SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane mayor Lisa Brown and city officials have declared a state of emergency to help the city respond to this weekend’s frozen temperatures.
During a Spokane City Council session, Neighborhood Housing & Human Services Director, Dawn Kinder, says that 183 beds will be brought online through various providers at different locations.
This will help prepare for a surge of those in need of a warm place to stay when temperatures reach single digit highs this weekend.
The 183 beds will be provided over the next seven days, Spokane’s Compassion Addiction Treatment center will also be providing an additional 45 spaces to keep people safe during these frigid conditions.
The Cannon Street shelter is set to be an overnight warming facility from 7 p.m. – 7 .m. “Clearly transportation is a key part of this… A couple of our providers are organizing transportation and already have vans available.”
When discussing the opening of Cannon, Kinder states “the goal is to certainly maintain the surge capacity until we’re at a point where we can open and then potentially maintain whatever we can… the staffing and making sure that they are prepared to open safely is our critical piece.”
The city will be entering into a contract for overnight staffing to support the costs, but most of the actual services will be done by volunteers.
Within a couple weeks from now Brown states, “we will be doing our annual point-in-time count of the unsheltered population… Over the next year we will be engaging in a process to build community resilience, not just for cold but also for smoke, heat.. to build up additional capacity centers with resilience hubs in our neighborhood centers.”
Information about warming shelter operations, locations and how to get there will be on the city website. There will also be a section on how to help out during this time if that means volunteering or donating.
To see the capacity at existing shelters, go to the Shelter Me Spokane website.
