GROWING PAINS COMPLICATED BY A PANDEMIC AND COMPOUNDED BY A LACK OF HOUSING.

SPOKANE IS IN CRISIS AND THE PROBLEM IS LIKELY BIGGER THAN WE KNOW..

It is a crisis, and it's not just in the youth population, the adult population, the homelessness is overflowing right now.

THE HEALTH OF OUR COMMUNITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

WE LOOK AT THE BARRIERS AND THE SOLUTIONS.

SPOKANE'S HOMELESS & HOUSING CRISIS.

RIGHT NOW ON HEALTH MATTERS.

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(upbeat music) - Good evening, and welcome to "Health Matters", "I'm Teresa Lukens.

Homelessness and lack of affordable housing affect the entire community; healthcare, crime, jobs, even how we spend our tax dollars.

So it benefits all of us to find solutions.

And while the homeless crisis is far from being solved, progress is being made.

Tonight, we're fortunate to have some of the key players with us.

Ben Stuckart is the executive director of the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium and chair of the Spokane City County Continuum of Care.

The COC is the regional board mandated with coming up with a five-year plan to end homelessness.

The Low Income Housing Consortium is involved in the production and management of housing for our communities' most vulnerable citizens, Major Ken Perine is the corps officer of the Salvation Army Citadel Corp in Spokane, which has been serving this region for 130 years.

The Salvation Army's purpose is to give vulnerable children and families a hand up through numerous services and programs to help better their lives so that they can thrive.

The Salvation Army has many 24/7 programs and has remained on the front lines throughout COVID-19.

Bridget Cannon is the senior vice president of Youth Services with Volunteers of America of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.

VOA runs 11 youth programs helping youth in foster care, young pregnant and parenting teens and single youth, and young adults that are ages 12 to 24 who are at risk of experiencing homelessness.

And finally, Dale Briese is involved in many community boards and organizations.

He has done this for the duration of his 36 years being HIV positive.

Dale has worked with local organizations that serve the homeless and those with chronic health conditions.

He currently works part-time at the Spokane Regional Health District and also Volunteers of America.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

An important topic, in fact, Ben, it's one we just talked about just a few months ago, but we are still talking about a housing crisis, a homeless crisis in Spokane.

We do tend to throw the word around quite a bit when we say crisis.

Is it indeed a crisis?

- I would argue that the homeless problem has gotten worse kind of progressively over the last five years in Spokane.

And I would argue, we definitely have a housing crisis.

We are the second worst rental market in the United States.

We're in the top 10 for highest rising ownership rates, our housing prices are rising, and we have a three-year wait list for low-income housing in Spokane.

And then if we go around our community, in our neighborhoods or people living in their cars or under the overpasses downtown, it's gotten worse.

And so I'd argue that with our housing market like it is and the number of homeless people on the streets, and I think we're at real risk with the eviction moratorium ending.

We're getting on the front lines, the calls are increasing and the need is increasing.

There are lots of great things happening in the community.

I think we all just need to row that boat in the same direction.

- And Major Perine, are you seeing the same thing at the Salvation Army?

- Yes I would totally agree with what Ben was saying about the housing crisis, but also it's really, we need more low-income housing for people just starting out to be able to move into whether it's subsidized or not.

And with a vacancy rate, I believe it's 0.5%, is that correct?

- Yes.

- That's really only causes prices to increase and, you know, if you look at our medium household income here in Spokane, it doesn't match the medium, not even close to the medium housing index.

So it's really a difficult situation for those actually working.

And then when you compound that with those that are in need due to homelessness or medical conditions or mental health issues, then the really supply of housing really shrinks even further.

- And Bridget, when it comes to working with a younger population, the same?

- Well, and actually the younger population is a lot harder to count.

Essentially they don't qualify under the HUD definition of homelessness for the most part, what it looks like for younger people, especially those under the age of 18 is what we call couch surfing.

And for them, they wouldn't even be defined as homeless by HUD, but they are defined as homeless within the school districts, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act which is a federal act, identifies those not accompanied by their parents as being homeless, regardless of whether they're in somebody else's house or living under a bridge, or living in a shelter.

And so notoriously they've been undercounted nationally, locally on every single level.

But yes, we know through the school data that it has increased over the last few years.

And right now statewide there's over 6,000 unaccompanied youth.

Those are those in high school that are either couch surfing and shelters just out in the streets.

And that's the best way to get those numbers because they hide, they don't wanna be known.

- It's difficult to do, Dale you've been doing this for 36 years.

Have you ever seen it this bad?

- I've never seen it this bad.

I think, you know, a lot has to do with the pandemic, how, you know, the response was for individuals and how they have their mental health challenges through it, beyond the system.

And, you know, and in general, our population has increased in Spokane and we really didn't plan for that in healthy ways.

And so I think, you know, I mean, is it a crisis?

Yes, but I have hope on the other side.

So you know, that we'll get to answers.

- How did we get here?

What has happened in the last 10, 20 years to put us in a position where we're not able to find housing or adequate shelter space?

How did we get here?

- Well, I know in the low-income housing world, it started in the mid-1970s and early 1980s when the federal government slashed subsidy to build low-income housing by 75%.

And it just took a little while to catch up, but that is when 10 years following those cuts in low-income housing at the federal level, we started to see homelessness across the United States.

