The future of the city's flagship homeless shelter on East Trent Avenue has never been more uncertain.
Mayor-elect Lisa Brown has called the warehouse shelter — the Trent Resource and Assistance Center, or TRAC — a "financial and humanitarian disaster" and has called for it to be replaced over the coming year.
But someone has to keep it running in the meantime. And the process of choosing an organization to do so has been plagued with delays and communication challenges that now threaten to disrupt 300-plus people who stay there nightly.
"Everything has been so disorganized," says Council member Karen Stratton.
For a brief moment, it seemed like Jewels Helping Hands would be taking over management of the Trent shelter. The nonprofit homeless service provider previously managed Camp Hope, the large homeless encampment in East Central. It's also led by Julie Garcia, who outgoing Mayor Nadine Woodward frequently clashed with and accused of conspiring against her.
Jewels was one of three organizations that applied to take on the city contract to run the Trent shelter in 2024. The Salvation Army — which currently runs the shelter through a contract with the city that expires at the end of December — also applied for the 2024 contract.
But the city committee tasked with reviewing applications thought Jewels' application material was stronger, citing the nonprofit's depth of services and lower price tag. During a Sept. 6 meeting, members of the city's Community Housing and Human Services board voted overwhelmingly to recommend Jewels for the 2024 contract and pass on the application to City Council for final approval.
But the process stalled. Repeatedly. For more than two months.
Now, as the end of the year approaches, the window of time for an orderly transition to Jewels is shrinking. The Woodward administration is proposing extending the Salvation Army's contract for four months into 2024 for $3.2 million — despite the CHHS board's belief that Jewels would offer better services at a cheaper price.
Council President Betsy Wilkerson, who sits on the CHHS board along with Stratton, says she thinks chronic short-staffing in the mayor's CHHS department played a role in the delay. (The director of the department announced her resignation one day after the CHHS board voted to recommend Jewels.)
Jewels' application included a partnership agreement that would see the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium provide administrative and data support at the shelter. Ben Stuckart, the director of the consortium who helped draft Jewels' application materials, says the whole process was frustrating.
"I don't know if it was just lack of staffing down there or if it was intentionally delayed," Stuckart says. "But regardless, it was a messy process that should have never happened."
On Nov. 16, council members met with the CHHS board and members of the Woodward administration to try to piece together what happened and come up with a way forward. They walked away frustrated and with a lot of still-unanswered questions.
"There has been a lack of transparency," Wilkerson told the board, adding that if she were in their shoes, she would be "pissed."
CUTTING SERVICES
Jewels' proposal also included a partnership agreement with Revive Counseling — which does peer navigation work at the shelter through a separate city contract. (Both Jewels and Salvation Army asked for roughly $9 million in their applications, but Jewels' proposal was ultimately cheaper because the organization factored services from Revive and the Housing Consortium into the total bill.)
Revive's current contract with the city is set to expire at the end of this year. But unlike with Salvation Army, the city does not currently have a proposal to extend it into 2024.
"Closing services for over 300 guests who are in the middle of an engaged recovery and housing process with their Revive case managers will be inhumane," Lane Pavey, executive director of Revive, wrote in an email to city officials earlier this month.
On Monday, Kim McCollim, the director of the city's Neighborhood Housing and Human Services division (which houses CHHS), told council members that she was talking with Pavey and trying to find ways to keep Revive on board for the winter.
SEARCHING FOR $9 MILLION
Woodward called for a pause in the process of awarding the Trent shelter contract immediately after the CHHS board voted to recommend Jewels on Sept. 6. She cited concern about a lack of identified funding sources and uncertainty about how plans for a regional homeless authority would impact the Trent shelter.
Woodward didn't mention Jewels as a reason for the pause. But in a series of evening tweets on Oct. 5, Woodward referred to Garcia as Brown's "partner-in-crime" and expressed incredulity about the fact that Garcia was applying to operate the Trent shelter, despite having repeatedly criticized the shelter as insufficient and inhumane.
"UNBELIEVABLE!" Woodward wrote.
Wilkerson is hesitant to speculate whether Woodward's well-documented dislike of Garcia played a role in the delays.
"I'm not going to call that one," Wilkerson says. "I think people can read between the lines."
Brian Coddington, the mayor's spokesperson, says that Woodward's personal relationship with Garcia is irrelevant and that funding was the only issue.
