On Tuesday, sometime before 5 pm, a woman who had been a resident at the TRAC shelter for months was ejected by shelter staff, finding herself back on the streets with little notice and nowhere to go. The woman, a power wheelchair user, was told she had “too much stuff” and she could come back in 24 hours.
According to Dr. Bob Lutz, the former director of the Spokane Regional Health District who does medical outreach at TRAC weekly, and has developed a relationship with the woman, she went to the only place she knew she could stay warm – a 24-hour Denny’s diner roughly 3.5 miles from the shelter— to wait out the ban, hoping there would still be a bed for her when she returned.
The woman wasn’t the only person removed from the shelter on Tuesday, but exactly how many were forced out with her is unclear, with multiple sources, including Lutz, saying the number is 37, while Diane Hutton, the Program Manager at TRAC, is telling concerned city staff the number was “less than a dozen.”
Lutz said many of the residents were given no reason for their removal, though a few people were told it was because their space was too messy and unhygienic. TRAC service providers who spoke with RANGE anonymously for fear of losing their jobs didn’t deny spaces were unkempt, but said they’d been that way for a while. One service provider questioned the need to kick people out at all, rather than just working with them to clean their spaces.
When a city staffer emailed Hutton to ask why so many people were being kicked out abruptly as temperatures were dropping, Hutton responded that the number was lower and that “some chose to use drugs on site.”
Hutton’s email — which was forwarded to RANGE by Councilmember Paul Dillon — also said the people ejected were driven to the shelter of their choice, but we know that at least one wasn’t: the woman in the wheelchair who spent Tuesday night and Wednesday at the Denny’s on North Argonne.
The discrepancy in the numbers and the reasons for the ejections provided by Hutton to city council and reports coming from service providers and residents is part of a pattern of unclear and conflicting numbers and information about operations from the shelter’s operator, the Salvation Army. And though city council has publicly expressed frustration with multiple budget overruns, oversight gaps, reports of inhumane conditions at the shelter dating back to its inception (see previous reporting here, here and here) and a persistent lack of reporting and data shared by the Salvation Army, they voted in December to continue paying them $750,000 per month to keep their doors open.
Hutton did not return an email request for comment, and RANGE was unable to reach any other Salvation Army officials, as the two phone numbers publicly listed for the shelter were not answered and had voicemail boxes that were full.
In the vacuum of consistent and transparent reporting from the Salvation Army, word of events like Tuesday’s ejections spread through unofficial networks of concerned staff members of the various agencies — who anonymously contact journalists, city staff and electeds, and advocates like Lutz, hoping to get the word out.
After over a year of this, Lutz said, “We are incensed about the lack of accountability and poor service.”
Council members on both sides of the political aisle, including Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart, who both represent District 1 where the shelter is located have consistently questioned the level of monitoring at the shelter and the lack of information provided to council.
“Anything with homelessness funding needs to be audited pretty carefully and pretty aggressively,” Bingle told RANGE. “We ask for data all the time and it feels as if nobody can ever give us data. And it's like: why the hell don't we have this data? Why can't we get this data?”
In a Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability committee meeting in early December, Cathcart asked for additional protections and an audit.
“What about on-site-monitoring, making sure that the actual number of employees are there, that they're doing what they say they're doing, that we're seeing some results, all of that?” Cathcart asked Kim McCollim, the director of the Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services Department who recently resigned.
Freshman Council Member Paul Dillon, who was the recipient of the photos taken at the shelter, said he hasn’t seen enough accountability and reporting from the Salvation Army.
“I’m kind of learning that there has been a lack of transparency,” Dillon said. “It is a system breakdown between the city, the county and really just not knowing enough and being kept in the dark and not getting good access to information.”
Dillon, whose first council meeting after being sworn in office saw the vote to extend the Salvation Army’s contract on a month-to-month basis until April, has been pushing for an audit of the shelter conditions and services being provided, and was “appalled” by the recent Shigella outbreak at the shelter.
Lutz echoed sentiments of a “notable” lack of accountability from the Salvation Army as the service provider.
“They've not been, by any means, good stewards of the monies given to them by the city to provide for these unhoused individuals,” Lutz said. “Why is nobody from the city holding [The Salvation Army] accountable?”
On Thursday morning, Dillon, Bingle, Council President Betsy Wilkerson, and Nicolette Ocheltree, city council’s manager of housing and homelessness initiatives, sat on a panel at the monthly Homeless Coalition meeting, where they spoke about the future of the TRAC shelter and heard feedback from area homeless service providers. Robert Lippman, the event’s host, asked everyone present to avoid direct criticism of the shelter operator and service provider at TRAC — the Salvation Army and Revive Counseling, respectively.
“What I've seen, when I've visited TRAC on several occasions, is that it's too many people in that space,” Wilkerson said. “The TRAC shelter is larger than some of our small towns in the state of Washington, with no governing body. You cannot have that many people, in that small of a space, with their varying needs, and be able to meet that at the staffing level.”
Bingle also spoke to the common desire to care for people who need it, while getting closer to the city’s original goal for TRAC, which was a navigation center model where the focus was on moving people into permanent housing.
“There will always be challenges with what we're doing. There will never be enough money,” Bingle said. “But we need to understand what is going to be the most effective thing that we can do for one individual. And if it's for the one individual, how many ‘one individuals’ can we be most effective for?”
Dillon echoed the desire for transparency. “We all need to know what is actually going on, how this money is being spent and what that means for other providers,” he said. “We're all in this together. We all want to take care of people.”
Though the conversation at Thursday’s meeting largely focused on looking toward a future where new Mayor Lisa Brown’s plans for TRAC could radically change the shelter’s structure — or close it entirely — Dillon worried about what happens now, with temperatures predicted to drop below zero next week, no transparency from the Salvation Army on why 37 people were kicked out of TRAC this week and no commitment that it won’t happen again.
In an interview with RANGE, he cited the rising death toll of our region’s unhoused population that was shared at the CHAS Homeless Memorial last month – with the leading cause of those deaths being exposure.
Dillon said, “We’re in a humanitarian crisis right now and I don’t want people to die.”
