The camp opened in May to provide additional shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic and help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

According to a recently amended contract with the church, the encampment’s cost rose to $66,735, which is paid for by Community Development Block Grant coronavirus response funds, a part of the CARES Act. The city of Vancouver pays for site staff, administration, trash service, port-a-potties, water and electricity tied to use of the south parking lot at 2711 N.E. Andresen Road in central Vancouver.

There is a hand-washing station, and a shower trailer owned by Food with Friends is available four days weekly. The church provides some snack foods at night and quick breakfast items in the morning. The overnight shelter opens around 7 p.m.; people have to leave by 7 a.m.

The site averages 25 to 27 campers nightly — a group pastor Brian Norris describes as a community.

“It’s a success in our eyes,” he said.

The tents are spaced to provide social distancing and are disinfected when a new person arrives. So far, the church has hosted 133 people experiencing homelessness. Some people have left to move into an Oxford House or pursued another form of recovery, Norris said.

He said the group is cleaning beyond the church’s property to counter the stereotype that homeless camps are dirty or attract trash. In a couple of weeks, the church will re-evaluate the campsite and determine next steps.

Other community groups are helping out by providing meals. The Sikh community, for instance, is offering lunch every Sunday through the end of July through Living Hope’s Live Love Center. For years, the center has operated a food pantry, clothing closet and low-barrier severe weather shelter, and offered meals and showers to the homeless community.

We met up recently with Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados Food with Friends , Elizabeth Fitzgearld with Clark County Volunteer Lawyers Program, and Liz Cerveny, from North County Community Food Bank and dropped off your donations to them.

Showers, hand washing stations and a parking lot encampment are among the offerings meant to help prevent the spread of coronavirus among the homeless population.

Living Hope Church has long hosted a shower trailer on Wednesdays and Sundays but decided to expand to Monday and Friday when the virus came into play, said Pastor Brian Norris.

“We started realizing there was more of a need,” Norris said.

The Navigation Center doesn’t currently offer showers. Also, Norris said, homeless people who have gym memberships can no longer access those facilities to shower.

Each day Living Hope’s Live Love Center is open, it provides a meal, restrooms and showers using a trailer from Food with Friends. The showers are particularly important due to the COVID-19 pandemic putting an emphasis on personal hygiene and cleanliness. The showers are bleached between each use.

“It’s already vital, but now it’s more needed,” said Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados, who heads Food with Friends, the nonprofit that runs the shower trailer. She is also a Battle Ground city councilor.

Lately, she’s received more calls from people asking about showers. Without the showers at the Navigation Center, Food with Friends’ trailer is the only place for people who are unhoused to get a free shower, she said. DesRochers-Vafeados recently spoke with a man who hadn’t showered for a month.

She’s working on getting another shower trailer up and running. The aim is to remodel the trailer and set it up permanently at Living Hope Church while the other trailer could be hauled around town wherever it’s needed.

Living Hope Church is also in talks with the city to open a temporary tent encampment behind its building off Andresen Road.

For now, its homeless outreach is happening outside in the parking lot. Norris said the Live Love Center doesn’t just serve homeless people. Those who are living paycheck to paycheck come to the center to get bags of food or clothing. Volunteers are handing people items rather than letting them shop inside.

As Norris reminded people waiting for showers Friday afternoon to keep space between each other, someone said: “But we love our friends!”

“I know. We’ll get back to hugging soon,” Norris replied.

Doc Kerr noted that during this pandemic, everyone is being told they can’t go here or there. For the homeless, “that’s every day.” Kerr, who’s been homeless in Washington for five years, said he doesn’t normally like asking for help. But one day he came to Living Hope Church, and they treated him so well he decided to keep coming back.

“It’s a blessed place,” Kerr said. “They give their time for people who have nothing, who feel like nothing.”

Mall encampment

The showers are located about two miles away from the city’s temporary parking lot encampment at Vancouver Mall where people are quarantining in their vehicles.