But throughout the fall, members of the City Council and the Woodward administration seem to have been on wildly different pages about whether or not funding for the shelter was actually in place.
When the City Council voted on Oct. 23 to move $6.1 million in unspent federal pandemic relief money to help cover shelter operations, Wilkerson said it was her understanding that the contract could then move forward. It didn't.
When the Inlander asked Coddington what the holdup was in early November, he said the contract was still on pause because the federal pandemic money only covered two-thirds of the $9 million needed for the entire yearlong contract.
But Wilkerson says she was under the impression that funding for the full year was already identified. Weeks earlier, on Oct. 5, Skyler Brown, the city's grants and contracts manager, had emailed council members and members of the Woodward administration to say that the state Commerce Department had indicated it would be OK for Spokane to use the department's inflation grants to help cover costs at the Trent shelter.
When the City Council's budget director, Matt Boston, emailed with Skyler Brown to compare Trent shelter funding notes on Oct. 23, both had the combined federal pandemic relief money and several pots of Commerce money adding up to just over $10 million, "which gets us above and beyond the number we were looking for," Boston wrote.
(Coddington says it's his understanding that the Commerce money has been identified, but not yet "fully confirmed" by the state agency.)
Boston kept trying to move the contract forward — emailing City Administrator Garrett Jones and McCollim on Nov. 1 to say that the City Council was in "critical need" of an update on the status of the contract.
"We know that we need to fast-track the contract to get the new provider started prior to January 1," Boston wrote.
Boston added that the topic would be coming up at the CHHS board meeting scheduled that night and that it would be helpful to have an update for them.
The CHHS board members did not receive an update that night.
"People have been asking us, and we don't know" where the contract is, Wilkerson told the board. "I guess there's an appeal process pending?"
AN APPEAL PROCESS?
The Salvation Army had filed its formal letter asking the CHHS committee to reconsider its decision on Sept. 22.
Kelly Cain, a captain with the local Salvation Army, wrote that it would be a "disservice to our guests to interrupt shelter operations with another provider change" and that the organization had "many success stories that can be shared" about its work at the shelter.
The letter was addressed to Jenn Cerecedes, the former CHHS director who had announced her resignation two weeks earlier. McCollim was included in the letter's recipients.
Members of the City Council and the CHHS board were not informed of the appeal. Wilkerson said she only heard about it shortly before the Nov. 1 CHHS board meeting.
"It was pretty disappointing and frustrating that that information had been kept from Council," Wilkerson says.
Council members and the CHHS board didn't receive an actual copy of the appeal until Nov. 16. During a meeting that day, McCollim said the appeal wasn't forwarded because there wasn't a process in place for how to handle it.
"When I was told there was no process, I was as upset as you are," McCollim said.
Members of the City Council and the CHHS board spent a lot of time fretting about the appeal, but Coddington says the appeal didn't actually have anything to do with the pause. He stresses that lack of funding was the sole reason.
"I don't know if it was just lack of staffing down there or if it was intentionally delayed. But regardless, it was a messy process that should have never happened."
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"We've gotten to the point where we've identified two-thirds of those funds solidly, and the other third, at this point, fairly solid," Coddington says. "But because time has passed, circumstances have changed, now it's most prudent to be able to provide the mayor-elect" flexibility.
On Monday, McCollim briefed council members on the request to extend Salvation Army's contract. She said the extension was necessary to give Brown time to develop her plan to wind down the shelter and to avoid disrupting guests with a service provider change in the middle of winter.
The proposal included an additional $730,000 to cover Salvation Army going over budget to accommodate extra people during extreme weather earlier this year.
Council member Zack Zappone said he was uncomfortable with the proposal, noting that the Salvation Army has already gone over budget several times this year, including in September, when the City Council voted to increase the organization's contract by $3.5 million.
"My real concern is we don't have options," Wilkerson said. "The amount of money that's being requested is more than we can truly afford."
The extension will likely come to a vote next week. Council members aren't happy about once again being forced to choose between spending money the city doesn't have or kicking 350 people out into the cold.
As frustrations flared on Monday, outgoing Council President Lori Kinnear asked her colleagues to cut the city's CHHS department some slack.
"When you have so much turnover, things are going to fall through the cracks, it's inevitable," Kinnear said. "We just have to move forward... Let's just get this done so people aren't freezing on the street." ♦