Now the West Coast has lagged behind on the number of homelessness, but it has caught up to the West Coast.

And this isn't a problem isolated to Spokane, but we're younger cities than the older cities on the East Coast and we haven't really figured out density, where our city is built to be a suburban city with large yards and houses, we don't have enough density for apartments.

So then when you don't have enough apartments and you have 0.5% vacancy rates, like the Major was saying, prices spike up and then people end up on the streets if there's no housing that they can afford.

We should only be spending a third of our income on your roof over your head, but the current rental rates make that impossible.

I was meeting last week with a group of journalists and like their argument to me was, "These are all people in their mid-career in journalism, yet, they can't find housing in the city of Spokane where they work in market rate apartments.

And so this isn't just like, "Oh, we got a crisis of low-income housing because feds cut" that's true, but we also have a crisis of housing availability because we artificially constrained ourselves.

The Growth Management Act is where we can't spread out because we don't wanna sprawl, but cities are full of 'not in my backyard, NIMBYs that don't want their cities to change.

And so then you're not spreading up and you're not spreading out.

And where does the housing come from?

It doesn't, and you end up with a crisis.

And then I think we've got a mental health system that's broken.

We've got a substance abuse system that is, you know, the wait list is six months to get into treatment.

We've got a lot of broken parts of our society that are contributing to these crises.

- Major Perine, would you agree?

- Yes.

And I would just add as a entry note is, you know, we have staff that we're paying $800 a month in rent four years ago when I arrived, and now that same person is paying $1,500 more rent, but we haven't increased their salary by that same amount in that same time period.

So here's a person that does have a job.

the husband has a job, but because of the scarcity of housing it's causing an increase in pricing, and so that's actually affecting just regular normal people.

These are not a couple of that, the idea of them buying a house is really, the chances of that has really gone down significantly in the past, just in the four years I've been here.

So really the issue is it has to do with density, but also just building something.

We can build something somewhere, but we're just not building enough of the right things.

And I would love to see us building more condos and townhouses and regular houses, but it needs to be a mix of those things and not just focus on one at the exclusion of the other.

- The families that come to the Salvation Army are they, are these what we're calling the working poor, similar to the employees you were just talking about?

- Right, so the person that comes through, like, our transitional housing for families or emergency housing.

That family, our goal is to help them get a job, get them both employed, and then get them out into realistic housing for their income level.

The issue is the number of housing available for that same family has gone down significantly.

And the amount that family has to make in order to be able to move into the house has gone up significantly.

So it's a real issue right now.

- And when it comes to the youth population, you can only help them for so long, they age out of the system, and then where do they go?

So you're running into the same issues?

- And our hope is always that they don't graduate into the adult homeless system.

And so we really try to do a lot of the prevention and the upfront work, so that way they actually, when they do age out, they actually have a place, they have skills necessary, but it doesn't always work that way.

But yeah, we're seeing the same thing.

And the other thing that is impacting it, and the Major kind of touched upon this is, we are funded with what is essentially called flat funding.

So no taking into account the cost of living that has, and the inflation rates that have impacted.

So the cost of living to live in an apartment, all of a sudden is doubled, but what we can pay the staff is not, and we get the same amount year, after year, after year.

And how do we do more when we are essentially, when you take into account inflation, we're doing more with less.

And so at some point we can't do more anymore, but the need is still there and the need is still increasing, but we can't do more because we're essentially, you get the same amount every year, for years.

We have one grant that's been the same since 1994 and has never increased.

So that really hurts our ability across the board for any of the providers who are reliant upon this kind of funding to do more because the need is more.

- I also wanna contribute that there used to be a lot more residential setting housing within our community and across the state actually, that, you, know, was legislated out years ago for like group homes and such.

And I think, that that model would be a quicker solution through legislation, locally or such to really, you know, get directly to some quick answer cause, you know, it's faster then building.

- So the Continuum of Care is tasked with this five-year, coming up with a five-year plan.

Talk about how those discussions are going?

- You know, well, we just got the NOFO out the door.

So that was, that's been our renewal for our next year's grant, just out the door.

And the, now we're getting back into the discussions about where are we at with the, you know, the rental rates to the barriers for the, you know, the projects themselves from the master leasing for rental units out there to support services for the acuity of the individuals that we're serving within the COC, and because the substance use and the mental health issues are really creating havoc.

And it's something that the, you know, social work profession is really struggling with because it's more of a security issue than a social work issue.

And so, but we're addressing that and, you know, I'm really looking forward to that discussion and how actually the community leaders can wrap around that 'cause Major's seeing that also.

And how can we, I think incentivize, that was one thing that has been mentioned, incentivizing the homeless to be a part of the match to our security and our cleanup and, you know, that's something that has been, you know, that has worked actually within some projects.

And I really, you know, as somebody that has been in the situation of homeless years ago is like, you know, taking pride in my community around me and matching the efforts of the administrators and that put all the time and effort into the numbers and such, it's like, "What can I do?"

And I think, you know, that has a lot that we could discover that could really build self esteem and really project people through the system.

Even though if it's limited, it still could really help manage some of the crisis that we're seeing.

- [Teresa] You think Dale most would be willing to be a part of that process?

