Moses Lake City Council approves funding plan for new shelter

MOSES LAKE — In a 6-1 vote, the Moses Lake City Council adopted the city’s homeless committee’s funding plan for an enhanced shelter Tuesday, moving forward with the El Rancho Motel location.

The motel at 1214 S. Pioneer Way will be purchased with the Emergency Shelter Grant, which is from Grant County and the Department of Commerce, as well as the Emergency Solutions Grant, from Grant County, said Moses Lake housing and grants coordinator Taylor Burton.

At its Feb. 9 meeting, the council voted against the plan, citing it needed more information on the management company, HopeSource, and its safety precautions.

The new shelter will have 24-hour supervision, tenant background screenings and holistic services for permanent transitions from homelessness, Burton said Tuesday.

“The general public had concerns about the Sleep Center when that was proposed, however, with the management provided by HopeSource, the Sleep Center has seen a great success rate of exiting individuals from homelessness with very minimal issues,” Burton said.

HopeSource has been initiating these programs for 30 years, he said. They manage 500 units of housing, virtually ended homelessness for veterans in Ellensburg and see an 83% success rate, 30% higher than the state target.

Moses Lake Police Chief Keven Fuhr said the new shelter would eliminate the safety concerns of the current location.

While council member Karen Leibrecht was hesitant to move forward at the first meeting, she felt much better with the new information, she said.

“Just a walk back in time, you know, we need to review what it was like before the city was doing nothing, and there were tents set up along our (streets), along the lake, they were in our parks, and our citizens were demanding us to do something,” she said.

The need in Moses Lake is strong, said Erika Ritchi, youth homelessness advocate at HopeSource and lifelong Moses Lake resident.

“Homelessness is not just the people we see on the streets or the people who are camping in tents,” she said. “We have a huge community of people that are maybe one or two paychecks away from being homeless and needing support.”

While the homeless committee had provided adequate logistics Tuesday night, the Moses Lake School District had not been involved in the beginning and was unable to give its insight, said district board president Vickey Melcher. For this, she urged the council to vote against the funding plan for the new shelter.

Council member Dean Hankins didn’t want to delay the vote any longer.

“This has been a progressing situation, and we’ve gotten the information as fast as we could, and hopefully can make a decision tonight because this is a deadline,” he said. “I apologize that we didn’t get the information to the school board ahead of this, but we didn’t have the information.”

Further, Burton said despite being invited, a representative from the Moses Lake School District has not attended a meeting of the Grant County Homeless Task Force since he organized it in September 2020.

Melcher was unaware if anyone from the school district had received invitation, she said.

All but council member Daryl Jackson approved.

“I wish this information had gotten to us the first time. It’s difficult to make a decision when you don’t have the information, so I think this is a good example of it,” Jackson said. “I’m surely disappointed in the school district for not participating in the committee meetings, but that’s not our problem, that’s theirs. So I voted against it, and I will retain that vote against it. Thank you.”

(This story has been updated to reflect HopeSource's correct success rate and name of the county task force.)