Houseless Community Member Hospitalized Due to Hypothermia Will Receive Shelter
Editors Note: Some facts such as date, time, and names have been redacted from this story to maintain anonymity and respect HIPPA law.
By Cole Goodwin
A community member who is experiencing houselessness has been hospitalized due severe hypothermia from prolonged exposure to the winter weather. City of The Dalles Police, community members, local health services, the Department of Human Services, and Mid-Columbia Community Action Council responded to the incident in a timely manner resulting in the administering of lifesaving care and securing shelter for the individual. On Dec 7th, St. Vincent de Paul board members will hold a meeting to discuss requests to reopen The Warming Place at SVDP.
“The community immediately responded to the situation and that has resulted in that person being placed in shelter. That’s the best we can do.” said Kenny LaPoint, Executive Director at Mid-Columbia Community Action Council.
The hospitalized individual had accessed shelter through MCCAC before but had left.
“People can’t be forced to go into shelter or to accept services,” said Kenny. “There’s resources available for people, and in many cases people are choosing to not go into a shelter environment.”
MCCAC is currently operating 60+ shelter beds. Four beds have recently become available. One of those four will be for the individual who was hospitalized when they are discharged from care.
LaPoint also noted that they were working to continue expanding access to services, raise awareness of services, and celebrate the housing successes that are happening everyday in our community.
“Two years ago we had five shelter beds, now we have 60,” said LaPoint. “Two years ago we had nine staff members, today we have 39.”
MCCAC has been in a state of constant growth, improvement, collaboration, fundraising, and strategic planning over the past two years, to address houselessness in the Mid-Columbia region. MCCAC has raised millions of dollars to build housing, a coordinated services facility, and has now helped dozens of people experiencing houselesssness find permanent housing, and has set a goal to move at least 20 people into permanent housing every year and in 2021 they successfully placed 21 people into permanent housing. In addition MCCAC has also helped to form the Mid-Columbia Houseless Collaborative, which consists of forty local agencies taking a coordinated approach to addressing houselessness in the region.
MCCAC, The Dalles Unhoused Task Force and DHS also have efforts underway to try and reopen one of the oldest and most well known sources of winter shelter in The Dalles: The Dalles Warming Shelter at St. Vincent de Paul in downtown The Dalles.
SVDP is one of only two locations in the City of The Dalles which has a land use citation that allows for shelter services to take place on the premises. Prior to the announcement that the Warming Shelter would be closing in March of 2022, the shelter had operated an average of 95 days a year during the winter months for a number of years.
Since March, The Dalles Unhoused Task Force has been working to find a solution to the closure. Both MCCAC and DHS have offered to provide staffing, resources, and hire security to operate an emergency winter weather shelter at the SVDP site for an estimated 15-20 nights a year. However the SVDP board has yet to approve MCCAC or DHS requests to reopen their doors as an emergency warming shelter.
Although SVDP board members are scheduled to meet privately on December 7th to further discuss the issue. However some feel forward motion on the project might still prove challenging as working relationships between SVDP and other local agencies have been strained in the past. Meanwhile, the closure is already having a serious impact on the unhoused population in the community, leading Mid-Columbia Medical Center to reach out to the State about the closure, citing concerns about a large influx of houseless patients that may need to be seen for winter weather related illnesses and injuries.
RELATED READING: Houseless Man Dies of Stroke During Winter Storm in The Dalles
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