Bellingham opened a warming shelter Friday morning, Jan. 12, to keep people out of the extreme cold after winter and severe-weather shelters reached capacity Thursday night.
The shelters must be staffed by trained volunteers, presenting capacity issues as officials scramble to find enough people to safely operate the shelters.
The warming shelter, located at 1013 W. Holly St., is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, and from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Melissa Morin, assistant communications director for the City of Bellingham, said they’re prepared to host 60 people in the shelter Friday. Temperatures could reach –20 degrees with windchill on Friday.
The city and county’s winter- and severe-weather shelters all reached capacity last night, Mayor Kim Lund said in an interview Friday morning. Sheltering options included the city and Road2Home’s 45-bed winter shelter at 1355 Civic Field Way, the county’s 45-bed severe weather shelter at 810 N., State St., Ferndale Community Services’ 15-bed severe weather shelter at the United Church of Ferndale and Lighthouse Mission’s 200-bed Base Camp at 1530 Cornwall Ave. in Bellingham.
The Lummi Nation and Nooksack Tribe are also hosting severe and cold weather shelters on their reservations for tribal members.
Lund said shelters stretched their capacity last night to serve people. Base Camp hosted 220 people, while the severe-weather shelter hosted 50, she said. She didn’t immediately have information on how many people were turned away from shelters last night.
While people who stayed in the county’s weather shelter last night are permitted to stay during the day through Sunday, the city’s new day shelter is intended to support people staying at the Road2Home winter shelter and those who were not able to get into any shelter last night.
The Whatcom Transportation Authority is helping this weekend, Lund said, by sweeping the civic complex Friday morning and inviting people who need transportation to the day shelter. She said WTA is committed throughout the weekend to help with transportation to the day shelter.
Lund said the city is “actively” assessing if they can support overnight guests at the day shelter.
“We have to make sure we can do it in a way that’s safe for everyone, for both the people that are staffing and the guests that are here,” she said.
Lund said a challenge in setting up this daytime warming shelter was staffing.
“We’re looking for a set of volunteers that has security checks, background checks, has some de-escalation training and are able to take a trauma-informed approach,” she said.
Lund said she reached out to Bellingham Public Schools, and leadership teams from the public schools with that training agreed to volunteer.
“They have staffed most of the weekend shifts for us and they did that within an hour,” she said. Lund said they’ve also been able to partner with the Homeless Outreach Team to support the day shelter.
Communications Assistant Director Dana Smith at Bellingham Public Schools confirmed that 26 principals and other administrators have signed up to volunteer as of Friday morning.
Northwest Youth Services is extending the hours of youth day-use center Ground Floor to 9 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. tonight, Executive Director Jason McGill said Friday morning. He said staff will be helping youth at the center to find a safe place to stay tonight, and they’ll be open again from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday.
McGill said capacity for the day-use area is about 75 during the day. Priority is for people 25 years old and under, but McGill said they won’t be “checking IDs.”
Lund said the plans on the day-use shelter weren’t made public until last night due to challenges in understanding lease agreements, assessing legal considerations and risk and finding volunteers to staff the shelter.
“I think it’s really important to acknowledge that we’re in a better place than last year, but we’re learning a lot again this year and we’ll definitely be putting our learnings for now into place for next year,” Lund said. “Every year we’re getting better as we go, but there’s always room to grow.”
Next year, Lighthouse Mission’s new building, with a 400-bed capacity in severe-weather events, will be open.
Lund said she’ll continue to focus on the daytime shelter piece.
“That is still something we’ll work to operationalize moving forward so we don’t find ourselves having to spin up [one] on such short notice,” she said.
For Whatcom County, Kayla Schott-Bresler, the special initiatives manager, said they’ve worked to stretch capacity at the severe-weather shelter.
In December, the county changed the activation criteria for the shelter: before, the overnight low had to be 28 degrees or below, or 32 degrees or below with at least 2 inches of precipitation. Now, freezing overnight lows activate the shelter.
Schott-Bresler said their biggest barrier to expanding service is staffing. She said to properly serve the populations using the severe-weather shelter, they need highly trained staff and volunteers.
“The daytime staffing, as well as the prolonged nature of this cold spell, is stretching us really thin on our capacity,” she said.
Jed Holmes, the county’s community outreach facilitator, said the City of Bellingham and the county have shared responsibility in providing severe-weather and winter-sheltering options.
“Every year we do a little bit more and sometimes a lot more, and every year that more that we do turns out to fall a little bit short of the need of the community,” Holmes said. “We’re doing more this year than we ever have, but it turns out that it’s maybe not quite enough to make sure everyone has a warm place to spend the night.”
This article was updated at 7:02 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 12 to add the latest information on Northwest Youth Services’ Ground Floor hours.
