December 31, 2024 Dena Jensen

It’s valuable to keep pressing officials for better homeless sheltering services. They will try to tell us they can’t do better. But over the years we have seen them at least try despite their stated limitations and resistance.

It was nearly six years ago that Whatcom County Council Members at that time, Barry Buchanan and Barbara Brenner requested that then-County Executive Jack Louws get an emergency shelter open as soon as possible in response to community outcry. In his motion, Council Member Buchanan urged, “And when I say that, I don’t mean let’s put it off till Monday. Let’s open it today if we can. Let’s open it tomorrow morning if we can.” It opened within 24 hours.

As icy days went on, Council Members had to tangle a bit with the Executive as well as counter resistance from Bellingham City officials to operate and maintain a shelter presence over the number of weeks of bitter cold during February and March in 2019. The community continued to fight to be heard regarding their concerns for the well-being of folks who were still left out in the cold.

Every year since that time, it has been the community keeping themselves engaged with government leaders and staff that has helped raise the bar on sheltering toward improved – but still severely insufficient – services and accommodations. Here is a link to a number of pages of blog post links covering the years of community and government sheltering efforts between then and now: https://noisywatersnw.com/?s=shelter

On Friday of last week Whatcom County Health and Community Services sent out a newsflash to people who have requested to be notified of information Whatcom County is willing to send out about the department. The WCHCS newsflash contained “Bellingham Severe Weather Shelter Questions and Answers.” The newsflash is also available on a webpage on the County website.

The report was detailed and prints out to be 7 pages long in a decent-sized font for tired eyes. The newsflash comes about a month after a petition initiated by Tukayote Helianthus – who operates the homeless outreach services offered by Operation Water Drop – was circulated online.

The petition called for this year’s Severe Weather Shelter to be opened when temperatures go to 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below. The aim is to help better protect those folks from hyperthermia who have no homes and are forced to live and try to sleep outside during this hostile weather season.

The County’s Severe Weather Shelter in Bellingham currently opens when forecasts for a given night predict temperatures will reach a low of 32 degrees or below for four consecutive hours. The National Coalition to End Homelessness reports on the dangers of not opening shelters when temperatures are anticipated to be below 40 degrees. And the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states on their website, “While hypothermia is most likely at very cold temperatures, it can occur even at cool temperatures (above 40°F) if a person becomes chilled from rain, sweat, or submersion in cold water.”

As the month of December 2024 carried on, there were a couple news articles in local publications – and after the newsflash, now three – that have been written related to the petition and issues surrounding the County’s Severe Weather Shelter in Bellingham. The articles that were published earlier in the month in The Bellingham Herald and My Bellingham Now provided responses from people at WCHCS and some of that information was included in the newsflash from December 27.

In general, it seemed the WCHCS wanted folks to know that the temperature threshold they chose was due to budget and staffing issues, along with some of the reasons they felt they needed to adhere to the sheltering model they have chosen.

Meanwhile, Helianthus has updated his petition around 21 times over the 4 weeks since it was created. The update he posted on Friday, December 27 – the same day that Whatcom County Health and Community Services sent out their newsflash – noted to petition supporters: “Your voices matter, and together we are sending a strong message that no one should be left out in the cold. However, it has now been over 24 days since this petition began, and we’ve heard nothing from our county and city leaders. Their continued silence in the face of suffering is not just disappointing—it’s unacceptable.”

The County finally responded in their fashion with the newsflash, but not to Helianthus directly. To keep what is finally some semblance of a conversation with County government going, on Monday morning I sent the following email to County officials and members of Whatcom County’s Housing Advisory Committee and its shelter subcommittee. There are addresses listed below the letter where folks can send their own messages:

Sent: Monday, December 30, 2024 at 08:35:44 AM PST

Subject: Regarding severe weather shelter and community engagement

Dear Whatcom County Council, Executive Sidhu, Director Lautenbach, Housing Advisory Committee and Shelter Subcommittee members: 

I am writing to reaffirm my support of the petition I signed in early December that called for raising the temperature threshold for this year’s County operated Severe Weather Shelter. The petition was started by Tukayote Helianthus and was covered in a couple local media articles. Personally, I also call for the County to operate or support the operation of a winter shelter rather than the intermittent and less stable service of a severe weather shelter. 

Yesterday I read Whatcom County Health and Community Services Department’s Bellingham Severe Weather Shelter Questions and Answers newsflash, which I received via email. I also visited the Whatcom County website page where it is posted.  

It is my understanding that no officials had contacted Mr. Helianthus in response to the petition he initiated, nor did he even receive a copy of Friday’s newsflash about the severe weather shelter when he normally receives County newsflashes in his email. 

It is especially disappointing that officials have not contacted Mr. Helianthus to engage with him since he is one of our community members doing homeless outreach via his Operation Water Drop. Mr. Helianthus is capable of advocating for himself regarding his petition. I am mentioning this though, not only in support of his efforts, but because he did not receive a personally addressed copy of the newsflash with a brief note to him, at the very least, highlights one of the significant barriers government staff and officials need to work on removing – that which stands in the way of meaningful government engagement with community members who are providing services.  

I appreciate the thoroughness and detail provided in the newsflash and being made aware of the dilemmas faced by County staff according to the approaches and practices the County is choosing for sheltering. It helps community members who have developed awareness of either on-the-ground challenges faced during the hostile weather seasons or historical background on County efforts to address sheltering needs over the years gain a clearer understanding of where current barriers to services may lie. 

While I can see progress being made by the County in social media presence and providing communications that tell their own story of the approaches and actions they are taking to provide homeless services and create housing, there is still a critical lack of engagement by officials and County staff with community members. 

