Moses Lake council votes to end support of sleep center

MOSES LAKE — The city of Moses Lake will end its support of the Open Doors sleep center June 30. Moses Lake City Council members made the decision in a unanimous vote at a special meeting and workshop on homeless issues Friday. 

Moses Lake Mayor Dustin Swartz said council members considered three options for offering services. They decided in the end to provide “core and basic services only,” which, according to a memo provided to council members, would return administration of social services to county and state officials, or to nonprofit organizations.  

“The city will explore better ways to get homeless individuals and others in need to effective ‘wrap around’ services,” city officials said in a statement released Friday afternoon. “Wrap around services help address the root causes of instability, reduce recidivism (e.g., returning to homelessness or incarceration), and increase the likelihood of long-term success. These services are not fully or readily available in Moses Lake. It is not the City's intention to provide any such services, and the City will instead focus on core and basic city services, including police, fire, streets, parks, recreation and utilities. “  

Swartz said the city has the option of using funds generated through recording fees to provide some social services, which don’t generate as much money as the state-funded grants but do provide more flexibility.  

“Municipalities have a lot more options available to them in how they can use those dollars,” he said. 

It would, among other things, allow the city to have entry requirements for any future temporary shelter facility, he said.  

Swartz said the sleep center originally was intended to be the first phase of a larger project that eventually would have offered a wider range of services. But council members and city managers have changed, and the current council doesn’t consider the larger facility as an option, he said. 

The council voted last year not to renew the year-to-year contract with HopeSource, which runs the shelter, and replace it with a month-to-month contract. The city received an emergency housing grant to pay for the site lease, utilities and security, among other things. That grant runs out June 30. 

The vote came during a workshop and not at a council meeting, the next one of which is scheduled for April 22. Swartz said the vote was not an attempt to avoid debate. 

“This was more of a response to comments we’ve been receiving for a long time now,” he said.  

The most recent was during the April 8 meeting, where Debbie Doran-Martinez, Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, presented a petition calling for the closure of the sleep center. Swartz said that was the latest, but not the first, example of debate. 

“We’re mostly trying to respond to that,” he said. 

Having the vote occur during a workshop rather than a regular city council meeting is permitted under the law, but is rarely done. 

Swartz said he thinks the current system has not been effective in helping homeless people find support, and that has led to frustration for city officials and residents alike. 

“They just see that so many of the programs fall short of what they need to be,” he said, and the city by itself doesn’t have the money to provide the services needed. 

“We just felt we’ve been put in an impossible situation,” Swartz said.  

The Columbia Basin Herald will have additional coverage of the challenges of homelessness in the coming weeks.