- You know, years ago HUD actually had us have the tenants bring forms into us to show that they can match the dollar amount that they receive from HUD.

And I was pleasantly surprised, I would say like 60% of the tenants followed through with saying, "You want my effort?"

And it was like, "Yeah, I want your effort."

And, you know, I mean, as an administrator at that era, it's like, you know, like I just shared, you know, here's my effort, yours.

And they went out and volunteered and they went in community service, went to treatment, and it was, it really meant something to them to be asked to do something for our work body.

And the new NOFO that was just put out, actually, has a community engagement and volunteer placement in it.

And so I look forward to having that conversation with the homeless and asking our local representatives to actually move that forward.

- We have a notion, a stereotype, if you will, of what homelessness means.

But, you know, in hearing what Dale has to say, it may be a lot different and we need to change our way of thinking.

- I think, yeah, we definitely have a way of thinking and communicating about homelessness.

And I was on a call yesterday, discussing families in crisis in our community.

And two people told stories of families that are newly homeless in the last month in Spokane with babies less than six months old living in cars.

And I lost it in the meeting, and I was completely unprofessional.

Later today in a meeting because I been reflecting on that and I can't get over it.

I, like, can't get over the fact that we're in a community that has a three-month-old baby that's living in a car, and we need to wrap our arms around them.

And it's just gonna, it takes a lot of coordination between like government agencies and nonprofits, and everybody's got struggles right now.

Like we hear about restaurants having employee retention problems or rehiring problems.

Well, there's not a nonprofit in town right now that can afford to retain all of the employees that they need, the city, you know, there's no homeless employee.

Right now in the homeless department at the city there's no employees.

In the housing department at the city there's no employees.

And so the city's having the same problem after COVID.

But what that means is there's not enough coordination going on.

There's not enough to move the big things forward that need to.

There isn't a stereotypical homeless person.

Everybody's got their own story, and that's, I guess, some of the success stories, and I don't know if you want me to wait to talk about that, but in the youth system, we've got a grant and I'll let Bridget talk about this, but we're seeing sustained reductions in youth homelessness.

And it's because we're putting in the effort, but we're treating them as individuals.

We have by-name list and then they get case management.

So it's, you know, it's the old story of Time Square.

I was listening to NPR, I don't know, six years ago, and I was driving down the road with my dad, and he's like, "You've gotta listen to this story."

And my dad had a 38 year career working at Snap.

And he said, "You're gonna listen to this."

And we stopped the car, and they were like, "We finally got the last person, homeless person "on Time Square out and it took six years."

And then they told the story of homelessness in Time Square.

And they hired case managers, social workers that would go down to Times Square every day for six years and get to know the people, get to know what their barriers were, they built low-income housing right on Time Square, so they could be where they had been used to living, but live in a home there.

And eventually six years later, all of the homeless people in Times Square, which was known for that, were gone.

But it's because of that treating them as individuals and finding out what resources they need, and are they ready to get off.

And sometimes it takes longer than for others, but you provide a home and work with them on what their needs are and you can solve the problem.

It's resource heavy, but it's so much more inexpensive as a community than them visiting the police officers, the fire department, and the emergency rooms, and cleaning up the streets all the time because of garbage left or whatnot.

And I would just have to-- - [Teresa] It's getting to the core.

- It's getting to the core when you treat people as individuals, I guess, is my circle back to your question is, it's not a stereotype, we can't stereotype people., they're all individuals, and if we give them the wraparound services they need, we can make a difference in their lives.

- [Teresa] Dale.

- The critical first question that I just learned is in a training, the Intentional Peer Support training was changing the, like, "What's wrong?"

To "What happened?"

And asking that.

And because that introduces co-reflection- - That flips it.

- It flips.

- [Teresa] That completely flips it.

- And so what happened, you know, and it's just, it's a game changer in my setting and for myself.

And it's like it, you know, and, you know, moving to the by-name list, at the COC level, the providers is that we were gonna go to a singles by-name list here soon.

And so that we hope will help initiate this in a more one-on-one way, just that, 'cause the coordinated assessment is actually pretty intrusive.

And I think, you know, if we initiate, and everybody does it so wonderfully and the providers out there, you know, I mean are really frontline and doing outreach for our community to help everybody in many different ways.

And yet, you know, I mean, we have to, we've got to try something different to, you know, in our approaches and maybe coordinate that a little bit healthier.

- Bridget, talk about that program, right.

- Well, I was about to say with the by-name list, because we keep throwing out by-name list, and people might be going?

- [Dale] Yeah, right.

- "What is that?"

And it literally is, it's people that are experiencing homelessness that in one way or another have touched a service.

It might not be a housing service, it might not be a shelter, it could be, and when I'm thinking of it with the young people it might be a mental health provider that knows that they are unstably housed and they can help that young person.

And so getting on the by-name list and then bringing it once a week, a large group of different providers that have cross-sectors, so it's education, it's mental health, it's justice, it's homeless providers, but it's across all the sectors that impact people's lives that can be a part of the solution, sitting down together with this list and going, "Okay."

And then, "What do we have as a resource?"

And literally taking each name, so you are working with the individual and going, "What do we, what can we wrap around this individual, "so that way they can be successful and move out "of their current predicament."

