Shelter-bed increase came with conditions

When a city hearing examiner last week gave Community Lifeline permission to increase the number of beds from 35 to 54 at its downtown Shelton shelter, the approval came with a slew of conditions.

No one has filed an appeal of the hearing examiner's decision. Friday is the deadline.

Community Lifeline is required to comply with city ordinances and codes, including building, plumbing and fire codes. Before receiving the certificate of occupancy for a 54-bed capacity, Community Lifeline must secure permitting from the city's building official and fire marshal for required changes to the facility's layout. All lighted exit signs, emergency lights and portable fire extinguishers must be maintained and serviceable at all times. Levels of inside and outside noise can't exceed city code.

Community Lifeline is also required to give the city a written set of operating rules and procedures at the overnight shelter, which requires that an on-site member/volunteer always be on-site when the shelter is in operation.

The outdoor smoking area must be monitered, a daily logbook of incidents and activities must be maintained, and staff members and volunteers are required to regularly patrol the area to pick up trash and any "stashed items around the property."

The nonprofit must have at least one trained staff member on site for every 15 people staying at the shelter. That means four staff members will be required when all 54 beds are filled.

Community Lifeline must coordinate with the city to maintain an ongoing count of available beds for use by homeless people.

Volunteers and staff members are also required "to be as proactive as possible in reminding patrons of their facility of their responsibilities in being 'good neighbors'" in the neighborhood and in Brewer Park.

Colleen Carmichael is the executive director of Quixote Communities, which operates the Shelton Veterans Village for homeless veterans. She regularly speaks about the challenges faced by local homeless people and resources that are available during public comment at meetings of the Shelton City Council.

In an email to the Journal, she wrote "The National Alliance to End Homelessness states that emergency shelter is part of an effective crisis response system to identify those experiencing homelessness, to prevent homelessness, and when possible, to connect people with housing quickly and provide services when needed. Community Lifeline is one of the few providers of emergency shelter beds for single adults in Mason

County. These additional beds are critical to helping get more individuals off the streets and into housing/services."

Judith Whitaker, who lives next door to the shelter, said she is "disappointed" in the hearing examiner's decision.

"The Community Lifeline shelter needs to move from its current location away from this or any residential neighborhood, not increase capacity," she wrote to the Journal. "The shelter is located in the historical district of Shelton, which used to be one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city. It is now the worst, an embarrassment to the entire city. This is one the areas that visitors come for walking tours. They used to see clean streets, two nice parks, both of which are now used only by the homeless, a destroyed gazebo in the Post Office Park, open drug use on the streets and in the alley behind the shelter, constant litter and garbage, and intoxicated and erratic people wandering the streets at all hours of the day and night - often carrying weapons, including large branches that they sharpen into spears. Visitors are also likely to see people passed out or openly camping on the sidewalks. On a daily basis, there will be outbursts of sudden screaming and yelling coming from the shelter or park next door." A mobile methadone truck parked outside the shelter creates more noise with its engine, she wrote.

Whitaker said people continue to sleep on the streets no matter how cold it gets.

"The fact is that many people do not want the constraints of sleeping at the shelter but stay close to the shelter for the free food, maybe a shower, and now for the free drugs that are supplied by the methadone clinic," she wrote.

She added, "City and county management needs to make it a priority to help find or build a new shelter, large enough to meet the growing needs of the county in a suitable location away from residential neighborhoods. No other neighborhood should be destroyed, and its residents or visitors put in danger the way this one has from the shelter's presence."