KENNEWCK, WA – Governor Jay Inslee joined community leaders on his visit to Tri-Cities Tuesday to discuss rectifying the homelessness issue. The panel informed him that there has been a 338% increase in homelessness in the Tri-Cities area over the past couple years.
Yessenia Chavez from Kennewick School District told Inslee they’re running out of funding for their low-income families. “It’s getting difficult to get families into a hotel for a night,” said Chavez. “We have asylum seekers that come here with a plan, and then it gets uprooted. A single mom had to stay at a bus station, and she had nowhere to go. And KPD housed her for two days. My job is to problem-solve with community resources and get them housed for the night.”
When the eviction moratorium ended and the subsequent uptick in rent prices, there became an increasing problem with housing.
Gloria Caldwell, a Special Programming Coordinator with Benton County, has actively helped the homeless for years. “We have a behavioral health and disabled housing program where we have over 100 people,” Caldwell told Inslee. “We subsidized the housing. We even look at senior citizens who are about to be homeless because of the increase in rent. Subsidized housing works.”
Caldwell encouraged Tri-Citians to remember that homelessness can happen easily to anyone. “Neighbors can become homeless. We can’t look at them like its someone else’s issue. We have lots of homeless people, but people don’t notice because we put them in hotels.”
Caldwell emphasized how subsidized housing is a key. She also told Inslee how, if the community and legislators helped invest in programs to keep people from becoming homeless, it will actually be cheaper than building more homeless shelters or other facilities.
“One client was always in the ER – always being arrested. That’s a lot of money. Once he was housed, and he was no longer homeless, there was only one hospitalization,” said Caldwell in one example.
Caldwell also added that building tiny houses is not going to help because, “they don’t make enough to pay rent.”
Caldwell’s programs received money through the treasury and federal money. ESG federal money helped them put homeless people in hotels. “But I need money for the mentally ill and disabled,” continued Caldwell who is working on a program for mental health and financial assistance.
“We just can’t stick the homeless into a place and expect them to be okay. We need to give them resources. The majority of people that we assist with mental health, we help them get into affordable housing,” said Caldwell.
Caldwell also established a partnership with Kennewick Police Department where they go out to help a homeless person. “We treat them with respect,” Caldwell added.
Kendra Palomarez, who represented Catholic Charities Tri-Cities says she’s seen a huge need for affordable housing for aged-out foster youth transitioning out of the system. “We have a program that provides a year of subsidy for them, but a year of subsidy does not erase a lifetime of trauma.”
Palomarez told Inslee that in her experience and research, landlords don’t want to rent to aged out foster youth. Many are members of LGBTQ community or suffer from mental health issues and substance abuse disorders. Because of the lack of affordable housing, this causes them to become homeless in addition to low-income families who do not garner enough money for rent.
Palomarez is advocating for HB 5566 to pass this legislative session in order to expand services to serve more clients in foster youth. Governor Inslee agreed the bill needed to pass.
Nono Viera from Viera’s Bakery says he has to can see the homelessness population worsening in Tri-Cities right out of his bakery window.
“I deal with this daily. I call non-emergency dispatch at least 2 times a week to deal with the homeless. But the they can’t go to jail because they won’t get help there. They can’t go to the hospital either. Pasco Police told me that they have nowhere to take them expect jail for a bit, and then they release them. I’ve been there since 2004, and it just keeps getting worse. I see people decline,” said Viera.
Tobaski Snipes with Empower Life works with youth who may not necessarily be foster youth, nor have juvenile delinquent history, just innocent youth caught up in harmful circumstances that are out of their control.
“For example, I have a kid whose family moved back to Mexico. His parents got deported, and the kid lived with his aunt, and then at 18 he had nowhere to go. But then the city of Pasco contacted me, and now he is a high school graduate and is now going to the army. If he had not been housed, maybe he would have been homeless, a high school dropout, and a criminal,” said Snipes as he highlighted the importance of programs that help youth such as this.
Andrew Porter who represented the Union Gospel Mission said he’s been working with homeless people since 1990 and accredits the greatest growth of opioid and drug addiction to the rise in homelessness.
However, Tri-Cities is the only area in Washington that has no detox center for someone to detox and no inpatient facility here.
Dr. Michele Gerber Benton Franklin Recovery Coalition is working on a detox program. “A person in Tri-Cities dies every 5 days of drug overdose. We have no residential in patient treatment. Even Wenatchee has one. That means 3,000 people here have no services,” said Dr Gerber. “Two of my children encountered addiction abuse, and they had to get treatment in California because Washington has a waiting list. But we had the ability to pay. Others will not have that privilege. When parents call about their child addicted to drugs, we have to say get on the highway and go west because we can’t help you. I have been one of those parents driving through the night and going to California, so my child can detox. We need a recovery center for addiction and mental illness.”
Benton County is now in the process of receiving a detox center in the coming years. Inslee says he needs more legislators to be on plan to fund these programs.
“Other legislators that disagree with me think we need to cut funding for programs such as these without realizing that these programs help our children, families, and community,” said Inslee.
Inslee promised to take these testimonies to legislators. Alexis Estrada from the Tri-Cities Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is working with a rental assistance program to get information out to the community, so people don’t end up homeless. Point in Time Count is also a cause to get that accurate data about homelessness, but they are in need of volunteers. Sign up here.
