Roughly a month after the matter was first introduced, the Lewis County Board of Commissioners is expected to make a decision next week on a contract with the state that will fund local homelessness and housing assistance programs.
It remains to be seen how much money the county will accept after two commissioners expressed frustration with an increase in resources from the state amid increased taxation following the recent legislative session in Olympia.
Lewis County Commissioners Lindsey Pollock and Scott Brummer during the board's directors update on Wednesday, July 29, moved forward with a resolution that would approve a contract with the Washington state Department of Commerce and make more than $6.5 million in Consolidated Homeless Grant funding available to the county for funding local programs designed to keep people off the streets and in their homes.
The resolution is now set to appear on the board's business agenda for Tuesday, Aug. 5.
However, Commissioner Sean Swope, who was absent from the Wednesday meeting, told The Chronicle that local state lawmakers Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, and Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Centralia, have, at the board’s request, negotiated new terms with the Department of Commerce on the county’s behalf to return homeless and housing funding to 2023-2025 levels.
According to a letter to the county from the Department of Commerce and acquired by The Chronicle, the department has offered to propose a new contract with funding equal to the county’s actual spending from the 2023-2025 biennium, which would reduce the amount received by the county from the Consolidated Homeless Grant for the 2025-2027 biennium by $1.4 million. With the reduction made, the revised contract would make about $5 million in grant funding available to the county over the next two years.
Swope’s news of a new contract comes at the last second as Brummer and Pollock moved the original version of the contract onto the board's business meeting agenda after seeing little evidence that the state would allow the county to adapt the contract to the county’s demands.
Swope said he will introduce the new version of the contract to the board on Monday of next week in hopes of adopting the reduced funding proposal on Tuesday instead of the original contract proposed by the Department of Commerce for the 2025-2027 biennium.
Reluctance by Swope and Brummer to accept the full amount offered by the state has led to frustration among some of the local groups set to receive the money, including Hope Alliance of Lewis County, which has said it could close its doors without the funds.
Consolidated Homeless Grant
At the core of the contract negotiation is the Consolidated Homeless Grant offered to the county by the Washington state Department of Commerce. The department's Consolidated Homeless Grant offers funds to counties across the state to support local programs designed to aid homeless individuals or to support people who are at risk of losing housing.
In Lewis County, the funding supports a range of programs from housing and essential needs or eviction prevention that support residents already in housing to programs, such as the county’s night-by-night homeless shelter operated by the Salvation Army of Lewis County and the transitional shelter run by local nonprofit Housing Resource Center.
The funding is provided to local governments on a reimbursement basis, meaning that service providers provide services and then provide receipts and other proof of expenses along with an invoice to Lewis County. When Lewis County officials deem the expenses reasonable, they then send an invoice to the Department of Commerce, and the funding is released to the county and then the local service providers.
While the current contracts agree to provide more than $6 million in funding to Lewis County, the county has rarely used the full amount allocated in previous years. For example, while the county was allocated $3.6 million in the 2023-2024 fiscal year it only spent $1,758,487.98 over that period, meaning more than half of the funding available to the county stayed with the state.
Case against
The original contract proposal from the state received criticism from Brummer and Swope when it was first introduced during a county directors’ update meeting on Wednesday, July 9, leading to the board tabling it for a later date. At the time, the two raised concerns that the growing funding from the state was irresponsible. They also claimed that it led to increased spending by the county and increased services.
Records from the county confirm that the local government has spent an increasing amount on programs in recent years, spending approximately $1.75 million in the 2023-2024 fiscal year and just over $3 million in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Swope said he was concerned that the growing services would turn Lewis County into a “catch basin” for individuals from outside the area seeking services, as previously reported by The Chronicle. Local service providers deny that services for homeless individuals have increased in recent years. They instead suggest increases have gone to those who are already housed.
The solution proposed by the two commissioners was to reduce the amount of funding received by the county, or at least return it to the same amount as the previous biennium.
Also important to the commissioners’ case is a point-in-time count released by the state that shows Lewis County to be one of the few counties in the state to reduce the number of homeless residents. Swope said if the number of homeless people has decreased, then so should the funding for services.
Swope has also taken to social media to make his case to community members, last week posting a clip of body cam footage from local law enforcement that appears to be taken near the Centralia Timberland Library. In the footage posted to Facebook, which Swope says is just a small clip of the footage of a larger conversation, an unidentified individual talks about the services offered in the county and claims that struggling individuals get stuck in Lewis County unable to afford to leave and unable to pass up on the resources offered in the area.
According to Swope, he acquired the footage through a public records request after hearing about the interaction while speaking with local law enforcement officials.
Providers attempt to defend funding
As discussion around the funding has continued since the contract was first proposed at the beginning of the month, community members and local service providers have also spoken out to defend the funding offered by the state and warn that less funding could be harmful to community members.
Lewis County Director of Public Health and Social Services Meja Handlen and service providers have also testified to the accountability already involved in the programs, highlighting the reimbursement format of the funding that allows the county to exercise oversight on how the money is spent.
During a Lewis County commissioners meeting on Tuesday, July 15, a representative of the Lewis County Salvation Army, Gin Pack, testified during the public comment portion of the meeting calling for the board of commissioners to accept the funding proposal from the state as is.
During the meeting, Pack testified to the value of the programs the Salvation Army provides, not just in the night-by-night shelter but in programs that serve exclusively residents of Lewis County, such as eviction prevention. That program allows current residents to access funds to catch up on rent or other costs and endure difficult financial situations while remaining housed.
“In the last fiscal year, the Salvation Army partnered with Lewis County Public Health and Social Services under the provision of the Consolidated Homeless Grant, which administers $427,000 and a little bit more direct to services for eviction prevention funds,” Pack said. “These funds weren’t theoretical. They weren’t abstract. They were definitely not bureaucratic. They were targeted and accountable and transformative.”
Of the original $6.5 million in Consolidated Homeless Grant funding proposed by the state for the 2025-2027 biennium, more than half is earmarked for programs targeting current residents, with approximately $1.7 million dedicated to housing and essential needs, and $1.62 million dedicated to homeless prevention and other smaller amounts dedicated to programs such as rapid rehousing that help find currently housed people a new place to live.
