Moses Lake managed shelterless camp opens Friday
Celeste Applegate pulls off plastic sheeting from shelters that will begin lodging local shelterless people by Friday night. For Applegate, who struggled with shelter herself for years, it was important to volunteer her time to support the sleeping center.
Emry Dinman/Columbia Basin Herald
Moses Lake City Council member Don Myers, foreground, and others tour the city’s managed unsheltered camp before it opens Friday night.
From left to right, Moses Lake Mayor David Curnel, council member Karen Liebrecht, Housing and Grants Coordinator Taylor Burton and council member Don Myers (with others) meet at the city’s new sleeping center Thursday, touring the site and taking a last look before it was to open Friday night.
MOSES LAKE — By Friday night, years after city officials first began to consider it, Moses Lake’s sleeping center for those without shelter will open for the first time, according to city officials.
The managed shelterless camp, on the southeast corner of state Route 17 and Broadway Avenue (a former Penhallurick’s lumber yard), will consist of 35 tiny home units, two bathrooms, each equipped with showers, three warming stations, as the housing units themselves are not heated, and an administrative office that will process occupants as they check-in for a night at a time.
Housing and Grants Coordinator Taylor Burton, in charge of the city’s side of operating the center, guided a tour of the site Thursday afternoon that included a number of Moses Lake council members, Mayor David Curnel, City Manager Allison Williams, and others.
“I think it’s great,” Curnel said “The fact that we got this money from the COVID funds and everything, it was a no-brainer for the council to get this setup and going.”
The sleeping center has initially been paid for with funds specific to homelessness made available by state and federal agencies due to the pandemic and does not currently call for any additional costs to area taxpayers. Those funding sources include $170,000 of state COVID-19 Emergency Shelter Grants and $175,000 in federal CARES Act funds, Williams told city council members at a Sept. 8 council meeting.
While it may later serve as very short-term shelter, during the pandemic it will provide longer-term housing and potential quarantining of homeless people who may be exposed to the coronavirus, Williams said in an earlier interview.
Along with the site itself, the city has contracted with HopeSource Moses Lake to manage the site and perform outreach. That organization will work to provide both short- and long-term support to the site’s occupants, from getting laundry vouchers to those who need them, to enrolling willing participants into programs that can help get them off of the streets, according to Burton.
This will be a significant improvement over the city’s warming center, Burton said, which had for years provided a place for the shelterless to get out of the freezing cold, but which did not open last year, leaving many unsheltered people to struggle through the winter.
“We look at it as, this is an entry point to get them into programs where we can work to get them off the street,” Burton said. “I think that’s the piece that’s been missing. The warming center was a Band-Aid.”
Celeste Applegate, a volunteer at the site who was putting the final touches on the units in time for tomorrow’s opening, and who has also been unsheltered before, said the site could make a big difference in the lives of unsheltered people.
“Being homeless occupies more of your time than you might think, and it’s hard to get out and do anything for yourself except survive,” Applegate said. “If people have a warm place to sleep where it’s safe, maybe they’ll have more opportunities to get up in the day and do something to change their situation.”
“And the most that you can ask out of your homeless during the winter is that they survive, and this will help them do that,” Applegate added.
When checking in for the evening, occupants will undergo a health screening and will receive hygiene supplies and a key to their units, Burton said. Couples will be allowed to lodge together, and pet owners can bring their animals onsite and into their units. Destructive animals will not be allowed to return to the site, Burton added. However, a veterinarian from Othello has not only volunteered to pick up those animals for the night and shelter them, but also to provide free spay and neutering services.
The center will open at 6 p.m. every day, with final check-in at 10 p.m. and check-out by 8 a.m. The site will also have security services to monitor from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., Burton told council members Thursday.
“I think it’s great,” Curnel said after the tour was over. “This is a win-win for everybody; for us, for HopeSource, and for the clients that come here. It’s a place to get them started to get their lives back together.”
