SPOKANE, Wash. – Mayor Lisa Brown and her team have announced a concrete plan to close the controversial homeless shelter on Trent Avenue by the fall, with the goal of creating smaller “scatter site” shelters throughout the city.
“Closing TRAC is a big thing,” Dawn Kinder, the director of Spokane’s Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services division said.
It is going to be a busy summer for Spokane leadership as Mayor Brown hopes to fulfill one of her top campaign promises of closing the Trent Shelter.
“It’s going to be chaos, in a good way,” Kinder said. “There is a lot of work to accomplish to make this happen, and trying to be very mindful of winter coming, even though summer’s not here, timing things up so the folks we’re serving are not left without an option.”
Timing is everything with many factors coming into play when it comes to housing the homeless. But closing TRAC (Trent Resource and Assistance Center) is one of the first steps in creating a safer tomorrow for the homeless across Spokane, in the opinion of the Brown administration.
By October, Mayor Brown hopes to make good on her promise to do just that.
“Really focusing on creating smaller, scatter site shelter locations with adequate public facilities in them,” Kinder said.
The mayor was not available for comment on Tuesday, but Kinder, who heads the Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services division, said it’s all about relationships and safety.
At one time, TRAC was holding 400 people under Woodward’s administration. Now, Kinder said that capacity tops out at 250 each night.
“We believe that 250 plus, at times up to 400, is far too many individuals to serve safely in one location, both from a public health perspective but also from a health and human dignity perspective,” she said.
On top of that, the shelter doesn’t have any running water. Plus, at its peak, the city was paying $1,000,000 a month to keep the shelter open. However, in recent months that’s been chopped down by 40%, coming out to a total of around $620,000-640,000 per month. Kinder said this is because of a few reasons, but largely because the Salvation Army who runs the shelter has been a great partner in lowering the costs.
“We could do other things with those resources in a more intentional way, so we’re excited to be pivoting in that direction,” Kinder said.
The city has $4,000,000 made available by the state legislature to transition out of the Trent Shelter, and Mayor Brown’s plan is to open smaller shelters around the city, plus a navigation center where the homeless can be guided through the complicated process of finding housing.
“When you’ve got 300 or 400 people in a building, it’s really difficult to have meaningful relationships and dialogue with those clients, and so, creating spaces where we know service staff can create those meaningful relationships is part of it,” Kinder said.
A couple inside the Trent Shelter Tuesday said they hope the city opens more shelters throughout Spokane, adding they understand the city needs additional help, money, and resources to do that.
Kinder said the city may keep TRAC available as a backup next winter, in case of a weather emergency, but the goal is to close those doors and, in their opinion, open better ones.
“We’re headed in a really positive direction,” Kinder said. “I think Mayor Brown has given very clear leadership and direction on what she believes Spokane deserves, and that’s inclusive of all the residents so we’re just moving forward.”
Kinder added the city plans to head out and speak with community partners, like non-profits that could help with this effort, in the next couple of weeks.
