YAKIMA, Wash.- Camp Hope is far more than just a homeless camp.
To Levi Lizotte, it’s the place that changed everything.
“It’s different. It’s not run like any other shelter,” Lizotte said. “It saved my life.”
Lizotte spent a winter living in his car after being released from jail. He returned to his hometown Selah and had a mental health crisis.
A mental health facility treated him for schizophrenia and he went to Camp Hope.
The shelter hired him on as a monitor and he has been there since– working to help others at the same place that saved him.
“This job and this place has been the best thing for me,” Lizotte said.
The Washington State Department of Commerce Snapshot of Homeless identifies 9,906 homeless individuals in Yakima County– nearly triple the amount in Benton and Franklin counties combined, and up 3,228 from 2016. Commerce calculates those figures from state benefit programs and the Homeless Management Information System. It accounts for individuals who may be ‘couch surfing’ or in emergency shelters, whereas Point in Time Count surveys are largely conducted with those living on the streets and do not paint the full picture.
Camp Hope CEO Mike Kay helped found the shelter in March 2017. He is proud to say they offer a lot more than the typical domestic violence or emergency shelters.
They house anyone who needs it– human trafficking survivors, refugees, domestic violence survivors, families, chronically homeless individuals, and the elderly who had to make the decision between paying their rent or mortgage or buying medicine.
“The people that the average citizen sees on the street aren’t sleeping in the snow because they want to. It’s a mental health condition.”
Camp Hope partners with Comprehensive Healthcare to have a medical doctor on-site and a case manager to take residents to services they need. Kay said they are currently working to build a behavioral health center to bring a therapist into the fold.
The shelter has space for 250 people, and it logged 1,612 unique enrolled residents in 2024. 37 residents transitioned into permanent housing according to operations manager Suzi Caprino.
As of March 5, the shelter has helped 17 people find a home in 2025.
“People are getting their lives back because we’re able to actually treat the root cause of why they’re homeless,” Kay said. “Not just a symptom of why they’re homeless.”
But it’s far more complicated than just treating mental health.
“Our family shelter is bursting at the seams right now because of the cost of affordable housing,” Lizotte said.
The Washington State Advisory Council on Homelessness flags a lack of affordable housing as the primary driver of homelessness. Yakima County District 2 Commissioner Kyle Curtis acknowledges that.
Curtis serves as chair of the executive committee of the Yakima County Homeless Coalition. The coalition is currently building the framework for a 5-year plan to address the homeless crisis.
“The plan that we adopted in 2019 frankly was inadequate,” Curtis said. “It didn’t have measurable goals.”
The coalition builds its action plan through meetings with community members and stakeholders.
“I think one of the trends that surfaced to the top out of all the groups was mental health,” the commissioner said. “We recognize that– while not everyone that’s unhoused or experiencing homelessness has a mental health component— a majority of them do have a mental health need that’s not being addressed”
In direct response to concerns of a lack of affordable housing, Curtis said the county does not have enough resources to solve the problem itself. He said the county depends on help from the state to develop affordable housing projects.
The commissioner pointed to the state government again when asked about how the county can address the problem, saying it is “cumbersome” to build due to permits and regulations developers need to acquire and follow.
“Frankly, government needs to get out of the way,” Curtis said. “I think we need to cut a lot of those rules and regulations and allow our developers to just do what they do best– which is build. I think when you have an increase in the housing market, the housing stock, you’re going to have a direct correlation to a decrease in the number of folks that you see out on our streets.”