Thirty-five of the 40 available spots are being used at the encampment, Dave Perlick, recreation manager for the Parks and Recreation Department, said Friday. With a couple of families on site, there are 60 people staying there.

Perlick said the city increased trash collection and added a weekly street sweeper to ensure the site is well maintained. The Clark County Food Bank provides boxes of food to people weekly, and other donors have provided toiletries and pet waste bags.

The parking lot remains open through May 4 under the governor’s current stay home, stay healthy order.

“If that order gets extended and the mall remains largely closed, it is our intent to extend the safe park program,” Perlick said in an email. “That decision is contingent on discussion with Continental Real Estate and the Vancouver Mall.”

Fourth Plain Pit Stop

In addition to extra showers and a parking lot encampment, homeless advocates launched the Fourth Plain Pit Stop where people can use portable restrooms and wash their hands in the parking lot of River City Church.

The church is across from Water Works Park and a few blocks down from the Navigation Center. Jamie Spinelli, a case manager with Community Services Northwest who helped put the pit stop together, had been mulling how to help people staying in the area. Spinelli said she was glad to see the city reopen some public restrooms but was concerned Water Works Park and Leverich Park weren’t included; restrooms at both sites are heavily used by people living outside. She hopes the pit stop helps fill the gap.

The Rev. Ryan Sidhom, pastor at River City Church, said church leaders were praying for an opportunity to serve the homeless population, especially after hearing about the Navigation Center’s closure.

“That’s when Jamie called me and pitched the idea,” Sidhom said.

The church is a year old and focuses on ways it can serve the community, Sidhom said.

“This is something that’s kind of built into our DNA,” he said.

The pit stop opened Thursday with three portable restrooms, including one that’s wheelchair accessible, and two hand washing stations. It’s open daily, but hours depend on volunteer staffing. Washington Recovery Services funded the startup costs.

Volunteers are tasked with ensuring people maintain social distancing and disinfecting the portable toilets after each use.

“Which makes these the cleanest toilets in town,” Spinelli quipped.

She’s kept up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for people who are unhoused and sought guidance from Clark County Public Health on how to run the pit stop.

“Handwashing has been called a lifesaving measure at this point,” Spinelli said.

Unhoused people need to take the same mitigating efforts that everyone else can employ at home. If COVID-19 gets into the homeless population it “would spread like wildfire,” Spinelli said.

Spinelli noted the pit stop isn’t intended to be a hangout. On Thursday, there weren’t more than three people on site at a time. Food, clothing and other supplies are not distributed to preserve the site’s cleanliness.

The Fourth Plain Pit Stop could, however, become a place for outreach workers to meet clients, and Spinelli expects education around COVID-19 to be done there.

She recently met a homeless man who said he didn’t know anything about the virus. People staying outside may not have access to the same information housed people do or be able to stay up to date with the constant stream of coronavirus news.

“I was at the point where I didn’t know what I was going to do,” said Morin, 29.

She messaged friends on Facebook, and one of them got her in contact with Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados. Her nonprofit Food with Friends recently began addressing minor transportation needs for people experiencing homelessness — whether that means providing a bus pass, gas or, in Morin’s case, a new car battery.

Morin didn’t expect much. She’s faced a lot of disappointment in her life and met plenty of people who say they’ll help and never follow through. When DesRochers-Vafeados showed up holding a new battery right when she said she would, Morin almost couldn’t believe it.

“I mean, it made me cry. I was so thankful,” she said. “It kind of my gave me my confidence and everything back as far as the community and stuff. People are out here actually trying to help rather than looking down on people who are homeless.”

DesRochers-Vafeados returned later that night with a few pizzas that Morin dispersed to other homeless people staying in east Vancouver. She used to live off Northeast 49th Street, so she stays on the east side, the place she calls home.

Morin was among the first to get assistance through Food with Friend’s new grant-funded initiative called Project Going Places. It’s meant to assist people with minor transportation costs.

