SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — As we look at the homeless population across Spokane County, KREM 2 News wanted to take a look at what the City of Spokane Valley is doing to help combat theirs.
With a camping ban in effect and no homeless shelter within the City itself, members of the City of Spokane Valley say they work with Spokane to combat their homeless population.
Members of the city say they utilize different shelters across Spokane, having an outreach team work with someone they find in the City that needs shelter, transporting them to different ones across the City as needed.
Homeless centers and organizations all across Spokane help take in Spokane Valley's homeless.
The Valley provides roughly $4 million in grants towards affordable housing and homeless-related grants. Those funds go to things like a SNAP Housing Project and Habitat for Humanity for affordable housing, all of which the Valley's website says are coming soon.
Housing and homelessness coordinator for the City of Spokane Valley Eric Robison said the City does not have the budget for a shelter within its limits, but emphasizes how they try to support the resources, assisting their people in need.
"We do also support regional efforts to fund homeless shelters," Robison said. "They don't happen to be located here, but we still are paying into those efforts. In terms of citing a shelter in the City of Spokane Valley, that would be something that would require funding that just isn't available right now."
Service providers like the Union Gospel Mission (UGM) said they see people coming in from all different areas in the Inland Northwest, with Spokane Valley being one of them.
"We will partner with this area, Coeur D'Alene, Lewiston, the whole area," Steve Ellison, director of development with UGM, said. "People can come to us."
Dawn Kinder with the City of Spokane said the protocol isn't anything new, but hopes there could be a shelter available in Spokane Valley, letting the people with the need out there to get service closer to where they are at.
"I think we certainly see that people have much greater success when they're able to stay in their home neighborhoods and home areas," Kinder said.
"Knowing our system is so overburdened, any opportunity to help people serve people where they are is something we would be very excited about."
Robison adds that while a shelter is something the city could use, the next steps would be transitional housing so people in need could help build an income and move into stable housing.