Bremerton and Kitsap County leaders continue to contend with a homelessness crisis, in large part focused on finding options for an overnight shelter to open to ease some burden. At the same time, alternative shelters and transitional housing options are nearly full, compounding the difficult of moving people who are unhoused into some kind of shelter.

But housing programs that do exist, like the Kitsap Rescue Mission, say that transition housing program in place have been showing signs of success. Since 2021 a program KRM runs to house people in rooms at Bremerton's Quality Inn has moved more 62 individuals to more permanent housing, and currently offers a place for 102 guests, including 30 children and another many others are low-income elderly folks or have a disability, according to executive director Robin Lund.

However, in approximately a year the mission plans to open a new facility in Port Orchard, in a former fitness studio renovated into what will be known as the Pacific Building. And once it does, the individuals currently in the Quality Inn will be offered a place there -- helping keep people in a stable environment known as "transitional housing," but once again likely leaving no vacancy for temporary overnight shelter in Kitsap County.

The Quality Inn rooms now in use by Kitsap Rescue Mission have been funded by ARPA federal money and community donations to the Bremerton-based nonprofit.

There, homeless guests are often paired up in hotel rooms where they are allowed two tubs of belongings. Guests have access to meals, hygiene products, transportation for laundry, a playground for children and on-site mental health, medical and housing services, which have been successful for more than 60 individuals.

“That's quite a success story,” said Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler.

For a while, the shelter operated on a “stay home, stay healthy” protocol coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially while there was an eviction moratorium in place and very little housing inventory, Lund said. Some guests at the Quality Inn have been there since the shelter’s inception, and some have even been in the mission’s care since its former location on Sixth Street in downtown Bremerton.

“In 2023, we've really started to see everything come together now with our larger team, with our on-site services, and now folks are really starting to move ahead,” Lund said. “We have some great success. Fourteen people went back to work last month and we're definitely on the upswing. We've got people going to treatment consistently, we've got people getting stabilized with their mental health. Once they're able to become stable, we can really start to move them on.”

From transience to transitional and permanent housing

Homeless individuals get referrals to stay at the Quality Inn from the Kitsap Community Resources’ Housing Solutions Center, after filling out an application, the same process for all shelter programs in the county besides the Salvation Army’s walk-up winter shelter. For the Quality Inn, people with the highest needs get priority when a room becomes available.

“We have folks with a multitude of challenges: we've got folks that have untreated mental health disorders and abuse disorders, involvement with CPS, and other entities,” Lund said. “The typical profile of a guest coming into shelter is spotty employment history, potentially past legal issues, family separation, and has most likely been living in conditions that are uninhabitable for good lengths of time.”

When guests come in, they are triaged by the mission’s case management team, housing support team and behavioral health specialists. The mission has a mental health counselor and substance abuse counselor integrated onto their staff for crisis intervention, assessment, treatment placement and recovery groups. Peninsula Community Health Services also provides on-site medical and dental care.

Guests aren’t required to use the services, but they must work with the mission’s housing team to find longer-term or permanent housing, Lund said. Guests stay at the Quality Inn on 90-day housing plans, which can be extended in 30-day increments several times by staff as long as they meet the low barrier shelter guidelines, giving them the ability to stay as long as they need.

The mission conducts a background check to ensure guests don’t have a history of violent crimes and maintains a zero-drug-use policy, though lockers are available for storage with no questions asked. Repeat violation of the shelter’s rules and policy to be a good neighbor can result in a guest being discharged from the program.

Though the Quality Inn serves to provide shelter for the county’s unhoused population to get people off the street, the mission’s goal is to connect individuals with transitional or permanent housing and promote self sufficiency.

The mission works with many housing programs, like Kitsap Homes of Compassion, the Bremerton Housing Authority, Pendleton Place and Eagle’s Wings, many treatment programs, and sober living houses to provide long-term housing options. Guests also move on to permanent housing using Section 8 vouchers from the Bremerton Housing Authority for low-income or market value housing, or through their own wages and savings accumulated while in the mission’s continuous-stay shelter.

“We really want to focus on the client and making sure that they're getting those individualized services because they all have different barriers,” Lund said. “Because we're working with the people that don't do well in the other organizations… Cookie-cutter services are not effective with the people that we're working with here.”

The mission staffs two housing coordinators that are commonly combing the market for housing opportunities, developing relationships with private landlords and working with guests to fill out housing applications and collect the documents they need for verification.

“It does take a lot of time, a lot of compassion,” Lund said. “We try and stay with them for a couple months once they transition, just to make sure they get settled and have what they need.”

Limited room at the inn

Pendleton Place, a joint project between several entities that opened mid-2022, houses 72 homeless adults with mental health and substance abuse disorders in one-bedroom and studio apartments at a facility on Kitsap Way near Highway 3 in Bremerton. Rent subsidies come from the Bremerton Housing Authority and tenants spend no more than 30% of their income on rent. However, all of the program’s units are occupied.

Kitsap Homes of Compassion, established in 2017, also works to connect homeless individuals with housing, either through their placing people in own units or helping them to find and apply for housing with other providers. Homes of Compassion, based in Bremerton, currently leases 26 three- to five-bedroom properties from homeowners in the community to provide permanent housing opportunities for homeless tenants with disabilities, SSI, SSDI or Section 8 housing vouchers.

There are only three properties with availability right now, however, with a waitlist of 25 people looking for housing, said executive director Scott Willard. The program is hoping to open two new homes within the next three months.

Similarly, the Kitsap Rescue Mission’s Quality Inn shelter is currently full. There are 200 people on a waitlist.

The Kitsap Rescue Mission is working with Kitsap County to open the Pacific Building shelter, with a 75-bed capacity, on Mile Hill Drive by October 2024 at the earliest, Lund said. The rescue mission also bought a building in Port Orchard to serve as permanent housing for low-income women with chronic medical conditions and multiple barriers who won’t be able to afford fair market rent in their lifetime.

The building, currently referred to as the Forever Home, will have 12 beds for women and will likely see renovations completed by the second or third quarter of 2024, Lund said. Next year, the mission will begin looking for a similarly sized and serviced Forever Home for men, she said.

“We have a percentage of people here (at the Quality Inn), I would say probably 20 percent of our folks, they're not eligible for anything out there. There's significant gaps in low-income housing.”

When the Pacific Building and Forever Home opens later in 2024, the mission will move many of its guests to the overnight shelter and permanent housing, whichever is most available, Lund said, though they will also accept people in need from outside the mission as well. There are 102 guests at the Quality Inn though, so the mission will need to stop accepting new guests soon to trim down to a 75-person model, Lund said.

This means there will likely be little to no room for homeless individuals outside of the program as the city of Bremerton prepares to clear collective encampments off the street with a new ordinance after a winter overnight shelter opens up at the Salvation Army on November 1.

“When you do the wraparound services, it gives an individual a greater chance of success once they're sheltered,” Wheeler said. “There's a finite amount of shelters we're going to be able to have in our county and in Bremerton and so we're going to need success at those shelters as far as transitioning folks out of them, to free up beds for that next person who's vulnerable.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap Rescue Mission planning move to Pacific Building