Helping Hands maximizes space by using the building as a group-housing re-entry program rather than renting out units
In November, Helping Hands, a reentry and outreach nonprofit serving those who are experiencing homelessness, opened an Astoria facility. It was full within its first weekend and taking referrals.
Alan Evans, the organization’s executive director, said the new facility was part of a restructuring the organization underwent at the end of last year, shifting services from its Seaside facility. The organization operates in Clatsop, Tillamook, Lincoln and Yamhill counties.
Helping Hands Seaside, the original location first opened by Evans, reopened an old facility, which became a 13-bed emergency women’s shelter, and a 15-bed men’s shelter moved to a new location altogether.
“We changed our footprint in our county, but didn’t want to pull services from Seaside,” Evans said. “We actually have about 20 more beds than we had before, they are just restructured,” Evans said.
In Clatsop County, where homelessness and a lack of affordable housing have been identified as a growing crisis, every new bed counts.
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An old Finnish boarding house built in 1896, the Astoria building was formerly a property of the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, or NOHA, and rented to low-income and Section 8 voucher tenants.
Residents of the units were given a 90-day notice to vacate, and an extension was granted to one resident who needed more time to move.
Raven Russell, the Outreach Director for Helping Hands, said NOHA knew Helping Hands could house more people using the building as a group-housing reentry program than they could renting out three one-bedroom apartments and a studio.
The emergency shelter and reentry program in Astoria now contains 65 beds.
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Situated in the historically Finnish Uniontown neighborhood, underneath the Astoria-Megler bridge, the building is a designated historic landmark. Buildings and homes with this designation must do upgrades and repairs in keeping with original architecture and are required to run all plans through the City’s Historic Landmarks Commission. A nonprofit is no exception: Repairs and renovations to ready the building cost $350,000.
Restoring the building to a dormitory-style boarding house is a return to its original use, from a time when Finnish immigrants were settling in Uniontown to work in the fishing industry. It also follows with the character of Uniontown as a gritty, working-class segment of the community.
Even so, the arrival of new transitional-living style services in the neighborhood caused some business owners to raise concerns when the sale of the building was first announced last year.
Evans said he received concerned calls from nearby hotels and businesses. His attitude has been to welcome community opposition. For him, challengers are an opportunity to gain supporters when the results reveal themselves. Already he says, “The naysayers we did have are now donors.”
This is true of Diana Kirk, owner of the bar Worker’s Tavern, located directly across Marine Drive/Highway 30 from Helping Hands. Initially, Kirk raised concerns online, and despite being a vocal advocate for working-class interests, thought Helping Hands would be bad for the neighborhood. By the end of the year, she hosted a fundraiser for the group in her bar, which raised over $1,000.
Kirk said one of the things she pushed back against was a tax-exempt nonprofit moving into the building. She feels more focus should be on working-class housing and also building a tax base. As a developer and an advocate for the growth of both Uniontown and the region, she viewed the building as better suited for rentals.
However, she said she believes that Helping Hands is good at what they do and sees people in the program waiting for the bus every morning to go to work.
“That’s how the system is supposed to work,” she concluded.
Citywide and countywide, this Helping Hands expansion has been anticipated positively by a region with mixed thoughts about why people are homeless and whether the addition of more services “attracts” more who are unhoused.
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Helping Hands uses a data driven model. No decisions are made for services without data to back them up. Their focus is on trauma-informed care.
Through the program, residents are supported to gain the skills necessary to step back into housed living. Raven Russell referred to “soft skills” – knowing what landlords are looking for, interview skills, etc. Case managers assess where there are gaps in a client’s skill sets and assign classes, which are offered on-site.
“Households are so much more vulnerable these days, people are becoming homeless who never would have before. If we try to cookie-cutter people into the same program with the same criteria it isn’t going to work for them,” Russell said.
Another critical piece is getting people connected to services outside of the program, and making sure community partners are at the table to help people where they need it.
While Evans believes that Clatsop County is a strong community, he still sees a need for greater community buy-in for more services. He feels the county is close to the kind of consciousness shift that will open more doors for wrap-around services. Where things are now, he said things are in a holding pattern. The homeless and housing crisis has been identified, but he is still waiting for donors to put their money in the right place rather than simply “throwing it at a problem.”
When it comes to getting people off the streets, Evans said most communities lack a simple knowledge of what people need. “It’s really hard to solve a problem when you don’t know what you are talking about.”
For this reason, he said, Clatsop County has yet to see outcomes, only worsening problems. He hopes the county will set up smarter funding streams to support people systemically rather than focusing on individual groups. From his view, while focusing on particular groups, such as women or veterans, does result in people being helped, the larger issue continues to worsen. He likens this to only squeezing one part of a balloon, which results in creating a bulge elsewhere. “Communities are not spending their money wisely.”
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Helping Hands is not a low-barrier program and therefore cannot support everyone on the street. Due to supporting families, they are not able to take in sex offenders. Also, sobriety is a prerequisite for entry into both the shelter and the reentry program.
FURTHER READING: Helping Hands shelter: Conditions definitely apply
For those who require medical support to become sober, the only place to detox in Clatsop County is the emergency room. “This is not supposed to be the function of the ER,” said Russell.
According to her, nearly half of the people they serve have an addiction history.
A methadone clinic is in the works for Seaside, although the timeline for opening is not yet known.
For those who are chronically unable to meet the sobriety requirements of the program, Evans supports the addition of low-barrier services such as a drop-in center to meet people where they are at. The shift Evans is waiting for may be in these low-barrier services, which are starting to gain traction on a new Astoria City Council, and among advocates.
On the other end of the reentry experience, the availability of housing, county-wide, is a barrier at all socio-economic levels.
While clients are set up with Housing Choice vouchers before they graduate the program, current wait lists are roughly three years long, according to NOHA property manager Marty Hughes. Frequently, vouchers expire before housing is found and the application process must start all over again.
While NOHA has not replaced the lost subsidized spaces, in time, the upper floors of Helping Hands will be renovated back into rentable units. Tony Johnson, executive director of the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, said this model is already in place at the Tillamook Helping Hands. The goal is to provide a steppingstone for program graduates into housing, where the benefits of group-living and services are still built-in.
Residents are already staying in the program longer simply because they are having a harder time finding housing. The average timeline for stay was once six to nine months. Today it is 12 to 15 months, mostly because of the additional time spent finding a place to live.
“When landlords are getting 100 to 150 applicants, the competition for the most desirable applicant is pretty steep. It makes people who are in a vulnerable position have a hard time getting up on their feet,” says Russell. “I don’t think people realize how competitive the housing market is out here.”
In general, the county needs more housing,” Russell said.
A housing study was commissioned by Clatsop County in 2018, and its findings and recommendations are still in early stages to determine how, where and what kind of building can take place.
Russell believes that even building some mid-range housing would take some of the pressure off of the rental market and open up some units.
To Evans, it doesn’t seem feasible for the county to “build its way” out of a problem. “We will not create enough affordable housing to make people successful. While housing is one of the issues, employment wages are another issue and child care is another issue,” she said. “We believe group housing and transitional housing is going to be the answer to this problem. It is cost-effective to the client and meets the needs of a community.”
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