Two Homeless Shelters Getting New Facilities House Of Charity, St. Margaret’S To Open This Summer

Two new homeless shelters - one for men and one for women and children - will open in downtown Spokane before the summer is over.

Staff and residents of St. Margaret’s Shelter for women and children will move into their new building the first week of June.

By summer’s end, the staff and residents of the House of Charity for men will move into their new facility.

Both shelters are owned and operated by Catholic Charities.

St. Margaret’s will move from 707 S. McClellen to the northeast corner of Pine and Hartson, near Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Known as a haven for homeless women and their children, the old building has seven rooms and 2 bathrooms. Up to 20 women and children have crammed into those tight quarters at one time. The new building will have 18 separate units with private bathrooms. The families will share a kitchen, a dining room and a living room.

“It’s such a beautiful building,” said Nadine Van Stone, director of St. Margaret’s. “It’s very light and spacious.”

The women’s shelter will expand its services to provide housing for mothers and their fragile newborns who have been discharged from the hospital but need to remain close to medical care.

Catholic Charities also hopes to allow women to live there up to two years, until they find subsidized housing, Van Stone said.

The House of Charity will move from its current location in a condemned building at 9 W. Main to the northeast corner of Browne and Pacific. There will be a dining room and dormitory sleeping space for more than 100 men, up from 55 in the old building.

The House of Charity serves a midday meal six days a week and runs a winter sleeping program from Nov. 1 until March 15. Director Ed McCarron said that once the move is complete, the staff may expand the sleeping program.

“It takes a lot of energy out of us, that winter sleeping program,” McCarron said. “With people drinking all the time, it gets old.”

He hopes the job will be easier in a new building, although he suspects more men will want to sleep there. The shelter averaged 55 men each night last winter. At times the number jumped into the 70s. No one is turned away.

The House of Charity’s mission is to welcome everyone, no matter what their physical or mental condition. As a result, alcoholics and chronic drug users who might otherwise freeze to death have a place to sleep in the winter. Residents are not allowed to drink, use drugs or fight in the shelter.

McCarron said his first job will be to meet his new neighbors and see what he can do to minimize the negative impact of having a shelter in the neighborhood.

“I’m going to have a hard time policing the whole neighborhood,” he said. “But we are going to do our best.”

The new building will enable the House of Charity to expand services beyond food and shelter.

The shelter will continue to offer a medical clinic as well as expanded counseling and case management services. McCarron hopes more men will use those services, because they will be available in a discreet wing of the building.

“We think our numbers will go up in every area, not just the sleeping and eating,” he said. “We hope we will be able to do a better job.”

Catholic Charities raised $6 million in cash and in-kind donations to acquire the land and build the new shelters.

The new House of Charity is expected to cost $2.9 million, and St. Margaret’s will run $2 million, said Mary Ann Heskett, development director for Catholic Charities. Another $375,000 was spent on architects’ fees and fund raising. Any leftover funds will go into an endowment for the shelters, she said.