SPOKANE, Wash. – Spokane’s Cannon Street Shelter will reopen with a new focus on transitioning homeless people into housing on Wednesday.
With funding from the Washington Department of Commerce, the shelter is relaunching as a pilot housing navigation center.
Revive Spokane, a mental health counseling and social services organization, will operate the shelter.
The interior is noticeably refurbished, as new sleeping facilities and common areas have been prepared by staff over the past several months. Unlike charities that focus purely on providing beds to houseless people, Revive Spokane will also make mental health a main focus when the Cannon Street building reopens.
“We’re looking at this through the lens of the opioid crisis and also the housing shortage,” clinical social worker and therapist Layne Pavey said. “We focus on people’s needs that have to do with their behavioral health.”
The shelter in Browne’s Addition served as a crucial part of the city’s homeless shelter system for many years, and has since been closed and reopened several different times under emergency circumstances–most recently by Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration as a warming center during last winter’s cold snap.
Starting Wednesday, though, it will be operated by Revive Spokane, a non-profit homeless outreach organization specializing in behavioral health and housing navigation, as a pilot navigation center.
The project is fully funded by Washington State’s “Right of Way Encampment Resolution Program” through a city agreement with the departments of transportation and commerce announced by the Brown administration in March.
It designated areas around 2nd Ave. and Division St. in Downtown Spokane as a “priority encampment zone,” and made state funding more easily accessible to the city to help clean up existing encampments, and to try and connect homeless people to resources.
The team at Revive has put in countless hours since work began last Thursday, repainting and repairing walls, floors and bathrooms in order to make space for 30 to 40 people to sleep and store their belongings, and have a common area for meals and hanging out.
Revive Executive Director Layne Pavey says teams have been working with people in the 2nd and Division corridor to find folks who are ready to take the next step in their journey.
“We’re really just here to be part of the solution, and help people feel like they can transfer into a place where people care about them, and they can help them transfer onto more stable housing opportunities,” Pavey said.
Pavey said the new facility will have addiction treatment services, behavioral and physical health and housing resources available to people staying there.
“We’re looking at this through the lens of the opioid crisis as well as the housing shortage,” Pavey said. “Because we’re a licensed behavioral health agency as well as a housing agency, we come in and we focus on people’s needs that have to do with their behavioral health.”
Perhaps most importantly to Pavey, though, everyone on her staff has lived experience with homelessness, addiction or incarceration.
“To be able to have somebody be able to come and sit next to you and say, ‘hey I’ve been the same places you have,'” said staff member Richard Hoffman. “‘I may not have had as bad a struggle or as many problems, but I’ve been there, and I’m here to help you and I can walk you through.'”
Revive staff member Danielle Fegan agreed.
“It shows that someone actually cares. That helped me, having somebody that believed in me and wanted to help me along my journey,” Fegan said.
Revive says they’ve been planning for security and safety concerns for the neighborhood and the people who’ll be staying at the renovated Cannon St. facility.
“When you have the community working together with the impacted people and they come together, it makes them feel like they’re human again,” Pavey said. “It actually helps them become more accountable, and wanting to make the neighborhood a decent, safe place. IIt builds in accountability when the neighborhood says ‘you’re a part of us too, how can be work together and support each other?'”
The city and Revive said people identified to take part in the new program will start walking through the doors on Wednesday.
