SPOKANE, Wash. — Shortly following the release of what the City of Spokane called a detailed inclement weather shelter plan, the questions started coming.
Homeless service providers say they're still grasping to find the answers to details missing, such as where the emergency shelters will be located.
Now they're asking in a new and big way.
Billboards fill the skies of a Spokane commute; the big canvases as common as a corner coffee shop, but right next to Dutch Bros. on 2nd Avenue downtown, one such sign is creating more buzz than others.
“Clearly this billboard has gotten the attention, brought it to light more," said H.T. Higgins, who paid for the billboard which reads in part, 'Mayor Brown, you promised something different than the Woodward administration. What is different?'
Higgins, who says he spoke in support of and even put his own money behind Brown during her mayoral campaign, has now put his money behind the sign. He says more may be coming because he and other concerned citizens are tired of the same message from Brown's administration when it comes to emergency winter shelters.
“Continually the administration is doubling down saying, ‘We’ve got a plan, we’ve got a plan.’ And there really is no plan," he said.
Which is why he put out the big message of his own Monday; Higgins works with Jewels Helping Hands and says they, and other service providers, feel time is running out.
“This is an emergency," he said of winter sheltering. "This isn’t about putting up a new road, this is about human beings.”
He says he's concerned the repercussions of not providing beds before a freeze, along with the closure of the city's largest shelter, TRAC, by November 1, could be loss of life. Or what he calls "Camp Hope 2.0," in reference to the mass encampment that started as a protest for a lack of cold-weather shelter beds.
Higgins and homeless service providers fear we could hit freezing temps this week, which is the city's threshold to open up more warming beds according to municipal code. It's also under the same code the city shall publish and disseminate an emergency shelter plan no later than September 30, with several details that are still missing from the city's current release.
“Addresses of where unhoused people can go, along with how they can get there, transportation," Higgins said.
KREM 2 has asked multiple times, including again Tuesday, where people can go for emergency warming. We were told, again, that won't be finalized until requests for proposals (RFPs) are done later this month.
No one with the city was available for an interview to address provider concerns or questions, and KREM 2 News was referred to Mayor Brown's comments to city council delivered Monday.
“The team worked hard to go to existing shelter providers and with this amount of funding we can procure, in advance, 100 surge beds that would be ready on a night when inclement weather provisions are triggered," the mayor said of the city's inclement weather plan.
As to where to go to get one of those beds? That's still a blank.
“You just feel empty," Higgins said. "It’s just an empty, sad feeling.”
Higgins is trying to fill the void because he and others believe the lack of a clear message is bigger than a billboard.
“That’s why we’re out here in public going, ‘Hey! Hello? What’s the plan?” he said.
In its inclement weather plan release, the city said it had identified 357 surge beds at six sites (though later told KREM 2 it can only afford to provide 100 of those beds for 38 nights.) It also said there were more than 1,000 shelter beds already available county-wide.
Julia Garcia with Jewels Helping Hands forwarded an email she'd sent the city asking where that number came from.
"So confused," she wrote. "I’m also having a flashback to the previous administration when they stated an inaccurate amount of beds and called people experiencing homelessness “shelter resistant” even though any time beds were open they filled up."
By her count, Garcia said the city's shelter dashboard only accounted for 714 beds, many of them full. She also asked where a reported 100 "scattered site" beds were located.
"I am exhausted of having to continue to have to send these emails. It's exhausting trying to get to the truth. I used to think that we could actually move the needle in homelessness in our beautiful city but that hope fades more and more when narratives instead of facts are being sold to our city’s constituents," Garcia wrote to Mayor Brown and her administration.
When asked by KREM 2 for a complete list of where the city's 1,000-plus existing shelter beds are, spokesperson Erin Hut emailed this graphic, showing a total 1,310 beds across various providers.
