TRAC shelter closes, city moves to end contract
The Trent Avenue homeless shelter, known by the acronym TRAC, closed Thursday. Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown’s office said the city was out of money to continue paying rent on the privately-owned building and paying the Salvation Army to operate it.
Brown said closing TRAC and ending the lease two-and-a-half years early will save the city more than $21 million.
The shelter, a former warehouse near the Spokane-Spokane Valley border, opened in 2022. It lacked indoor bathrooms and showers for residents and wasn’t fully equipped for people with disabilities.
The city spent $20 million over two years to operate TRAC, Brown’s office said, but did not see enough positive outcomes to justify the building’s continued use.
“Of the hundreds of people that have stayed at TRAC, only 10 percent were transitioned into more permanent housing solutions,” Brown said in a statement. “We know that warehousing people is not the right way to help them break through the challenges of homelessness, so we are moving to a new model that we know provides better results and is also more cost effective.”
Homeless service provider Julie Garcia doesn’t dispute that TRAC was not an ideal option. But Garcia, CEO of Jewels Helping Hands, said closing the shelter as the region enters its coldest months will put unhoused people in danger.
“I think that TRAC shelter was not a great solution when it was set up, nor did it provide humane treatment to people experiencing homelessness,” Garcia told SPR News. “I also believe that it put a roof over 500 people's heads and saved 500 lives last year. And I don't know what we can do to make or replicate that this year.”
The city is slowly moving toward a “scattered site” model, in which large congregate shelters like TRAC are replaced by smaller facilities in different parts of town. But that process in its infancy.
WA congressional members ask White House for disaster declaration
Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, sent a bipartisan letter to President Joe Biden, asking for a disaster declaration for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation because of devastating wildfires this past summer.
Colville tribal chairperson Jarred-Michael Erickson said big fires have become more common on the reservation.
“Unfortunately, we're kind of used to fire, which isn't a good thing, but we've had probably close to 800,000 acres burned since 2015 so we've had a lot of big fires here in the Colville reservation,” Erickson told SPR News.
The letter asks for assistance for more than 57,000 acres of Colville Reservation land that burned in July and August. The congressional representatives said the fires damaged infrastructure, disrupted communications, and disrupted daily life. The burn area also includes 61 culturally significant tribal sites.
Federal enviro regulators tighten allowable PCB levels for Spokane River
PCBs are chemicals that have been linked to cancer in humans. The chemicals enter the Spokane River through various sources, including the county and city municipal waste facilities, Kaiser Aluminum, Liberty Lake sewer operations, and Inland Empire Paper.
The human health threat comes from exposure to the water, or from fish consumed from the river.
The Environmental Protection Agency decided to restrict the amount of pollution to just 1.3 picograms per liter of water, a standard already implemented by the Spokane Tribe on its section of the river.
While the state standard is a more lenient 7 picograms, EPA spokesman Bill Dunbar said the agency chose the more stringent standard to meet requirements of the Clean Water Act.
“The Clean Water Act requires the most protective standard, and in that case it’s the Spokane [Tribe], and their water quality standard based on the amount of fish people eat there. It’s very strict,” Dunbar told SPR News.
Dunbar said the Washington State Department of Ecology will develop an implementation plan to gradually tighten the standards, but the process may take years to fully put into place. The technology necessary for industry to meet the standards has yet to be developed.
Day of the Dead observance planned for Spokane
Celebrations continue today, with costumes, colors and more – but not for Halloween.
Latin Spokane Radio’s Rafa Zamora will emcee the group’s first Festival of the Catrinas for Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1st and 2nd.
Zamora said with the growing Hispanic population in the Spokane area, he wanted to add an event that shares the importance of the holiday.
The Catrinas symbolize loved ones who have already passed away.
“In our case, as Mexicans, we celebrate with them, we laugh with them, we dress like them so we can dance like them in a form of respect to unite with each other for this holiday,” Zamora told SPR News.
The event will begin at 4:00 p.m. Two hours later at Riverfront Park, the observance continues with multiple dancing people dressed as skeletons.
Zamora said there will also be a Day of the Dead-related art exhibit on the first floor of the Spokane Public Library before the evening celebration.
- - -
Reporting was contributed by Brandon Hollingsworth, Monica Carrillo-Casas and Steve Jackson.