And we tend to not describe our young people as being homeless 'cause that's more of a label, it's an experience they're going through.

And that also kind of sets a different framework for them that "This is just a temporary situation.

"This is just an experience."

- Well, in fact, what do you hear from teenagers about, you know, if they've been labeled homeless?

What do they say?

- Well, and they don't like, there is a stigma.

There is a huge stigma around it.

I had a young man years ago who spent the first night in our under 18 shelter and Crosswalk, woke up the next morning, and I explained to him, I said, "So where are you going to school?"

And he told me where he was going to school.

I said, "Okay, so this is gonna be your HUD liaison, "she's going to help you with transportation "and making sure that you can still keep going to school "if you end up staying here in the shelter."

And I explained, this was for young people experiencing homelessness, this is a staff person, he goes, "Oh, I'm not homeless."

And I said, "Well, you kind of are, "you woke up in a shelter.

"So you, you now qualify for help with transportation "and other things."

"No, I'm not homeless."

And young people will tell us when they come into our shelter, they ended up dropping out of school, a lot of times because of that stigma.

I had another young person, this might be going on forever- - No that's great.

- But I had another young person who wanted to use me as a reference for a job.

And she had applied for a job as a housekeeper in one of the local motels.

And so this man called me up for the reference and he said, "I wasn't even going to call you," after we spoke about this young person, and then he goes, "I just wanna let you know, "I wasn't even going to call for a reference "because I noticed she was from Crosswalk, "because she had put the address down."

And then one of the other housekeepers said, "No, give her a chance, give her a chance."

And he said, "So can I make a suggestion?

"If you help them with like getting jobs and teaching them "how to get jobs."

I said, "Yeah, we do."

He goes, "Tell them not to say they're living in a shelter."

And I said, "Well, we tell them to be honest, "because what's worse that they tell you "they're living in a shelter "and they're experiencing homelessness right now, "or that they're evading and they're hiding "some piece of information "while they're interviewing with you and you're gonna go, "'What are they, why are they being so invasive?'"

So we just tell them to be honest.

And if somebody isn't going to hire them because they happen to be homeless, well, maybe that's not the place for you to be working anyhow.

- Well, and that brings us to, we wanna introduce you to someone that works with Bridget.

And in fact, to help you understand better what we're talking about tonight.

In fact, VOA Crosswalk helps about 1,000 kids every year with a staff that has the necessary training and experience.

But there's nobody better equipped than Rose Stark, and that's because she's one of them.

[Rose Stark] We're on the street.

You can say what you want.

You can have any opinion you want, and we can talk about anything, and we're in your space ROSE STARK SPENDS HER DAY ON THE STREETS OF SPOKANE, REACHING OUT TO HOMELESS KIDS.

So, I feel like my job is amazing because I get to have those really realistic conversations.

MORE REALISTIC THAN MANY OF THEM REALIZE... BECAUSE SHE WAS ONE OF THEM.

And I ended up literally on the streets at 13 years old.

WHAT SHE CALLS A TYPICAL CHILDHOOD, ENDED FOR ROSE WHEN HER PARENTS SPLIT My father spiraled into depression, lost his job, lost our house.

And, my mom ended up in a relationship with an extremely abusive man, who was also a drug dealer.

WITH NO SAFE PLACE TO CALL HOME, ROSE FOUND SHELTER WHEN SHE COULD, AND FOUND FOOD WHERE SHE COULD.

I would jump in the Domino's trash and take out the pizza.

They'd throw a whole pizzas away, and I would eat that.

Mostly, I would stand on a corner with a sign asking for change.

SHE BECAME IMMERSED IN STREET LIFE, SURROUNDED BY WHAT SHE CALLS A FAMILY OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN HER SAME SITUATION.

It's the culture.

It's all you really know.

And, it's all you really have to escape the reality of, "This is my life BUT IT WAS ONE OF THOSE YOUNG PEOPLE WHO POINTED HER DOWN A PATH THAT WOULD CHANGE HER LIFE I was sleeping under the Post Street Bridge, when I got very, very sick.

And one of my friends was like, "Well, why don't you just go to Crosswalk?"

And I was like, "Well, what's a crosswalk?"

CROSSWALK GOT HER THE MEDICAL ATTENTION SHE NEEDED.

AND AFTER THREE DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL, ROSE GRUDGINGLY LET THEM HELP SOME MORE.

I was terrified.

I didn't trust adults.

I slept with my shoes on for months, because you never know when you're going to have to get up and leave.

You never know when you're going to have to run.

So, that's what we say here, "The day a kid takes their shoes off is a day you know that we've done our job right.

And that they feel safe and comfortable."

THE DIFFERENCE-MAKER FOR ROSE WAS AN OVERNIGHT STAFF WORKER WHO SHE JUST CONNECTED WITH She was young.

And, I felt she understood where I was coming from.

That she had some rough stuff happened in her past.

And, when she looked at me, I could feel like, "Okay, you actually understand.

You're not just another social worker NOW ROSE IS TRYING TO BE THAT PERSON TO OTHER YOUNG PEOPLE IN CRISIS.

I have walked in similar shoes.

I've taken the similar path.

I have literally laid in the same bed that you are sleeping in tonight, AFTER CROSSWALK HELPED HER GET HER FIRST JOB, HER FIRST APARTMENT, AND HER HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA...

