PORT ANGELES — There’s sufficient overnight shelter space for homeless people during the current icy blast, but Serenity House seeks volunteers to staff a daytime warming station.
Although the agency’s Single Adult Shelter, 2321 W. 18th St. in Port Angeles, is usually full, the Street Outreach Shelter, 520 E. First St., provides places to sleep for about 15 people nightly, said Kathy Wahto on Thursday.
Wahto is executive director of Serenity House’s programs for families, single adults and young runaways.
Numbers in the Port Angeles Street Outreach Shelter actually have declined from the 24 people who slept there some nights last month, she said.
The SOS opens at about 9 p.m. daily and closes at about 7 a.m. People cannot stay throughout the day.
The facility’s front office, however, could serve as a place for people to warm themselves, Wahto said, if enough people volunteer to oversee it.
Sundays are especially hard on people without homes because they cannot ride Clallam Transit System buses to escape from the cold, she said.
Open only when frigid
“We only want to do it during sub-freezing stretches,” Wahto said.
Although “we’d be perfectly happy” for someone to step up with another location, the SOS office is warm, “and it does have a couple of bathrooms.”
The warming station would be simple, she said, “nothing more complicated than coffee, chairs and some magazines.”
Another concern for homeless people is food, Wahto said, because the SOS has no kitchen facilities.
The outreach shelter moved to First Street this year after temporarily using the basement of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 510 E. Park Ave., which has a kitchen.
“We’d been able to do a holiday meal at St. Andrew’s,” Wahto said.
“Now, where can people go on Christmas Day?”
Aside from a Christmas dinner, “we’d really like to give [SOS clients] a breakfast somewhere and a bag lunch.”
Wahto suggested that people prepare simple covered-dish meals, leave them at the SOS and take away the dishes the next day.
The shelter has no refrigerator to store leftovers or a large sink to wash dishes, she said.
“It would be simple to bring in soup and rolls and cookies. We have the tables there; we just don’t have any kitchen.
“I think people would be very grateful for food. It’s just hard not to have something warm in the stomach.”
Eventually Serenity House will finish remodeling the Tempest Building, 535 E. First St., site of the old Aggie’s Motel and restaurant, where it can reopen its commercial kitchen.
Completion of the project, however, is at least two months away, Wahto said.
Beyond hot dishes, dry socks are another constant need in wet or snowy weather.
“Your shoes and your boots get wet, and your socks get just disgusting,” Wahto said.
People willing to supervise a warming station, prepare hot-dish meals or donate socks should phone Mike Svec at the Dream Center in the Tempest Building, 360-452-2883.
However, anyone can help by donating money or used goods to Serenity House’s Thrift Stores, 502 E. First St., Port Angeles, and 215 N. Sequim Ave., Sequim, Wahto said.
Housing resource fair
Serenity House plans to hold Homeless Connect, a housing resource fair in concert with the annual Point in Time census of homeless people on Jan. 29.
It will provide one-stop information on all programs for people who have no safe, stable place to stay.
A receding economy doesn’t hold a happy outlook for them, Wahto said.
“People are really starting to do without a lot of things. It’s going to be a tough winter for some people to survive.”
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@ peninsuladailynews.com.
