PORT ANGELES — The Shelter Providers Network of Clallam County will review needs for emergency overnight shelters on the North Olympic Peninsula when it meets Wednesday.
The group will meet at 10 a.m. in Room 160 of the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St.
The network is composed of about 50 public and private agencies that cooperate to fight homelessness, its causes and its effects.
Sign-in will start at 9:45 a.m. The meeting is expected to conclude by 11:30 a.m.
“Our goal is to get people from homelessness permanently housed,” said network coordinator Martha Ireland.
Serenity House, the county’s largest homelessness agency, returned to providing emergency shelter Oct. 1 at its Single Adult Shelter, 2321 W. 18th St., Port Angeles, near William R. Fairchild International Airport.
The agency began offering an overnight refuge to up to 14 adult men and women — housed separately by gender and segregated from the long-term single adult population — after the Salvation Army closed the shelter, 123 Peabody St., Port Angeles, it had operated since Feb. 17.
The Salvation Army had opened overnight accommodations after Serenity House was forced to close its Street Outreach Shelter, 508 E. Second St., when a sewer collapsed and the agency had no funds to repair it.
“We will be looking at how the shelter part of the system is working and what is needed to make it work better,” Ireland said.
Location a problem
A drawback to the Serenity House shelter — which is the only available facility in Port Angeles at which people can be housed overnight — is its location far from where people usually gather.
Clallam Transit System’s No. 26 bus stops nearby, but service ends at 7:15 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Buses do not operate Sundays.
Also on agenda
Also on the network agenda are updates on services and housing, as well as plans for the Clallam-Jefferson County Regional Forum on What We’re Doing to End Homelessness Together, to be held Nov. 18 at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Center in Blyn.
In addition, Marki Lochhart, Olympic Community Action Programs client services manager, will announce the startup of the seasonal Low Income Heat Energy Assistance Program to help needy people pay heating costs.
Anyone interested in ending homelessness in Clallam County is welcome at the network meeting.