THERE WAS LITTLE DOUBT THAT ROSE WOULD END UP BACK ON THE STREETS...

HELPING OTHERS.

It's time for me to come back and give back to the place that gave so much to me.

They gave me my life And we haven't talked about it yet, but Rose believes that moving the new Crosswalk Shelter out of downtown Spokane will make a big difference in helping young people be successful, and we're gonna be talking about that new shelter coming up.

Still talking about that stigma of homelessness, Major Perine you had some thoughts on that?

- I'm just thinking, you know, the audience is gonna be watching this when you hear the word homeless, they're thinking of the guy or lady standing outside, they're thinking of the person talking to themselves, that they see walking down the street, or the person doing things they shouldn't be doing, they're thinking of that person.

But the person that's actually in the shelter is still a person that's transitioning out of, hopefully, out of homelessness, and I think sometimes as a community we need a better job of telling the story of all the people that are actually having success exiting the program, exiting homelessness.

Every June there's graduate from high school, and every June we have a new crop of people coming in to be homeless.

And that's just life.

And so we do need to do a better job of telling the story of those exiting and at the same time telling the story of what the good things that are happening in the community to help people exit homelessness.

You know, our shelters, we've had people come through that have lost their children, and their children have been down at our foster care program and then gone through a visitation program and then emergency shelter and transitional housing, get the kids back.

It's like the country music song played backwards, right?

But it's, you wish that was the same story for everyone, but not everybody that goes through the process is an immediate (clicks fingers) Cinderella story.

Some people bounce in and out of the whole system, they have a hiccup, they wind up back on the street, they come back through.

So as a society we need to make sure we have a tiered approach to helping people exit, and give a lots of opportunity for people to exit, and a little bit more grace in how we look at people that are on the street.

They're still members of our great community and that we need to still love them and meet their, meet them where they are and try to help them, again, rise above their situation.

- So we need more of the bridge programs, which you have just opened a new bridge shelter for the Salvation Army.

- Right, so actually this, I was thinking about that, I was talking to somebody else.

This program is really what we had operating until about, I wanna say in 1960s, in the old Luigi building (chuckles), it's just sadly closed, but really it's the whole idea that when a person wants to exit homelessness, they can, this is for single men and women, they can come in, that's the only requirement they wanna change.

And then we'll work with them to figure out what their needs are 'cause we believe everybody has the ability to thrive in their, what means thriving for them.

If we have a person who has a severe mental, I don't wanna say handicap, but a severe mental issue that precludes them from having, become a realtor or something like that.

But maybe they can push the cart, say, at the Fred Meyer, that's what I'm talking about.

Just find that place where they can thrive and help them get back on their feet and to find employment if that's their path, or permanent supportive housing if that's their path, senior housing if that's their path, but to meet them where they are, meet the needs where they are wrap around the services, make sure that we're tracking through the system so if they do fall out we're still watching them to try to bring them back in.

But provide lots of opportunities for our folks, our community members to really exit homelessness.

- And then, you know, once they go through those types of programs, we're back full circle to needing someplace for them to go.

It's not just as easy Ben as just building more housing, you need infrastructure, you need schools nearby, you need a bus line nearby.

So we need to, where do we begin?

Is it the chicken, the egg?

I mean, how do you even start that process?

- You know, we have a dozen projects in Spokane County right now that the federal dollars I talked about got cut.

The state dollars are not enough to make up that difference since the 1980s.

And so now we're talking about, you know, last year we passed the local housing levy, but due to staffing concerns that money hasn't been released yet.

Then we have money at the city and the county from the ARP funds and there's they have between them, they have 181 million.

So we could provide gap funding and get hundreds of units built in the next 12 months.

And so we all need to be pressing on the importance of that because that's part of the solution to homelessness is having that housing at the end.

But we need to be thinking long-term about things like zoning, and, you know, the city has always said, we have a centers and corridor strategy, but we don't have housing near those centers in corridors.

And one of the things Major Perine was talking about earlier that I think was really important is that missing middle of housing, that can be something like town homes that aren't really allowed right now in Spokane setting.

And so those are ownership opportunities that are less than a single family home, but they can also be rentals so they can, condos are the same way.

Condos are another avenue into ownership.

And ownership is, so we can say we need apartments, we can say we need low-income housing, but we also need opportunities for ownership because that's how generational wealth is created through owning a home.

And that's where we've really missed the boat is opportunities for young people in our community in order to buy into that ownership.

And a lot of it's long-term though, there is no click a button that any of us can say here and solve it, but if we build more low-income housing, then there's an opportunity for everybody that goes through Ken's programs and Crosswalk to get out of those, a Way out of which is it's called a Way Out- - Yes, it is.

- But those programs offer a way out of the situation, but you have to have the end point, which is the housing solutions at the end so that then more people can go through their great programs.

Like their programs are amazing and the work they do is amazing in our community, but we've got to help the Salvation Army and VOA as a community by providing more market rate ownership opportunities, market rate apartments, and low-income subsidized housing.

And we all got to pull it in that direction because then more people can go through their programs.

But if 100 people are allowed in a way out shelter, and there's only maybe 20 of them are ready to graduate every month, but they can only find housing for 10, then people that are ready to graduate and go get a job and live on their own aren't allowed to do that because the housing isn't there.

