Maricopa County, the city of Phoenix and the non-profit St. Vincent de Paul are continuing an agreement to help house 200 people from extreme weather. The program began as a means to house people during the summer months and is now continuing to house people during the winter months from the cold. During an Oct. 26 Phoenix City Council meeting, the program received enough funding to run through the end of 2024.
In May, the three partners launched a pilot program to build a shelter to help people escape the heat. Over 300 people died from heat-related causes in 2021, according to Maricopa County health numbers. The creation of this shelter looks to change that.
St. Vincent de Paul partnered with the community organizations Community Bridges and From the Ground Up to run the shelter. The city of Phoenix provided the land: an empty city building that used to belong to the Aviation department located on 2739 E. Washington St. The shelter is appropriately named the Washington Street Shelter.
The Oct. 26 extension will allocate $4.8 million from Maricopa County and $4 million from the city’s allocation of the American Rescue Plan Act funds. The city is funding the program after seeing the success it had during its first phase.
Rachel Milne, Director of Homeless Solutions for the City of Phoenix said the program’s initial phase proved that it could work.
“We had such a huge amount of success we feel very comfortable asking for the money in order to keep it going for the next two years,” she said.
She added the city helped 583 people during the summer months and they were able to help place 380 people into places aside from the shelter. Of the 380, the shelter saw 300 positive exits. When a person in a homeless shelter moves onto something other than the shelter such as signing their own lease, moving to live with family, entering a treatment facility or something else that helps them, it’s considered a positive exit.
“That number is huge. We don’t typically see that high a percentage of positive exits,” said Milne.
While this was a pilot program at the Washington Street Shelter, it was not the first program of its kind designed to protect people from the heat in Phoenix.
In 2021, St. Vincent de Paul launched a heat relief center with help from Maricopa County. The center was created in the middle of St. Vincent de Paul’s dining hall and common area when the church’s dining hall was closed due to COVID. The shelter assisted more than 1700 people, according to the organization.
“One of the main things we learned is that if we were going to do that, it needed more,” said Jessica Berg, chief program officer at St. Vincent de Paul.
Significant changes were made between 2021 and 2022. The 2021 shelter required people to leave every morning and wait in line to reclaim their spot for the following night. In 2022, the Washington Street Shelter was a closed campus shelter, meaning people are guaranteed their spot until they are ready to leave.
The Washington Street Shelter not only offers beds and meals, it also offers career services. Many among the unsheltered population recognize this as one of the better shelters in Phoenix.
During the Oct. 26 city council meeting, district 7 council member Yassamin Ansari said, “It’s amazing, people actually know about [the Washington Street Shelter]—they want to go there. I think they are more likely to go there than to some of the other shelters that we have.”
Throughout the Washington Street Shelter’s lifetime, it has evolved into a multi-use capacity. Carlos Garcia of district 8, who is credited with spearheading this effort, said the shelter began to deal with the beat but now is becoming a general shelter.
Jessica Berg from St. Vincent de Paul said, “It is not just weather relief anymore. It’s the closed campus shelter that really needs a new name in my mind. It’s kind of half transitional housing and half emergency shelter.”
The new facility is set to be open until the end of 2024. According to a press release, due to its popular demand, residents will need to be referred to the shelter by a case manager.
Contact the reporter at pdalal6@asu.edu.
