There's a tall chain link fence around the homeless camp in Colville, with green privacy slats somewhat blocking the view to or from the busy street on the other side.
Though, as camp resident James Summers says, you can still see through it if you try to look.
"It's no different [here] than on the other side of the fence," he says.
The 1-acre camp off Louis Perras Road was created by the city of Colville in October 2022 to give people without homes a designated place to live. It's lined with gravel and has a water spigot and a few porta potties near the entrance.
The city will close the camp by October this year, now that federal case law no longer deems alternative shelter spaces necessary before cities can enforce local anti-camping laws.
But with no affordable housing options or shelter space available in rural Stevens County, residents and service providers are all asking the same question: Where are people supposed to go?
"I feel like wherever we go, they're gonna tell us to move," says Beverly Arbuckle.
The 63-year-old owns her own trailer and has parked it at the camp since it opened. But she has no way to move it, and nowhere to park it if she could.
"I do better in my own home. It'd be a shame to give up my trailer," she says.
There were close to 40 people living at the camp before its closure was announced in October. Now it's down to about 20 people, Colville Mayor Jack Smith says. He doesn't know where most of them have gone.
"A surprising number just leave," Smith says. "We do our best to document, but most people leave the camp and don't tell us where they're going."
People without permanent homes will often slip back into remote places where they won't be harassed by police but where they're farther from resources they need, says Teresa Lang, executive director of the Hope Street Rest Stop, a day service provider and gathering place in Colville.
The camp is just a visible "tip of the iceberg" so far as the real number of people struggling with housing instability in Stevens County, says local Dr. Barry Bacon. Bacon founded the nonprofit Hope Street to serve people without homes. He likens living without a home to "living in a war zone."
"The difference in life expectancy [between] housed versus unhoused, the latest studies are saying, is 27 years," Bacon says. "There isn't anything else like that. Smoking doesn't do that. Alcohol doesn't do that. Lack of housing does — it's deadly."
Rural Resources, a nonprofit providing wraparound services in housing, nutrition, employment and victim services, estimates that there are about 80 people without homes in Stevens County. Bacon says Hope Street has served as many as 250 unique individuals in one year (in 2016, their first year of operation).
Regardless, the city's camp has not been a home for the majority of homeless people in the county.
"There are still a bunch of homeless who don't live here," camp resident Summers says.
Cruze Thompson, the housing director for Rural Resources who has tried to ease homelessness in Stevens County for a decade, agrees.
"Before the first camp over here, homelessness was invisible," he says. "I assume once the camp is gone and homelessness is invisible again, the homeless problem will just be forgotten again."
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
In 2018, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decided in Martin v. Boise that cities could not enforce anti-camping laws if there weren't enough shelter beds for people with nowhere else to go.
Colville Mayor Smith says he saw an increase in homelessness on the streets of Colville in 2021. The Stevens County Board of Commissioners then loaned Colville about $120,000 from the county's homeless fund to create a solution. A designated camping spot "was the only idea we could come up with," Smith says.
Rural Resources Chief Executive Officer Bryan Raines disagrees that it was the only option suggested.
"I think a better approach would be to stabilize folks, which is what we do with the shelter space we operate," he says, referring to Rural Resources' two indoor shelters in Stevens County. "Then, start looking at that transitional housing piece and moving people into more permanent supportive housing, which is really where I think we can see successes from the work we do."
Raines says the city did not include Rural Resources in its decisionmaking process.
The city moved forward with the camp, and it "seemed to work, to some extent," Smith says, by concentrating homeless people in one area.
"Mainly, it's a place where if you want to take advantage of services, you can," he says.
But last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Martin v. Boise with its decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The court stated that the "enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment'" regardless of whether there are other places to be or not.
After the Supreme Court's decision, Colville "changed ordinances back to be in concert with that," Smith says. "The deal we made when I sold this to the public was that we need this as long as these judicial decisions are in effect."
The city planned to spend about $80,000 of the money from the county to open and maintain the camp for up to 10 years.