I believe Whatcom County needs to incorporate an all hands on deck approach to sheltering strategies as they have for other critical issues. Both homelessness – which disproportionately impacts people of color – and racism have been declared public heath crises by local governments. To bring all hands on deck requires that officials and staff adopt approaches that help prevent them from responding to community members as if they are opponents. 

Instead, it is vital to increase efforts to gather and value public input and engagement as a means to breaking through areas where the County and our community has remained stuck in unfortunately producing conditions conducive to homelessness for too many years. It’s apparent that whatever scaling up of services that is occurring is not yet competitive with the pace of increasing crises and hardship being experienced by those who have no option but to sleep outside.  

I acknowledge and am thankful for the important addition by Whatcom County of the shelter subcommittee of the Housing Advisory Committee. And I noticed in the newsflash that the HAC is highlighted as an option for community members to become involved. But the every-two-month meetings of the HAC are challenging to keep track of (especially when a person is first trying to get acquainted with the timing). In terms of the shelter subcommittee, the only glimpse most people are allowed to catch of that work progressing seems to be in a 5 minute report during the HAC meeting so far. 

I can find no HAC meeting recordings that are accessible online in case someone misses all or part (like the first five minutes when the shelter subcommittee report was given) of a live meeting they’ve been potentially been waiting to attend for up to two months. And currently, minutes are only available online for meetings two months in the past or prior.

Obviously, the challenge of gaining access to the privately operated –  also, every-two-month – Whatcom County Coalition to End Homelessness meetings by request through a phone call (as noted in the newsflash) does not promote public engagement that rises to the level of all hands on deck. However, I just noticed that the City of Bellingham on their webpage for the WCCEH has provided the Zoom link for the meeting. If the link is accurate, it would be helpful for someone to provide that information on the County webpage which includes information on the WCCEH, on social media, and to perhaps update your newsflash with that information. Other means of gaining access to those meetings – for which I can find no copies of minutes or meeting recordings posted – would also be helpful. 

I believe an all hands on deck approach is so important, for one, because of the critical need to remove barriers to acquiring and developing staff and volunteers for shelters. In remarks made in the media articles and the newsflash about this year’s severe weather shelter, reports from the Health and Community Services Department to Whatcom County Council and Bellingham City Council, as well as repeated comments from social service workers who meet with members of the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force, addressing the intense need for increasing and developing staff and social service providers is vital to reaching the level and types of services that people in crisis in our community need. For example, creating the conditions needed to generate and support ample service providers and provider capacity can eliminate the need to highlight that organizations outside of local governments aren’t responding to take on winter sheltering. 

It is moving and deserving of our gratitude to see County employees’ involvement and sense of compassion motivate them to want to take on extra workloads and responsibilities associated with sheltering during the cold weather months. However, it is not in anyone’s best interest for staff to be overburdened and stretched thin with too many or any conflicting responsibilities. 

Our community needs staff/providers to be increased to take on this work. The community should be hearing about that focus and a planning and development process happening in the reports that are given on sheltering because the community has a big part to play in this happening.

Also, in light of this need, it seems vital that sheltering have a dedicated part within the 5 year Homeless Housing plan that was discussed during December’s HAC meeting and will be ongoing in 2025. Because of how long it is taking to increase housing availability and eliminate the conditions that produce homelessness in our community, immediate shelter and transitional housing availability for the many hundreds of people in need of it is just as important as long-term solutions. 

The trauma that has been caused and is persisting present-day to individuals and their neighbors, friends, and families from being forced to live unsheltered will impact the success and funds needed for any long-term efforts to address homelessness.  The County has indicated it is open to seeking funding to support private operators of shelter services. Therefore, it seems seeking and planning for funding for improved shelter availability is also an option the County can pursue, while additionally seeking more funding for long-term efforts, as well. 

There were places in the newsflash on severe weather shelters where it noted limitations that officials and staff feel they are facing when making decisions regarding providing shelter. Meanwhile, it was encouraging to see that in the presentation regarding the 5 year Homeless Housing plan, there was an emphasis on public engagement. 

Incorporating an emphasis on meaningfully and broadly engaging with community members into daily efforts to provide shelter and end homelessness has great potential to provide resources that will allow all of us to remove many of the limiting barriers to services with which we are often unnecessarily struggling. 

Additionally and importantly, if you have not already done so, I call for you all to be applying the Government Alliance on Racial Equity toolkit to your decision-making processes regarding sheltering and housing. 

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>; Barry Buchanan <bbuchana@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Jon Scanlon <jscanlon@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Kaylee Galloway <kgallowa@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Todd Donovan <tdonovan@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Ben Elenbaas <belenbaa@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Tyler Byrd <tbyrd@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Mark Stremler <mstremle@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Satpal Sidhu <ssidhu@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Erika Lautenbach <elautenb@co.whatcom.wa.us>; housing@whatcomcounty.us <housing@whatcomcounty.us>; ageleyns@whatcomcounty.us <ageleyns@whatcomcounty.us>; cdonofri@whatcomcounty.us <cdonofri@whatcomcounty.us>

Cc: WREC <wrec@chuckanuthealthfoundation.org>; phab@co.whatcom.wa.us <phab@co.whatcom.wa.us>; ccmail@cob.org <ccmail@cob.org>; mayorsoffice@cob.org <mayorsoffice@cob.org>; IPRTaskForce <iprtaskforce@co.whatcom.wa.us>; rshowalter@bellinghamherald.com <rshowalter@bellinghamherald.com>; etoscani@cascaderadiogroup.com <etoscani@cascaderadiogroup.com>