The Mayor of Spokane has unveiled a plan to replace shelter beds, but is it in line with city law?

Mayor Nadine Woodward last week outlined a plan to replace the homeless shelters that will be lost when The Way Out shelter closes later this month.

The city will be using Union Gospel Mission, Truth Ministries, and Catholic charities to bolster accessible shelters in its network of homeless shelters.

“We are ready, we are executing this plan,” Woodward told the city council on Thursday in a meeting.

However, it is unclear whether the plan in its current form complies with a new city law that obliges the city to correct any dismantling of accessible accommodation – unless it can demonstrate that there is no demand.

“UGM, Truth Ministries and Catholic charities all play important roles in providing shelter, but they are not replacing the beds we will lose on June 30,” Council President Breean Beggs wrote in an email to The Spokesman Review .

Beggs estimates that around 500 people live in Spokane without housing.

“We’ll still have people on the streets, so what are we really doing here?” Asked Councilor Lori Kinnear, chair of the council’s public safety and community health committee.

City spokesman Brian Coddington told The Spokesman Review Friday that the administration would ensure their plan was in place by Jan.

The Way Out Shelter on Mission Avenue has been operated by the Salvation Army since last year when Spokane County bought the building with federal funds for coronavirus supplies.

The shelter will be closed on June 30th as the Salvation Army repairs the building and moves to a new “bridge model” that sets stricter standards for its guests and is supposed to lead them out of homelessness. The closure will temporarily reduce the city-wide barrier-free accommodation capacity by 102 beds.

To that end, Woodward outlined a plan to add more beds when The Way Out closes.

The Union Gospel Mission will open 65 of their beds to former guests of The Way Out, Woodward said. The shelter does not receive city funding and is not considered a low barrier, meaning it has requirements like sobriety on its guests, but Woodward said it will remove any barriers to the 65 new beds.

But that’s not how Union Gospel Mission described the plan. It will continue to require sobriety of all of its guests unless they have a prescription approved by a medical or mental health provider.

The people moving to the Union Gospel Mission will be the ones who have told the Salvation Army that they are interested in returning to the Way Out Shelter when it reopens as the Bridge Housing Shelter later this year, Woodward explained.

“They said they wanted to take the next step out of homelessness,” said Woodward.

These people will be included in the Union Gospel Mission’s Employment Readiness Program, which is similar to the bridge-building model envisaged by the Salvation Army.

“There will be an expectation of sobriety, as is common in all UGM institutions,” UGM ministerial director Joel Brown wrote in an email. “Others have applied (to) switch to one of the other programs at UGM and some just want to stay in the shelter.”

Woodward described the Union Gospel Mission beds as “new beds for the system”.

The Union Gospel Mission made it clear that the beds are not the result of expansion; rather, the beds in the men’s and women’s crisis house were already there, but were all empty.

“It just doesn’t go together for me. I think this is just replacing one type of bed with another type of bed, ”said Kinnear.

Coddington attributed the confusion over Union Gospel Mission beds to a misunderstanding the city had before Jan.

The intent is to replace accessible beds with accessible beds, Coddington said. The mayor believed that the beds in the Union Gospel Mission would be barrier-free.

Each of the new beds in the accommodations outlined in Woodward’s plan are only open to adult men, a fact noted by Councilor Candace Vumm.

To make room for women, Woodward replied, men currently on the city’s Cannon Street are being moved to other accommodations like the Union Gospel Mission or the House of Charity.

The city is not paying any Union Gospel Mission or Catholic charities under the new plan.

“This transition is very inexpensive,” said Woodward.

The city is adding 35 new beds thanks to the House of Charity of Catholic Charities, which is part of a government pilot project to reduce social distancing requirements imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Guests who have been vaccinated no longer need to sleep two meters away, according to Dena Carr, the shelter’s director.

“We’re essentially creating pods from fully vaccinated people,” said Carr.

The program was created with health officials, and participants are frequently tested for COVID-19 to monitor potential breakthrough cases.

“When we start realizing that there are breakthrough infection issues, our first priority is healthy protection and we will go back to our original numbers,” said Carr.

The last 25 new beds will be added at Truth Ministries on East Sprague. The shelter typically charges its guests a fee of $ 2 per night, but the city pays this fee on behalf of the guests.

Beggs noted that the beds at Catholic charities are technically not new and existed before the pandemic. Truth Ministries, he noted, aren’t open 24/7 like The Way Out shelter.

With the city slated to receive more than $ 80 million from the US rescue plan, Beggs said it was “the first time in a generation that we finally have enough funds to not only replace these beds but increase them, with them we people from the warehouse and out of the doors. “

When the Salvation Army shelter reopens later this year, it will accommodate 60 people in the Bridge Housing Program and 50 accessible beds on the ground floor.