Warming centers OK’d in Spokane

The Spokane City Council has adopted a cold weather response plan for a potentially deadly dilemma – too few beds for too many homeless.

The city’s answer: warming centers, places the indigent can go to warm up for a while when the weather turns dangerously cold.

“It’s not a perfect solution,” said Councilman Joe Shogan, “but it’s a start.”

This week the council approved a plan drafted by the Spokane Homeless Coalition to allow the indigent to be sheltered temporarily when the temperature reaches 5 degrees and all the city’s beds for the homeless are full.

Every shelter contacted for this article was full on Wednesday.

Throughout last year, Spokane counted 7,294 homeless adults, children and independent youth, according to Amy Jones of the city’s Human Services Department.

Of course, at any given time, there are far fewer homeless individuals looking for shelter. But during the last week of January 2005, there were 1,824 homeless persons in Spokane and only 457 beds available to them.

The warming center plan does not increase the number of beds available to the homeless, said Shogan, who offered the resolution to the council. It just gives them a place to stay out of the cold for a while.

The “Plan for the Emergency Expansion of Homeless Warming Centers” is two-tiered, according to Bob Peeler of SNAP’s homeless program.

Tier 1 will be activated when designated shelter space is full and the temperature hits 5 degrees.

“Which I think is too cold, but we have to start somewhere,” Peeler said.

He said the plan, modeled after a Toronto program, will be re-evaluated next year.

“We’ll look at this year and then we can talk about raising the temperature to 10 or 15,” he said.

The warming centers will be available to individual men, individual women, unaccompanied youths and families, based on what shelters are full.

The warming center for single men at the House of Charity will become available when that shelter’s 108 beds are full.

The shelter is already full, said its director, Ed McCarron.

“Right now, we are turning people away,” McCarron said. When the temperature drops, “we will hand out pillows and blankets” and a place to lie down.

The warming center for individual women is at Hope House, which has already begun giving homeless women a warm place to sit and a cup of coffee, according to program director Rusty Barnett.

Hope House has 34 beds, all of them currently occupied.

“We’ve been a warming center for the last several weeks,” Barnett said.

“Once our beds are full we become a warming center.”

Unaccompanied youth will go to Crosswalk.

Families will go to the Salvation Army, Interfaith Hospitality, St. Margaret’s and SNAP shelters. All are full right now.

Tier 2 kicks in when the temperature stays at 5 or below for more than five days.

Then, said Peeler, additional support will take pressure off the already burdened shelters.

New warming centers, such as the Women’s Hearth, a day center, will open overnight.

Police, fire and homeless outreach teams will coordinate with the city’s Human Services Department to get everyone out of the cold.

Peeler said individual shelters already had been opening their doors in cold weather to accommodate people for whom there were no beds left.

The warming center plan will coordinate those efforts.