“There are so many people where this is a huge barrier for them and holding them back,” said DesRochers-Vafeados, who is also a Battle Ground city councilor.

For instance, she met a woman who was stuck at a rest area and needed a new battery and gas.

“That one thing was preventing her from getting to the Social Security office,” DesRochers-Vafeados said.

Local non-profit organization Food with Friends is doing something unique in Clark County: it’s offering people living on the streets a free hot shower through a mobile shower cart service. The organization, which has served individuals and families living outdoors since 2016, started the shower outreach project in the winter of 2018. At present, there are no shower facilities like this available for people living unsheltered in the area. So, giving people the opportunity to take care of their personal hygiene through a simple shower is helping fill a steep need within Clark County. Currently, the project serves about 50 people a week at 2 different host sites on specific days and times.

Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados, founder of Food with Friends, explains that the organization started organically. She has served alongside other community members to help the homeless population for many years and during that time, she has developed a variety of meaningful relationships with people she meets on the streets.

After serving sack meals every Saturday on her own, her friends and family encouraged her to start an official non-profit organization. “Initially we thought we were only going to serve sack meals, so that’s why we came up with the name Food with Friends, as we were literally out having food with our friends,” Cherish says. “Over time, we grew and added more services, like the Shower Outreach Project. So now our name doesn’t quite mesh up as well as it once did, though we still go out and have food with our friends each Saturday.”

The mobile shower cart has two showers and two changing rooms, and the water is heated through propane tanks. Cherish explains that the unit was recently a victim of a hit-and-run, and it took some time to get it repaired and back into service. Now, the project is in full swing again and organization leaders are looking for ways that they can help reach even more people that need it.

The unit is on-site at Living Hope Church and Friends of the Carpenter on designated days and times. Currently, the organization is actively looking for more host sites to further expand their reach. Cherish shares that it’s easy to become a host and only requires a few things: volunteers to help run the showers, a water spigot, power and a sewer clean-out. “We obviously want to serve more people,” she says, “and if host sites are flexible with the pickup and drop off times, I think we can add more services.”

In addition to the shower project, Food with Friends serves about 325 meals a month to unhoused people. The organization also offers an emergency weather outreach service, where volunteers distribute cold climate survival gear during inclement weather. Their goal is to help prevent weather-related injuries or deaths.

To help keep things running well, the organization has many business partnerships within the community. Last year, Bombas donated 5,000 pairs of socks for distribution and they are offering another donation this year that is expected to arrive soon. In addition, a local pizza establishment donates leftover pizzas every weekend and milk and juice are donated weekly from a local dairy. Cherish explains that working on these projects is a rewarding way to serve Clark County’s underprivileged. “We build real friendships with those we serve,” she says.

Looking at the future, Food with Friends wants to invest in more shower units while expanding their amount of host sites. They are in the process of an internal reorganization and will fill gaps if needed, but the goal is to remain volunteer-run and always keep relationship-building with the underserved at the forefront of their mission and operations. “We are 100 percent volunteer run, we are consistent, and our only agenda is truly to serve people in our community,” Cherish explains.

Showers are available on Sundays from 2:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Living Hope Church’s Live Love Center (2711 NE Andresen Road, Vancouver) and on Wednesdays from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Friends of the Carpenter (1600 W. 20th Street, Vancouver).

To learn more about their services, visit the Food with Friends website or call 360-723-5791.

Food With Friends and this group came together, partnered with Friends of the Carpenter and Living Hope Church and found the money to buy a fully contained portable shower trailer. This trailer is placed at Friends of the Carpenter on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday at Living Hope Church.

According to the executive director of Friends of the Carpenter, five to 25 people have been showering each day.

My congratulations to Jamie Spinelli, Food With Friends, Friends of the Carpenter, local churches, Share and all the groups that came together to provide a little bit of dignity and warmth to our homeless friends. This group is always in need of funds to keep it going and for volunteers to help it continue.