behavioral Health Resources have been able to locate their clients easier, outreach services like PATH and the Downtown Ambassadors (operated through the Capitol Recovery Center) and Community Youth Services Outreach are better able to connect with folks and enroll them in services.

Anecdotally, we have been told that the Timberland Regional Library and many downtown businesses have reported that downtown is quieter, calmer and able to carry on with business as usual without having to deal with so many of the negative social occurrences that happen when people have nowhere to go and are struggling to meet their basic needs.

"I wanted to share how the Warming Center has impacted the library. We have seen a dramatic decrease in incidents as well as the general mood of the homeless community. Patrons have commented that the library is much quieter and everyone is able to enjoy the library. I believe that the Warming Center has dramatically improved the community especially for downtown businesses and the library. You are doing such great work. I hope that someday it could be year round."
-Senior Library Manager, Olympia Library-

As I often say, this work is not easy. On day one of this season's Warming Center we saw significantly more guests than we did last year. This trend has accelerated since moving to the Alpine Experience site, with a current daily average of 163 sign-in's per day, and an all time daily high of 237 sign-in's on January 23rd. The majority of our daily guests are from here, they've grown up here and they are downtown everyday. They spend every cent they have at downtown businesses and are a strong part of the fabric of downtown. We have witnessed many serious medical emergencies at the Warming Center that could have easily resulted in death had we not been there to intervene. By providing a place to rest during the day we have reduced contacts with emergency services like law enforcement and emergency department trips for many people. We have performed two memorial services for guests who passed away this winter; one local man passed away surrounded by friends and caring community members in the Warming Center rather than alone in the woods.

This work is not easy. We have two bathrooms and two portable toilets at our current location. The flu rampaged through the Warming Center and also our nightly shelter causing serious hospitalizations and cases of pneumonia for many fragile people, including staff members. The building housing the Warming Center is dilapidated, the ceiling leaks and the plumbing is shot. There is nowhere outside for people to be without making it difficult for neighboring businesses. There is no good place for people to relieve their service animals and pets. There are not enough mats for people to rest on, and not enough services being provided. The large numbers showing up each day -- significantly exceeding what we experienced previously at our faith based locations -- set us back on our heels, and we had to incrementally scale up our staffing resources in response. It is obvious to us that this scrambling, emergency reaction without adequate resources or a clear plan from the community, cannot cut it any longer.

We are excited to be working with Providence Health Services to open the downtown Community Care Center later this year, but it has become abundantly clear that it will not fill the role of the Warming Center. We are happy to work with the City of Olympia and regional partners to create a plan for a permanent day center and expanded nightly sheltering/permanent supportive housing options for the continuously growing population of people in our community experiencing homelessness. One major blessing of the Warming Center is the opportunity it has provided to gather information, learn from the challenges and use the experience to inform planning for the good of everyone -- and I really mean everyone -- in our community.

We must incorporate a homeless housing strategy as part of any overall housing strategy and create real plans for maintaining and increasing the stock of affordable housing in our area or we will never get out of this vicious cycle of providing band-aid approaches to a gash that will not clot. We must also recognize the vitally important role that emergency services play and realize that we need to do both -- meet the immediate need and at the same time plan for permanent housing solutions. We cannot have one without the other. Please let your elected officials from the city level to the state know that funding affordable housing and emergencies services is crucial to the health and well being of our families, businesses, government and any progress that we hope to see in our community.

The costs of additional staffing and the reams of supplies serving hundreds of daily users means we have exceeded our budget. We gratefully accept monetary and supply donations to support the full range of costs of the Warming Center.

I am grateful for the exhaustion, stress, laughter, love and healing that the Warming Center has brought us all this season. I am grateful for the visibility the Warming Center brings to this vital issue, and appreciate the outpouring of support we have received from our neighbors and the community as a whole. This is going to take all of us and I'm honored to count the shelter family IN as part of the solution. <3 <3 <3

Warming Center stock room. Photo by: Colin, Warming Center Support Staff

10 Comments

Marty

3/2/2017 10:36:25 pm

Keep going, Meg! This work is REALLY important!

Julia

3/3/2017 01:11:55 am

Meg, so grateful for this update and that you continue this vital work despite significant odds.

3/3/2017 11:23:32 am

What a compelling community story. So glad I've been there. Cheers to you, the staff, volunteers, and all supporters.

Corey Passons

3/3/2017 01:12:12 pm

Thank you for this post. Great work and inspirational.

Pat Starzyk

3/3/2017 02:32:42 pm

It truly takes a village to do all this. Thank goodness we have one.

Lois Beck

3/3/2017 02:38:24 pm

Thank you for all you, the staff and volunteers do.