And so I just, all levels of housing are important.

Housing, housing, housing is all I preach all the time, but it's because I think we all kind of agree it's the way out of the situation.

And we have these arguments as a community where, "Well, how many shelter beds do we have, "and how are we gonna build more shelters?"

And we get lost in that every single year.

It seems every winter we're having an argument about- - And here we go, yeah.

- Here we go, we're gonna argue about shelter beds, we have people chaining themselves to city hall a couple of years ago.

Like we should be arguing about how are we gonna build more housing and having fights about how to build more housing, because at least then we're all getting the same goal and not argue about like we, UGM is a really important aspect of the homeless system, they provide an excellent service.

The way out shelter and all of Salvation Armies, everything they do is so important.

Everything VOA does is important, everything Catholic Charities does is important.

There probably aren't enough shelter beds, but if we spend enough, as much energy talking about shelter beds, which are temporary, and instead talked about the end point, which is how to provide them a way out of those shelters, we would be in so much of a stronger position as a community.

- Dale.

- You know, and we can't forget that we are in a county that has, that I believe the second and fourth largest cities in the state, and city of Spokane Valley still does not have a shelter.

- They're in discussion right now, I think.

- They're in discussion, but yet, you know- - [Ben] It's a big change.

- It's a big change and, you know, pushing that, you know, for continuation of that city government to make decisions to help out also, to take some of the pressure off of the city of Spokane.

- Well, because this is a regional issue.

- Yes, yeah.

- I mean, we can try to concentrate this for, you know, city of Spokane, but it's a regional problem.

- And realize it's geographically, Spokane is the largest city between Seattle, Minneapolis, Salt Lake and Calgary.

So we get outlying areas, individuals that are struggling, we get them into our community.

And so that is a large geographic area to cover.

- And not to push back on you any, Ben, but yes (laughs).

- You like doing that.

- I know I do.

- Do I need to separate you two?

- But my pushback is this, I think it was about 10 or 15 years ago on the west side of the state Seattle area, they did a survey and surveying the homeless population, the adult homeless population, close to 50% of them identified the first time they were homeless was when they were an adolescent.

And so my argument and I will back you up, we need more housing, but a big part of my argument is, a lot of the largest homeless funders and that being HUD really in my mind, they are buying mops and buckets and they're not fixing the roof.

We finally, as a community have now a youth homeless demonstration project through HUD that's going to infuse some money just focused on that youth population.

Because what we need to do is really focus on making sure these young people who, and I would argue, and I know a lot of other people might push back on me, have been victims for a large part of their first 15, 18 years have been victimized in their families, by their families.

If we can end that homelessness for them and get them going, we're not gonna need quite the amount of housing and shelters that we're screaming for now.

And it's a lot cheaper in the long run.

And I'm going back to, it is a lot more cost-effective to end that homelessness when they're 18 or 20 than it is to end it when they're 40 or 60.

- Well, that's why too the location for where your new shelter will be built is so important because it'll be right across the street from Spokane Community College.

- Yes, yes.

- So we're talking about, you know, looking out the front window and seeing college students and what an incentive.

- [Bridget] Yup, yup.

- And that's why Rose is so excited about that project.

- And it was a young people, you know, when we started first talking about building Crosswalk 2.0, and I, you know, our admin offices are right above the Crosswalk Shelter, and I just went downstairs and had a cup of coffee with the young people that were waking up there, and I just said, "So we're thinking about building "a new Crosswalk," and unanimously, first thing out of their mouth was "Not downtown."

- [Teresa] Really?

- And I said, I said, I think I had the same face.

- Yeah, because you know an access issue, too, as well.

- I was like, "Why not downtown?"

And they said, "If you don't want us doing drugs, "don't put us next to the drug dealers.

"We wanna be in a more residential area.

"We wanna be, "we wanna see green spaces.

"We want," you know, they just didn't wanna be downtown.

And that location right by Spokane Community College is absolutely perfect.

Spokane Community College has unbelievable different sorts of education and training opportunities there.

We've already started talking with them about how we're going to partner together.

And then after we obtain that land for Crosstalk 2.0, the young adult shelter also was able to obtain land, a building a block away.

And we'd been welcomed by the neighborhood.

We have participated in the neighborhood council meetings.

We invited a panel of young adults who had experienced homelessness to speak at their council.

It was like a little town hall to speak at the neighborhood council meeting.

And at the end, they were like, "We're writing a letter, we're supporting it.

"We love this idea."

So gladly, not every neighborhood necessarily has a NIMBY.

They were a little, they were a little suspicious at first, but I think listening to these young people and the importance of that area and that space being so close to the Spokane Community College and the burgeoning partnership that we have with Spokane Community College.

The young people are excited about it.

- Major Perine, Salvation Army building isn't directly downtown, fairly close, but it does it make a difference just to be away from the core?

- We also did not wanna be downtown, and the reason our program is a little bit different, too, we actually, as they work their program, we're actually not allowing them to ride the bus.

And I just tell people, 'cause I might as well hand them the drugs myself.

So we were actually gonna be driving them to their doctor's appointment, to their work when they start work or whatever, their mental health appointment and picking them up because we just wanna keep them as safe as possible as they work through their addiction stuff and start to get stabilized.

