It’s been awhile since we’ve seen significant action from Whatcom County Council toward activating more resources to increase County-managed homeless sheltering capacity. Although some strides had been made by Whatcom County government in activating their own emergency severe weather shelter in 2023/2024, the impact of that critical effort was dwarfed by the increase in people who found themselves living outside when the rain, snow, ice, and winds struck during that time.

This week, a number of County Council Members put forward a draft resolution to initiate efforts toward achieving functional zero homelessness over the next decade at their June 4, 2024 Committee of the Whole meeting. The title of the resolution is: “REQUESTING THE COUNTY EXECUTIVE PREPARE A PROPOSAL FOR THE EXPANSION OF YEAR-ROUND SHELTER CAPACITY AND ESTABLISH A HOMELESSNESS AND SHELTER SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHATCOM COUNTY HOUSING ADVISORY COMMITTEE.”

Council Members seem to have been collecting some community input related to this effort. However, there is not much evidence of this that is apparent. For example, there have been no posts on the Whatcom County Council or Whatcom County Government Facebook pages related to homelessness or sheltering at all since January and February of this year. The last post on the Whatcom County Health and Community Services Facebook page was in March 2024. The few related posts on all these pages were focused on alerting community members to sheltering options and thanking volunteers and staff for services provided during those past months of the 2023/2024 severe weather season.

Now that the proposed resolution has been discussed publicly, we community members at least have our cue and a short window of time to provide input until Council Members meet again to either discuss or take action on it. Contacting them over the next few days will favor our input making an impact on the content of the final draft resolution.

Below is the email I sent to Council Members last night. Email addresses where folks can send their input are provided below the email:

Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2024 at 10:59:27 PM PDT

Subject: Input regarding the draft resolution to expand year-round shelter

Dear Whatcom County Council:

I listened today to your Committee of the Whole discussion from 6/4/24 related to taking action to expand year-round homeless sheltering capacity, including through operating a County-managed year-round shelter.

I am grateful for Council Members who brought this discussion and a related resolution forward and for all those who have taken part in the discussion about it so far. 

I wanted to offer some input and address a few issues regarding remarks that were made during that discussion on Tuesday this week.

There was a analogy made during the meeting comparing the act of providing shelter for those waiting to be housed to that of providing a lobby for a facility like a hotel.  More commonly, sheltering is sometimes referred to as being a bandaid being applied to the challenge of homelessness when we also need to seek stopping the harmful conditions that cause homelessness. Additionally, the draft resolution to expand year-round sheltering capacity references 5 overarching goals of the Homeless Strategies Workgroup, the fifth one of which is to “invest in long-term permanent solutions over temporary crisis solutions when resources are inadequate to do both.”

I believe these three references have significant dangers attached to them when being used as reasons to avoid or de-prioritize investing in sheltering solutions. I think it is easy to confirm with shelter providers that folks who are let into “lobbies” to wait for housing are people who would otherwise be left outside in various states of ability to try to create for themselves protections from hostile weather and many other kinds of threats to their health and safety. 

It’s even more clearly obvious that if bandaids are not provided to people who are bleeding and who cannot be kept out of physical peril by current systems and capacities, then people will be and are bleeding literally and figuratively on our streets, sidewalks, and wild areas, and very often their crises will flow from them to those areas and to other family and community members. 

It’s my observation that it is the past reluctance of Whatcom County and its city governments to equally prioritize both sheltering solutions and ample housing, as well as other infrastructure – including the workforce to fuel these options – that has helped lead us to the increase in crisis level our communities are facing right now. 

Regarding the concern that people may not promptly move on from tiny home or other transitional housing arrangements – whatever the rates are now of that happening, I believe those rates would significantly increase with an increase in both permanently affordable housing, and community housing arrangements that allow people to continue with the peer and professional support that has become valuable to them in their transitional arrangement. 

And regarding the concern that providing better outcomes for folks needing shelter and housing here will encourage folks with needs for shelter and housing to come here from other regions, I believe it is much more likely that, in creating solutions which work for unhoused people and restore their stability and well-being, we would be creating a model that can be shared so that other communities have confidence that they can also address their own crises related to homelessness. The concern, to me, just indicates there is a need for County outreach efforts to other communities to inform them – and listen to them as well – about what we are doing and what is being successful, how it can work for them, and how any successful actions of their own can work for us too.

Lastly, I want to call for all of you to include in your resolution the establishment of a free-standing commission or board that will focus on sheltering solutions. I don’t know if it would be harmful or un-useful to also have a subcommittee with that focus under the Housing Advisory Committee. Regardless, a shelter-focused board or commission independent of the WCHAC is vitally necessary. Presently, providing sheltering options needs just as much focus and influence as providing housing and other system improvements. 

I strongly believe that waiting too long to take these steps that you are now contemplating has been a heavy contributor to emergency situations that local governments are currently declaring, and I do not believe we can afford to either purposely or inadvertently leave any people out who want to help create well-being through the efforts of such a board/commission. Like other current efforts, this is another where all hands are needed.

Sincerely, 

Dena Jensen

Birch Bay, WA

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This email was sent to the following addresses:

To: council@co.whatcom.wa.us <council@co.whatcom.wa.us>

Cc: Satpal Sidhu <ssidhu@co.whatcom.wa.us>; phab@co.whatcom.wa.us <phab@co.whatcom.wa.us>; ccmail@cob.org <ccmail@cob.org>; mayorsoffice@cob.org <mayorsoffice@cob.org>; planning@cob.org <planning@cob.org>; Health <health@co.whatcom.wa.us>