Give Hope Village homeless project a chance

Legislature must reverse move by Longview's Jeff Wilson to yank funding

State Sen.  Jeff Wilson and other critics need to give Hope Village a chance.

Recently the state Senate yanked $2.5 million from its capital budget that was earmarked to help finance the City of Longview’s pallet home community, which is the city’s latest and most promising effort to address its homeless problem.

The Senate acted after Wilson, a Longview Republican, convinced state Sen. John Braun, a Centralia Republican and member of the Senate budget committee, to cut the funding and give it to the Lewis County Homeless Shelter in Centralia.

Wilson thus shifted money from his own district to another because he and his conservative allies — which include Cowlitz County Commissioners Arne Mortensen and  Rick Dahl — oppose funding for Hope Village.  

Wilson’s demand put Braun in a vice, because the money had been requested by state Sen. Ann Rivers, a Clark County Republican who also is on the budget committee. She also is Longview’s community development director.  Braun did his best to gloss over the dispute, citing “concerns about (Hope Village) locally,” according to The Daily News.

Wilson told me last week that “I make no apologies” for supporting the Lewis County homeless shelter, which he said enjoys public support and serves people from both the 19th District, which he represents and which includes Longview and Kelso, as well as the 20th District, which includes Castle Rock and the north county.

In contrast, he said, “the Hope Village project in Longview is a major source of local controversy. … Public support should always be a factor in the decisions we make. We are here to represent the public’s interests, not to override them.”

Undercutting city’s chief initiative to help the homeless

Wilson, to be sure, is an enthusiastic supporter of this community. His refurbishment of the Shay locomotive and recent sponsorship of a plaque to honor Longview desegregation pioneer Victoria Freeman are among his contributions. But in this case he is undercutting Longview’s major homelessness initiative. And he is overstating the amount of opposition to the HopeVillage, a 50-resident, fenced community with 24/7 supervision located on Alabama Street across the street from the Longview city shop.

Much of the initial opposition came from a core group of conservatives and very vocal businesspeople and landowners from the area immediately around Hope Village. They had legitimate gripes about the blight and vandalism linked to the unsupervised tent city that operated there for three years until the city shut it down and replaced it with Hope Village in December.

Wilson himself owns two properties a short distance from Hope Village, one at 640 Oregon Way, which Wilson bought in March last year and which is the site of a transmission repair shop. Information about the other, listed at 1470 Alaska Street, was not immediately available on the Assessor’s web site.

I asked Wilson if his property ownership there biased him. He dismissed the concern: “Owning property on Oregon Way for 30 years is a bias? I am a taxpayer, thank you.”

Like it or not, Hope Village has sailed and should be supported. At this point there is no better alternative. It is housing slightly more than half the number of people who typically camped in the tent city. Officials looked for years for another site for a homeless camp but couldn’t find one.  Other cities, such as Tacoma and Vancouver, have established successful pallet home communities.  Hope Village has had strong City Council backing.

Hope Village evolved from a crisis in which homeless camps sprouted up at Lake Sacajawea and in the medians around Longview City Hall — where they could not be legally dislodged until the city provided an alternative. Do the critics want that blight to get renewed footing? Some of former residents of the Alabama Street tent city have already scattered across the city, particularly downtown, according to Sunday’s TDN.

It is good to remember the words of Councilman Mike Wallin, who told an overflow audience at a September council meeting: “We have to find a path forward. We have to do something, not just for those individuals but also for the businesses at Alabama Street, for the neighbors and the residents.”

For better or worse, Hope Village is part of that path forward.

Hope Village appears successful so far

A recent stabbing was a setback, but otherwise Hope Village seems to be working. The streets around the community appear to be free of litter and loiterers.  Residents get counseling to help right their lives and find permanent housing.  Seven residents already have done so, though a couple dozen have been evicted for not following the community rules, according to Longview City Manager Kris Swanson.

The jury certainly is still out. But Hope Village already is a vast improvement over the squalid camp that preceded it. It has won the support of the governor’s office.  Even the City of Vancouver, which Longview looked at as a pallet home model, recently sent representatives to tour Hope Village because of its early success, Swanson said.

The city just signed a contract for a grant with the state Commerce Department for $400,000 it will use to help pay for the Hope Village. And the city might be eligible for another $100,000, Swanson said.  She’s confident the state will continue supporting the project.

“It is on their radar and they know we need the funding.  It is nice to have the state recognize and support our effort,” Swanson said.

Yes. Hope Village is expensive. It will cost more than $1 million annually to operate. But that’s the cost to society of job losses, unaffordable housing markets, inadequate mental health treatment (see the Seattle Times Sunday story about the state’s failure in this regard), poor literacy, drug addiction and other factors that contribute to homelessness. The consequences of these problems have come home to roost here and across the nation. 

Hope Village can’t solve all these problems by itself. But the pallet home community already is making a difference. It should be given a chance to succeed. And the Legislature, which does not adjourn until April 23, should find a way to chip in that $2.5 million.