I just wanna go back to something that Ben had said about the housing and again, for our population, which is not the youth population as much, but we really need to be a townhouse, multiple exits to become home owners is better for us, I think, as a community.

Again, townhouses, condos, but even in apartments to utilize, and I know there's programs, I think there's a federal government program for this, but where they can rent their HUD housing or whatever, but then they actually get part of that rent back that they can use as a down payment on a house.

That's the kind of stuff that provides that forward momentum for them to actually exit, not just homelessness, but to exit the apartment scene, and they can actually become a home owner, and just a greater connection to our communities.

So I would love to see more programs like that and, again, rather than, I'm not a big fan of having a, you know, 60-unit low-income housing, I'd rather it be split up and so I have six 60 units and each one has 10 low-income in it.

'Cause that's a lot easier for a community to grasp on to them to say, "Oh, you're putting low income housing "right next to my house."

But if you said only 10 of the units are, and even give it to another nonprofit to manage.

So then the, and give the tax, all six units as tax break to the, or 10 years to the owner.

There's tons of ways we can work this through to provide more opportunities to exit the homelessness, but also be productive members of our great community.

- Dale you were nodding.

- Well, you know what I mean, just there's the move on strategy for the COC, which, you know, is in stagnant just because of the inventory of it, you know, yet, you know, there is apartment buildings within our community that are being bought and sold right now, that are going to new long-term kind of, you know, investors.

And if we can get some kind of incentive out the door to have them set aside 10, you know, out of the free market for the population to move out of even through the COC units, or out of the Salvation Army units or, you know, throughout the community, that would be that big, big, you know, adjustment, I think, right away, another one, so.

- What can those of us that don't work within the COC or the great organizations, the non-profits in Spokane, what can we do?

I'm sitting here thinking I'd like to contribute.

The audience is thinking, "How can I help?"

- I think there are a lot of great agencies.

We have two of them sitting right here that could use volunteers.

I don't think they disagree.

I think volunteering is good because I think it puts you in contact with people in need and so.

Actually face-to-face, you don't otherize somebody when you meet them individually, you treat them as an individual.

I think we all need to be participating in our neighborhood councils, so that if our neighborhood councils are getting involved if you have time in those types of decisions, because they talk about housing in their neighborhood.

And a lot of times those are dominated by not in my backyard folks that don't want any change.

But we're gonna have to change if we want housing variety, if we want apartments.

We want, like HUD says their greatest goal is mixed income neighborhoods.

Yet treasury rules say that low-income housing in order to get the tax credits can only be in poor census areas.

So we need to be lobbying our federal senators to have housing policy that's consistent with mixed income neighborhoods.

We need to be advocating with our city government and county government to be like, if there's $180 million sitting in the bank, and there is an emergency on the street, you put money into the services that are serving the people on the streets, and then you put money into prevention down the road, the long-term solution, and you put the money into it.

And you say, we as a community, our elected leaders should all be around the table, like right there, so all the county commissioners and the city council members, and they should be saying, "We've got $180 million," and maybe they want to solve, those are maybe one of five problems, right, we wanna solve affordable housing and homelessness.

And maybe they wanna invest in our kids when they're young and give them early childhood education because we know that if you invest in early quality early childhood education, none of these problems would exist.

And so maybe they need to spend 40 million on early childhood education and guarantee everybody in Spokane County a quality before they come to school.

Like every child is gonna show up in kindergarten, ready to learn.

Press your elected leaders to solve these big issues, because we have a chunk of money that we're never gonna have again in our lifetime and why we need to use it wisely right now.

If there's a big problem, we should be solving it.

- And also know we have a wonderful Spokane Homeless Coalition, and 1,200 people are on that listserve.

The community is, you know, really, real-time asking for things, the service providers for refrigerators, to stoves, to backpacks, so that would be one thing.

We also have a one-day count coming up in January that we'll need volunteers to go out, you know- - What we essentially missed last January.

- We didn't miss it, it was altered because of COVID so we just did the sheltered count.

And so, but though, you know, I'm with Ben, I mean, involvement, you know, so volunteering.

- I would just say, you know, for us, I'm always looking for some quality adults that have already, maybe their kid's already moved out of the house to mentor the people in our transitional housing, just to come alongside and we do training with them ahead of time, but we're always looking for people that do that.

And what a great opportunity for you to actually make an impact in somebody's life, to help them navigate just regular life.

And, you know, our last, you know, we have three Rs, rescue the parish and renew the ability to thrive and restore healthy in community.

But that third R is the fact that we want people to realize they're part of our great community.

And so by somebody coming in and mentoring that person, or family is, those families never had that, most of the times, they never had somebody mentoring them on how to deal with life and kids and husbands and wives and relationships.

To come alongside just to say, "Hey, I'm gonna walk this path with you."

And those folks that get that great success.

And I feel like sometimes, and I know people are watching this on TV, but I think we watched too much TV, and we should be out in the community doing something, make stuff happen.

Showing up to the council meetings and find out what's going on, talking to your neighbor and mowing your senior neighbor's lawn and doing his snow or her snow.

That's the kind of stuff that we really need as a community to do.

