Future emergency shelter sites in Snohomish County contaminated with meth
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. - Two buildings purchased for use as emergency shelters in Snohomish County are now in need of remediation efforts after both sites tested positive for meth contamination.
The county had previously announced the purchase of the sites using money obtained through the American Rescue Plan Act, though the prices of both sites were dropped after the discovery of contamination.
A former America’s Best located in Edmonds dropped from $10.8 million to $9.9 million. The former Days Inn located in Everett dropped from $9.1 million to $8.4 million.
Kelsey Nyland, a spokesman from Snohomish County’s Office of Recovery and Resilience, told FOX 13 that the testing process and potential remediation work was already built into the purchase plan in the first place – meaning, the timeline hasn’t seen any major changes.
"We expect the facilities will be open sometime next winter, but we won’t have a definitive timeline until we hear from our partners/contractors," Hyland wrote.
The need to open additional shelters is top of mind – a recent point-in-time survey in 2022 identified 1,184 people in 953 households residing in shelter, transitional housing, or living without shelter in Snohomish County the night of February 21, 2022, the highest number since 2012.
At the announcement of the purchase for both sites, the county noted that the two sites combined added 129 new units to the county’s time-limited bridge housing program. County Executive Dave Somers noted in mid-2022 that residents had made it clear that they needed to stabilize/support vulnerable residents.
As weather turned cold this week, the need became more obvious: cold weather shelters in the immediate area are reporting that they have reached capacity.
According to workers at the Everett Gospel Mission, they have had 400+ unique visitors over the past two months in Everett at their cold weather shelters. They can house roughly 90 people on any given night.
"That’s the hardest part this year," said John Hull, the director of strategic initiatives with Everett Gospel Mission. "We have a limit. So, when we are saying no someone has to sleep in the snow."
Hull said he hopes that people do their research on the various types of shelter, and get more involved. He noted that there is a number of initiatives where groups are trying to build more shelters within the community – understanding what that looks like, and how shelters can become "good neighbors" is part of the housing solution according to Hull.
"It’d be great if we had small shelters all around so we never had to say, ‘no’ to anybody," said Hull. "So all of us as a community could say: ‘We don’t want you staying on the street here, but we do have dignified shelter and capacity over here.’ How do we get there? That’s how people in the community really can help."
According to Snohomish County, there is hope that cleaning up the contaminated facilities can add to the capacity of the county to offer further services to the growing population of people experiencing homelessness.