MARYSVILLE – Homeless women and children may be getting a place to stay in Marysville soon.
City, faith and social service representatives met recently to talk about the need and potential solutions.
Mayor Jon Nehring said the city owns a house on Third Street that could be used for such a place temporarily, but that a huge transportation project will lead to its demise in probably less than two years. He said he hopes the faith community can come up with a different home by then.
Chief Administrative Officer Gloria Hirashima said that would be a logical extension.
“Churches often take in families and help,” she said. “We can partner and facilitate.”
Hirashima said the idea actually came from a local pastor, and the city stepped in to help get it going.
Organizers got the Everett Gospel Mission involved, since they are the local experts on the topic of homelessness. They want to model it after the Lydia House in Snohomish. The difference would be it would be run by local churches, not the mission or the city.
“Every community is touched by the homeless epidemic,” Nehring said.
The mayor emphasized would be nothing like a halfway house, or the mission. Instead, it would provide longer-term housing for women out of recovery who could hold down jobs, but could not afford permanent housing yet.
“It’s a bridge to re-enter society,” Nehring said. “If they relapsed we wouldn’t throw them back out on the street, but they would go back to the mission.”
He mentioned that the Snohomish house has had few remissions.
“They’ve already been on a long road to recovery,” he said.
Volunteers will be trained by the mission in how to deal with clients. The mayor said the help is social in nature.
“Showing we care about them,” he said. “Social contact that will help them integrate into the community.”
Nehring said the women who make it this far want to succeed. “Everybody wants to help those who truly want help,” he said.
While in the house, clients would pay about $300 a month in rent, plus food, utilities, etc.
Dan Hazen, executive pastor of Allen Creek Community Church, said faith groups have addressed the issue individually in the past, and are looking forward to combining forces on this effort.
“We have a great network of churches in town,” he said. “We just don’t want to step on each others’ feet.”
Hazen said in other communities cities don’t work with churches.
“I’m super proud of city government for stepping in,” he said.
At some point, Hazen said he hopes churches can combine available finances and purchase an abandoned, foreclosed home, for example.
Another option might be a church with an adjoining house their pastor may not use.
Hazen said his church got involved in the issue a few years ago when a homeless person who sometimes went to church there died.
Hazen said Marysville citizens don’t have to worry about residents of the house being just from the freeway offramp. He said those folks are “still doing research” on homelessness.
Those at the Marysville Women’s/Children’s Center are past the relief and rehabilitation stages and have moved on to the development stage.
“They are through the crisis, at a place in-between,” he said.
Sylvia Anderson, chief executive officer of the Everett Gospel Mission, said she also is excited about partnering with Marysville’s faith community.
“It’s an underutilized resource,” she said. “We share a common vision of helping neighbors. I have a dream that every church (in the county) would have one house (to help the homeless). Then we could make a dent” in housing the homeless.
“We’d love for the faith community to step up and own this,” she added.
Anderson said the mission is based on Christian principles, but that is not a requirement for clients.
“God will lead them where they want to go,” she said.
Anderson said some people are worried that, “If you build a house (for the homeless) they will come.” But she said the homeless already are here in Marysville.
“I drove by three on the way here,” she said, adding it’s crazy that, “Houses are empty, and we have a homeless problem.”