And the last one I would say is, and as much as people's hearts want to help people, and I think by giving that person on the street corner a $5 or $20, you're really better off giving that to a good nonprofit and giving that person a card and saying, "Hey, there's a whole coalition of people out there "that wanna help you and wanna see you succeed, "and see you thrive and give that kind of advice."

And encourage that person to go that direction rather than handing out money that's gonna be used in a way that's not gonna help them.

- And Bridget, what would be your hope?

- Well, I started as volunteer in Crosswalk.

That's how I got hooked up with Volunteers of America was, I was volunteering in Crosswalk.

- And why did you decide to do that initially?

What called you?

- I was.

Right, I was new.

I don't know if you can tell I'm not from around these parts, I'm from Jersey, and I just moved out here, and I just wanted to be a part of the community.

And I used to work a job that was a lot of hours and therefore a lot more money, and I used to donate, but when I moved out here, I cut back my hours and hence my money, and I said, "All right, well, I don't have the money "to donate so I'm gonna donate my time."

And I always said that's the best job that we have at Volunteers of America because the job description is essentially, must play with kids.

What better?

But on the other side of that, I would love to encourage businesses, take a chance, hire a young person, even if they've experienced homelessness, hire anybody, even if they've experienced homelessness, take a chance because that's how they get out.

You know, if you're trying to find a job and you can't put down an address on an application, it's hard to get hired.

So businesses take a chance.

Take a chance, hire somebody hire two, hire five.

- Is it also going to take more money?

And we needed allocated properly is what I'm hearing sitting at this table.

I think Ben was loud and clear on that (laughs).

- I think the Houston in 2011, Houston, Texas HUD came in to them and said, "Your homeless population has doubled "over the last couple of years."

And they had 9,000, their pit count, that point in time count was like up to 9,000.

From 2011 to 2019, they cut it by 54% and they did two real things, they said our homeless response, so what the Continuum of Care is in charge of this five-year plan to end homelessness, the business community, along with the philanthropic community, along with the elected officials, and along with the Continuum of Care and the other community boards all got in a room and said, "In 10 years we're gonna cut this problem in half, "but we're all gonna operate from the same sheet of music."

And then their first step, what they did was they built, I think, 15,000 apartments for low-income people.

So they've housed all these people with that low-income housing, but they also only were able to build all the low-income housing and coordinate the services to get them into that low-income housing by everybody playing on the same sheet of music.

And if you see, like in Spokane, there's elected officials over here doing stuff.

There's elected officials here doing stuff.

There's the Continuum of Care.

There's a commercial real estate group.

Washington Trust now wants to make a difference, and they're over here.

The city has a CHHS board.

And all those people need to get in a room- - And that doesn't happen.

- No, there's not a community plan.

- [Dale] We're hoping to make that happen.

- We, I think the city agrees right now there needs to be a big, but we all need to be.

And, you know, when, when people get along, when people come around a table and say, "We're gonna get to this goal, "everybody has to give a little, right?"

Not everybody's right all the time, but I really feel like I've only been the chair of the Continuum of Care for a year, and I didn't really, I wasn't in the weeds as much as I am now, but I really, really see the need for one, everybody in the same boat and pulling in the same direction.

We don't need to argue as as groups about what the best way to do it is?

We all need to get in a room, decide what that best way is, so we can all coordinate our resource delivery correctly, I think.

I think that'll go a long way if there's, if everybody speaks from the same sheet of music, it's like an orchestra, right.

But if everybody's playing off a different song, it sounds like crud.

And I think that's part of the frustration in the community right now is, "The problems getting worse "and nobody hears one real solution.

- Well, and you know what I mean, the stigma homelessness, it really hits each one of us potentially.

We just, you know, because we just all, general society has been, just exposed to a vulnerability, COVID okay.

I respectfully have known vulnerability for a long time, and it is something that is, we can foster to be stronger from.

And that's my hope for the community is, right now coming out of the pandemic, as long as we can come out of it, because we there's still unknowns, but yet it's like, let's use those vulnerabilities that we just felt to be more compassionate to how we plan and how we gather.

Through the HIV epidemic, you know, early on, there was something that we gathered from, okay.

And we gathered together, we were all afraid in that era.

And it's like, but we gathered, we felt supported, some of us are graced with living longer than others.

And, and it's like, and that's something that I want to really hopefully help the community see is that, you know, through, because disabling conditions can go on, pandemics can, and it's like, we got to stay resilient, but use the vulnerability at the time, right now to make some action and go deep and commit to, you know, working together.

- Well, historically Spokane does want to do better, does wanna help, but with so many entities, and I had no idea that there were so many players that hadn't sat down together.

So that's a real eye-opener for me and learning that there's a lot of people that want to help solve this problem, but it needs to be in unison.

- [Dale] Yes.

- Something needs to happen.

- We need leadership that promotes social healing.

- All right.

Well said, I think we might just leave it there.

It has been a pleasure talking to all of you.

I appreciate the work that you do in the community, and thank you for taking the time to be with us here tonight for "Health Matters", and that will do it for this edition of "Health Matters".

And in fact, you'll find some helpful links on tonight's topic on the "Health Matters" page at ksps.org.

Be sure to join us December 16th when we talk about mental health in the community.

Until next time I'm Teresa Lukens.

Stay safe and good night.

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