Neighbors hear pitch to turn Everett parish hall into daytime shelter

EVERETT — An unused building at the former Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church is being eyed as a daytime shelter for homeless people in Everett.

Around 100 people attended a meeting Thursday about the proposal at the building on the northwest corner of Everett Avenue and Pine Street. Some voiced support for the project, others empathy for homeless people but worry over the impacts to the neighborhood, with others boisterously fearful of burglaries and drug use.

It comes just a couple of months after persistent outcry scuttled a proposal for Hope Church to sell its property, in the Glacier View neighborhood, to the county for conversion into an overnight homeless shelter.

The Catholic Church-hosted daytime shelter process is still in its early stages, and approval is subject to permits from the city — which haven’t been submitted yet — that could be a year out.

First, groups leading the process to turn the former parish hall into a service center are hearing concerns from people in the Riverside neighborhood and beyond.

“I’m not interested in simply smashing something down on the neighbors,” said Joseph Altenhofen, priest of the now combined Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church parish.

The meeting was the second this month about the day shelter proposed as a partnership between Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church — the name of the now-combined north Everett parish — and homeless medical care nonprofit MercyWatch. The church hosts a dinner every Monday in the parish hall and holds some religious services at the Cedar Street campus.

The church would lease the space to MercyWatch, which envisions operating the program 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday for between 60 and 80 people. It would have bathrooms, laundry services, meals, medical screenings, showers and social workers, as well as potential partnerships for life skills training and other education.

“We want it to be a place where people can heal and get out of the circumstance that they’re in,” MercyWatch founder and president Dennis Kelly said. “To do that, they need what I call ‘basic human necessities.’”

Organizers said they’re listening.

“It’s going to be shaped and molded by the community feedback,” Kelly said.

Everett could fund the shelter with $2 million in federal COVID relief money. City officials said supporting a day shelter is in response to years of community requests and observed need.

An official tally of homelessness hit a 10-year high during the annual Snohomish County Point in Time Homeless Count in January with 1,285 people identified as unhoused.

That count is low compared to the likely actual number, at least based on MercyWatch’s roughly 1,500 clients, Kelly said.

Ben Breeden, Everett’s homeless response coordinator, agreed the official count is “very, very, very conservative.” About half of the county’s homeless population list Everett as their residence, he said.

There were 687 shelter beds across the county, according to an inventory published in January. That means hundreds of unhoused people, and maybe more, can’t find a bed at night.

“We are actively and passively not caring for half of our homeless population,” Breeden said.

While people at the meeting Thursday may share that concern, several also loudly opposed the shelter over fears of crime. Some shouted about not wanting homeless people wandering around the neighborhood and into their yards, or drug use near Garfield Elementary School and Garfield Park.

The meeting had three tables for people to provide written input on different topics: neighborhood safety, operations and site security. The “safety” table drew the largest crowd.

MercyWatch’s board intended to review and respond to the input later, Kelly said.

At this point, the day shelter’s early vision for a management plan calls for two people, one inside and one outside, providing security during the shelter’s operating hours, Kelly said.

They intend to have a metal detector at the entrance to screen for weapons, and clients would secure their possessions in a locker before entering the hall.

“The community fears about dozens of people roaming their streets won’t be realized,” Kelly said. “We can’t have people loitering around in the parking lot … or in the area around the church. … This is not a place to come and do bad things, this is a place to come and get out of bad things.”

Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church wanted to find a use for the building and campus that aligned with its faith mission, Altenhofen said. A committee he assembled to evaluate its potential uses zeroed in on the day shelter as meeting a community need, he said.

Developers have asked about the whole campus, Altenhofen said. It’s a rare large and underdeveloped property less than a mile from downtown Everett, Everett Station and the future light rail stop. He knows the brick church built in 1925 is important to his parish and the larger community, which may associate it with the indefinitely suspended annual Sausage Fest.

But to keep it, the property must be financially viable, have volunteer opportunities for his parish and “proclaim the message of Jesus,” Altenhofen said. The day shelter satisfies the criteria, as would other outreach programs such as a small home village or “cars to housing.”

Ben Watanabe: 425-339-3037; bwatanabe@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @benwatanabe.