Kathy link

3/4/2017 12:31:24 pm

Thank you for the incredible contribution you make and skill you share.. Everyone should ask their city council members to put the Home Fund levy on the ballot. Local funds are essential to Leverage opportunities to build permanently affordable housing that includes needed services to house our community's most vulnerable people. We can nearly end homelessness as modeled by other communities who have approved home levy type measures. Go to thehomefund.org.

Ruth Apter

3/7/2017 08:46:40 am

As I looked at the breakdown of my property taxes this year I wondered why we all were NOT contributing to a solution for homelessness in Olympia. I decided I wanted to go to the city council and ask for exactly what you are doing and thehomefund,org plans to create. You have my complete support. I am truly in tears reading about all your hard work. If I were wealthy I would write you a big fat check. I wish I could. I will continue to make small donations as I believe that collectively we can help each other. Thank you so much for the great work you are doing. Thank you.

Sierra

3/15/2017 08:34:22 am

Wow Meg this is amazing, YOU are amazing. You are such a unique force of healing and love met with action, and clearly so is all the staff and volunteers at the Warming Center. Well Done!!

Andy

6/14/2017 01:30:14 pm

Has anybody ever stopped to think that short-term good can cause long-term bad? Sure, you might wish to help a starving homeless man with a couple of dollars, but what if you knew he is only starving this late in the month because when he got his monthly social security, he blew it on beer and video games? Then suddenly, you discover that bigoted rights-violating Republican whose always been living inside you, amen?

If you run your shelter too indiscriminately, you end up "enabling" the authentically incorrigible scumbags and parasites to thrive, in which case your acts of charity do more harm than good.

If the math shows that for every 5 homeless persons who actually become productive citizens via charity, there are 15 who freeload off that charity ever after, then must we not admit that we need to learn when and where to say no just a bit more often, if our efforts are to start having long-term good effect? What fool says employing the same tactics might start causing different results? If you want different results, you have to change your ways.

If you'd throw out a roommate because you discovered they were using your charity in ways you didn't approve, what is stopping you from drawing up a list of truly incorrigible downtown Olympia homeless people (those who just sit on their ass all day long with no intent to find gainful sustained employment, or who do worse, and barring them from your charity?

No, don't interview each person who attends the shelter.

Merely walk around and take private notes on each person over the period of about a month. You'll soon have conclusive proof of the people who are most likely to use your charity in a wise way, and those who are genuine freeloaders undeserving of help. After all, if you interview them, then of course they will all have sob-stories and show how willing they are to do anything to get a job. Skip the words and record their actions. Actions speak louder than words.

If you really wish to help the homeless people who have the most likelihood of becoming productive members of society, seems to me its only smart to conclude that because you have such precious limited resources for doing so, you need to be able to make double-certain the genuine freeloaders don't get your help. Indiscriminately handing out soup and sleeping bags and warm shelter to just anybody who happens to walk through the door, is how a child would run things. Requiring those in need of charity to demonstrate they have potential to do more than sit on the sidewalk texting their scumbag friends and using their social security to buy video games, would be the procedure of the mature adult, who doesn't want anybody to waste their charitable resources.

Do you like the fact that the cities don't have triple the amount of stinky disgusting social security and food-stamp-wasting homeless people that they currently do?

If so, you'll be disappointed to know that the only reason the numbers are as low as they are, is because in earth's history, many plagues and epidemics wiped out millions of people. If those plagues hadn't happened, those people would have procreated, and the resulting population of earth would be around 12 billion instead of 7 billion as it is today, which means we'd have triple the amount of homeless people in our streets than we currently do. Lord knows there aren't enough jobs already. There is enough room in Thurston County to create all the business and jobs we'd need to accommodate our population growing to three times it's current size. Something has got to give.

Stop and think real careful before you automatically assume that something which wipes out large numbers of people, is a "bad" thing. Sure, it would be "short-term" bad. We've been employing short-term homelessness solutions for decades, and the numbers of the homeless continue to skyrocket regardless. I'd say there's something about our indiscriminate bleeding heart liberalism that's wrong, wrong, wrong, wouldn't you?

Do you have any idea of how extreme the problem must become before you'll agree that more extreme measures are justified?

Are you the doctor who likes your patient's infected arm so much that you only cut away the tissue that is clearly infected, forever hoping to preserve as much of their arm as possible (i.e., the problem never really goes away, your short-term solution just makes her come back for repeated surgeries)?

Or are you the mature surgeon, who realizes the safety of the patient as a person requires you to employ the lesser of two evils, and thus cut away much of the good tissue too, so as to make sure the problem is resolved with finality (the long-term view)?

The State wasn't wrong to create criteria by which you can be kicked out of the foodstamp program, whether or not that would increase your odds of starving, so you cannot go wrong with your charity programs in identifying and excluding those who in your best judgement simply use your charity to enable th