When Martin v. Boise was overturned, so was the city's commitment to the camp. Smith says the city will try to pay the entire loan back.
The closure will take place over nine months, which the mayor says is "reasonable for the people who are there." On Jan. 1, the camp stopped accepting new residents. On April 1, departure notices will be distributed, and on Oct.1, the camp will officially be closed.
According to Thompson from Rural Resources, there are 19 shelter beds in Stevens County, not counting a crisis pregnancy center or a volunteer-run warming shelter that's sometimes open during the cold months. In a county with just over 40,000 residents in an area larger than Delaware, all 19 beds are already occupied.
Catholic Charities and Rural Resources are partnering to build the Colville Safe Haven, with 70 affordable housing units for low-income or homeless families. Even though the project isn't scheduled to be finished until later this year, all units are already spoken for, Raines says. It's not an option for people leaving the camp.
The new housing is a great thing for the community, he says, but the fact that it's already full speaks to the sheer number of community members experiencing housing instability.
"I think we all probably grew up with kids [who said,] 'Oh, I live in my grandparents' house with my mom or dad.' It was just kind of common in this area," Raines says. "I didn't consider them not stabilized with housing."
But it's those people who are at risk for homelessness. With the lack of affordable housing in the area, they're also the ones competing for a unit at a place like Colville Safe Haven.
"The majority of homeless in our rural county is not something anyone sees, hears or talks about," Thompson says. "It's the mom with a couple kids in high school, or the family whose house just burnt down, or one of the parents lost their job and they can no longer pay so they're choosing to sleep in their car because they didn't want to go through the eviction process. What you see in the camp is a stereotype, but there's so many more outside that stereotype."
BUILDING BELONGING
The house at 640 N. Elm St., just north of downtown Colville, is almost 120 years old. Three years ago, it was falling apart.
Now, complete with refurbished hardwood floors, crown molding and custom countertops, it's on the market for $825,000.
The newly beautiful home is thanks to Hope Street Restoration, a new extension of Hope Street run by Bacon's wife, Shelley, who employs homeless people to preserve and beautify Colville's current housing stock. Shelley is a life coach, job coach, mom and cheerleader, expecting her paid employees to be sober, on time, respectful and respected.
Flipping craftsman homes and selling them at market rate doesn't provide housing to Hope Street Restoration's homeless employees. But in addition to providing job skills, Shelley hopes it will help build rapport with the community, who will hopefully recognize the homebuilders as community members worthy of homes themselves.
"They become family. They become your people," she says. "They respond to the way you treat them with dignity."
The Bacons are trying to fortify a pathway out of homelessness, providing basic food and hygiene needs at the Rest Stop, then moving people into clean and sober shelters, then offering job training through Hope Street Restoration, then hopefully moving people to more permanent employment and housing that has yet to be created.
But it's too big a job for one organization.
"There are gaps all the way along that path that are not being built," Barry Bacon says. "We feel like the city leadership and the county leadership really need to work on solutions alongside us."
Service providers from Hope Street, NEW Alliance Behavioral Health and Rural Resources work alongside each other on the ground, though there's little formal coordination between the different organizations.
Rural Resources receives money from the Stevens County homeless fund. But it just lost the modest funding it had been receiving for almost four decades from the city of Colville that went toward the organization's victim services and child advocacy division.
Hope Street has received funding from the Stevens County homeless fund once — $14,000 for the permits for a new sober shelter called Patrick's Place that Hope Street is planning.
Both Raines and Bacon think collaboration is key to addressing homelessness effectively.
"It's more solvable here if you can get folks to work in the same direction and come up with some really common sense solutions," Raines says. "Things like having a housing project go up. ... It can be challenging to push through some of these projects."
Geno Krager grew up in Colville and has been staying at the camp there for two years. He's been waiting for housing the entire time.
"I don't have a vehicle, so I need to be close to town for my appointments," he says. "It can take a few years to find something like that."
He owns a motorhome but can't find a place to park it.
"Everybody thinks this homelessness thing's contagious," he says. "You get scared trying to figure out what to do because you have nowhere to go." ♦
