SPOKANE, Wash. — The Spokane City Council approved a purchase agreement for a new 24-hour homeless shelter on East Sprague Avenue on Monday afternoon.
The council allocated $50,000 in earnest money on the building.
The $1.8 million property is located at 4210 E. Sprague Ave, which once housed a Grocery Outlet location. The shelter is expected to open this fall with the capacity to house 120 people.
The city is accepting proposals from organizations interested in operating services at the new shelter. Applications are due by July 7.
The shelter would become Spokane's second low-barrier, full-service offering, the first being House of Charity. City leaders hope it will be able to pick of the slack created when House of Charity was forced to reduce capacity last year for safety reasons, and by doing so prevent another crisis like the one that mandated the opening of numerous temporary warming centers last winter.
The city council is also accepted $2 million in consolidated homeless grant funds from the county.
The proposal would also authorize the county to sub-grant funds to partner agencies, such as Catholic Charities and Volunteers of America.
A new process of allocation of funds will also begin with this proposal. The council will allocate the grant funds to partner agencies for the county, starting Jan. 1, 2020.
City council also unanimously approved a budget ordinance for local shelters,
$120,000 has been allocated to Family Promise, $20,000 to Women's Hearth-Transitions and $200,000 to House of Charity.
Family Promise will use the money to open 30 more beds to homeless families, bringing the total to 60. It had fallen to 30 from 80 following a drop in funding after the winter concluded.
Women's Hearth will use its funding to keep its day programs operating on weekends.
The $200,000 to House of Charity keeps the shelter's women's beds open for at least another year.
City funding for those beds had expired at the end of June, because the city expected the new 24/7 shelter to be operational by July. With the new fall timeline, the council determined House of Charity needed one-time emergency funding to extend its women's shelter program.
The money for Family Promise and Women's Hearth is previously undistributed money for homeless programs.
The money for House of Charity comes from savings from the 2018 budget surplus.
