Head of Everett’s Interfaith shelter says ‘it’s time for me to move over’

Published 9:00 am Saturday, July 27, 2024

EVERETT — Jim Dean is a doer.

He’s spent seven years at the helm of the Interfaith Family Shelter in Everett. In that time, he nearly tripled the nonprofit’s capacity from 11 families to 29. Before that, he was pulling 70- to 80-hour work weeks as a high school principal.

“I don’t want to be up here,” Dean told a crowd gathered Thursday to celebrate his retirement at Trinity Episcopal Church in Everett. “I’d much rather be working.”

Starting next Wednesday, he said he’ll have a chance to work on projects closer to home, like putting in a new bathroom at his house and tending to his “sorely abused and neglected” garden.

Lynsey Gagnon, a local with 14 years of nonprofit experience, is stepping up to take Dean’s place. Gagnon was a finalist for The Herald Business Journal’s Emerging Leaders award in 2022 and 2023.

“I’ve heard it over and over again: move over, boomer,” Dean said in an interview. “I’m listening to that and saying it’s time for me to move over.”

Ways to do more

Back in 2017, Dean knew he needed a change.

He’d spent nearly four decades in education, including six years at the head of Cascade High School and nine as Glacier Peak’s first prinicipal.

He was 60 years old and the long hours were taking their toll. A couple years earlier, he’d had a cardiac incident that left him with stents in his heart.

Sitting in his office one day, Dean had the thought: “I can just see myself being rolled down this hallway on a stretcher.”

He asked himself, “Is that what you want?”

Around the same time, Dean was part of a committee trying to find a new executive director of Interfaith. He’d been on the agency’s Board of Directors for eight years, serving as its president for the previous six.

He asked his wife if she could think of anyone who’d fit the position.

“Have you looked in the mirror?” he remembers she told him.

Two days later, Dean recused himself from the hiring committee. A few months after that, he had his last day as principal of Glacier Peak on a Thursday and started at Interfaith the following Monday.

Early on, Dean recongized the organization could be doing more.

“We’ve got to figure out ways to help more people,” he thought.

In 2019, he expanded Interfaith’s reach with Cars to Housing, developed in partnership with community group Everett Faith in Action and Cascade View Presbyterian Church. The program provides a safe place for families living in their cars to park and resources for them to find housing.

About 60 families have been through the program in the past five years, Dean said, adding Interfaith has about a 60% success rate in getting them into stable housing or a shelter.

Go out and talk to people

Under Dean’s tenure, Interfaith launched another four programs after that. One is Faith Family Village, a Pallet shelter site on Smith Avenue. The first families moved into Pallet units on the site in January.

Another two are satellite shelter locations at churches in Marysville and Everett.

Then, there’s the Homeless Prevention program, which offers support to families at risk of becoming homeless.

Other shelter projects have failed because of community pushback, like the county’s ill-fated Hope Church shelter proposal.

The key to avoiding outcry, Dean said, is going out to talk to neighbors before making any decisions. Most people are reasonable if you address their concerns, he explained.

Another word of wisdom: “When you meet with people, never, never, never bring them all together in a big room with a large crowd unless it’s your ribbon-cutting.”

Maximum group size should be 12, Dean said. Otherwise, you’ll just get screamed at by the angriest people in the group.

A smaller meeting allows you to answer people’s questions, he said. It also allows those who are angry to hear others’ questions and support for the project.

Dean’s problem-solving abilities impressed Interfaith Board President Greg Long.

At the height of the pandemic, for instance, Interfaith leaders had to figure out how to run a shelter without spreading the virus.

Dean led the effort to mitigate that risk with measures like alternating schedules for staff and educating families on how to stay safe, Long said. Interfaith continued for over a year without any COVID infections.

After a lifelong career as an educator, Dean could have just retired, Long said. Instead, “he stayed on working, doing this job for very low wages for somebody with his skills.”

A different perspective

Dean’s successor brings more than a resume to the job. Gagnon knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of social services.

In her early 20s, Gagnon lived in her car for a period. At that time, she was working for the nonprofit United Way of Snohomish County. That experience gives her a different perspective, she said.

She understands, for instance, what it feels like to have to get to work on time and pretend everything’s OK, knowing you’ll have to return to your car at night.

Homeless families, too, she said, “want to hide. They don’t want to be seen.”

Gagnon admires Interfaith’s “strength-based approach” to working with families, emphasizing what families are already doing right that they can build on.

She also believes the nonprofit world needs to work on fair pay for its own employees.

“We have to support them so they’re not in the same spot” as the people they’re trying to help, Gagnon said. “It’s really, really tough when you’re working with people and you’re helping them get living wage jobs, but you’re not making living wage yourself.”

Supporting staff also means recognizing how hard it is to listen to difficult stories every day, Gagnon said, and giving employees the time they need to take care of themselves.

Before taking the top job at Interfaith, Gagnon was the executive director of Community Resource Centers at Volunteers of America Western Washington. There, she oversaw cold weather shelters in east Snohomish County.

Gagnon hopes to expand Interfaith’s Homeless Prevention Program.

“That is so needed in this county, because it’s so hard once you do lose that housing to get housing,” she said. “If we can keep families in their homes, that’s so much more effective than trying to pull them out of desperation and out of homelessness.”

Sophia Gates: 425-339-3035; sophia.gates@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @SophiaSGates.