Wenatchee & East Wenatchee Continue Exploring Joint Homeless Shelter

Wenatchee and East Wenatche are in the planning stages to build a joint homeless shelter.

It'll likely be patterned after new shelters in other Washington cities that have built groups of small, self-contained pallet houses that can each accommodate one person.

A task force is being set up to make further progress on a joint Wenatchee-East Wenatchee project which could involve a partnership with the Salvation Army.

Wenatchee Mayor Frank Kuntz thinks the shelter here should have the flexibility to take in homeless people on a moment's notice.

"If we had 42 shelters, you would always leave five open for police," said Kuntz at Thursday's Wenatchee City Council Work Session. "You'd only put 37 (people) in there, so on any given night, if the police are out, they don't have to say 'Oh, our shelter is full."

The cities are waiting on a proposal on a partnership from the Salvation Army. The non profit has land in south Wenatchee that could be used to build the facility.

It's not certain how many small, self contained houses the local shelter would have. A group from Wenatchee and East Wenatchee recently toured similar shelters in Burlington, Everett and Moses Lake that have sprung up in the past year.

The Burlington shelter has enough space to house all its homeless people. Reaching that threshold is important in that current federal law forbids cities from fining or jailing homeless people for staying in unauthorized places if the cities can't provide those people with shelter.

The three existing facilities in Washington differ in whether they offer 24-hour or only overnight services. Wenatchee Mayor Kuntz thinks the local shelter should start out as only a place where people can sleep.

"The night shelter is the first place we need to start and make sure that we can do that, and do that great, and make sure we have the right entity operating that shelter, Kuntz said. "That's hugely important."