‘It’s inspiring’: Inslee praises Moses Lake’s innovative approach to dealing with shelterlessness

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake has some things to teach the state about how to address shelterlessness, according to Gov. Jay Inslee.

“We know we have a homeless crisis in the state of Washington, and one of the reasons I came to Moses Lake is to make sure people understand it’s not just Seattle,” Inslee said during a short press conference at the Moses Lake Sleep Center on Thursday.

Inslee was in Moses Lake from around 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday to meet with local leaders and tour the sleep center — the collection of 35 tiny buildings at the southeast corner of East Broadway Avenue and state Route 17 that give area shelterless a safe and private place to spend the night.

The governor’s small motorcade was driven into the sleep center through a main gate past a handful of protestors without meeting or talking to them.

“It’s inspiring because people have been so innovative here in Moses Lake,” Inslee said during the press conference. “And it’s really just great to see a chance for people to get their lives back to where they’d like to be.”

Inslee described his short tour of the sleep center, and the discussion he had earlier at the Civic Center with city officials and program managers from HopeSource as “inspirational,” and said providing housing first is probably the best way to help people deal with the other issues they have — lack of job skills, mental health problems and addiction.

“That housing first model demonstrates how we can be successful and is being adopted more and more across the state of Washington as a first step to people really changing their lives,” Inslee said.

During the meeting earlier in the Civic Center, Stacy Wahl, a program manager with HopeSource who oversees the sleep center, told Inslee that it’s important to start with getting roofs over people’s heads to help them kick drug habits and look for work.

“If people don’t have their daily needs met, they can’t do other things,” Wahl said.

During both the Civic Center meeting and the press conference, Inslee said Washington needs more affordable housing, and there aren’t enough smaller houses — fewer than three bedrooms and two bathrooms — or apartments for all the people moving to the state.

But the governor was also emphatic rent control was not the answer.

“I think we’ve got to build more housing, that’s fundamentally how we solve this problem,” Inslee said.

Earlier in the day, the governor also met privately with executives and employees of REC Silicon and Group14 Technologies, a company developing components for silicon-based rechargeable batteries. REC is scheduled to announce its earnings for the second quarter of 2021 on Wednesday.