With winter coming, this is what Bellingham is doing for homeless youth
Bellingham City Council voted last week to fund a winter shelter for young adults and help the Opportunity Council hire two additional positions for its Homeless Outreach Team.
In a pair of unanimous votes Monday, Oct. 25, the council used $76,000 from the state Affordable Housing tax for a young adult shelter at Civic Stadium and agreed to bolster the Homeless Outreach Team response with $196,000 from the General Fund.
Members of the Whatcom County Council will be asked to support those efforts with an equal amount for the young adult shelter, which will operate from December through February said Tara Sundin, Bellingham’s economic development manager.
“We had a huge challenge in regards to people who are unhoused before the pandemic,” Councilwoman Pinky Vargas said at an Oct. 25 committee meeting.
“Through the pandemic, it has obviously gotten a lot worse in a lot of places. I think the need has increased dramatically,” Vargas said.
Northwest Youth Services will operate the winter shelter using the locker rooms at Civic Stadium for the three coldest months of the year, said Jenn Daily, director of advancement.
That temporary shelter will serve about 25 to 35 people ages 18-24 until a permanent shelter for that age group is established, Daly said.
Northwest Youth Services hopes to turn its Positive Adolescent Development, or PAD, shelter for homeless teens on State Street into a youth shelter after a new teen shelter is ready in a home that the agency recently bought in the Samish neighborhood.
Meanwhile, expanded Homeless Outreach Team hours are critical as “one of several in a suite of programs” like LEAD, GRACE or the community paramedic that ease demand on police and firefighters for situations that aren’t an acute emergency, said Councilman Dan Hammill.
“This is another program that helps or assists in an intervening kind of way,” Hammill said. “It’s not emergency response. It’s more of preventing people from having to come in contact with the system or getting them connected ... to get the help that they need.”
Additional funds will allow the Homeless Outreach Team to be on the street three nights a week, above the four-member team’s current weekday daytime schedule.
No weekend hours are anticipated for the Homeless Outreach Team because services aren’t available on weekends except at the Lighthouse Mission, which operates the Base Camp shelter and has its own weekend outreach team, said Samya Lutz, the city’s housing and services program manager.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: The amount the council spent from the state Affordable Housing tax for a young adult shelter was corrected Nov. 3, 2021.
