From RangeMedia: Risk, Reward and Reimbursements
This article was too important to bury In The News.
Ed. note: I have been very impressed with the change in attitude at City Hall since our new Mayor took office. However, there is work to be done. Please read this entire article and sign up for a RangeMedia free subscription - and better yet, donate!
From RangeMedia: Risk, Reward and Reimbursements
The city wants flexible, cost-effective sheltering. Its billing process makes that risky for small nonprofit partners like Jewels Helping Hands.
Regina Thompson moved easily through the basement of the Morning Star Baptist Church last week, a space accustomed to informal gatherings for the congregation that has been converted into 24-hour shelter space for up to 30 people at a time. She stopped to chat with two of the current residents, asking them about their day, before popping her head into the kitchen to check on how dinner was coming. Thompson was hoping to bake the residents some of her beloved banana bread before she was off for the day. For Thompson, the daytime shelter and outreach supervisor for Jewels Helping Hands (JHH), it was a work day like any other.
After dinner was served and her shift was over, though, she drove home, loaded the remainder of her belongings into the truck she borrowed from JHH Executive Director Julie Garcia, and moved them into a storage unit before heading back to Garcia’s place, where she planned to crash for the next couple of weeks. One of the people charged with helping unhoused people find housing was now homeless herself.
Thompson had done everything right. She had a full-time job and, until recently, a couple grand in her bank account for emergencies. She’d been saving up for a car.
In January, when the new mayor and council praised this new scatter-site model, and began talking about extending the contract with JHH to continue partnering with churches across the city, it sounded like job security. But as Thompson worked through the first months of the year, providing services at those church shelters and connecting folks still on the streets with resources, she found herself increasingly worried about her own housing.
Because of a series of complications with JHH’s contracts with the city of Spokane — including city staff sending the wrong billing form and a bizarre IT snafu that led to the city blocking all emails from JHH — the organization had not been reimbursed for contracts it was already owed. It is harder for smaller organizations to weather reimbursement schedules than larger organizations. Compared to other non-profits providing services to the unhoused like the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities of Spokane (CCS) and Volunteers of America, Jewels Helping Hands is tiny.
In 2022, the most recent year we have tax filings, CCS reported $26.5 million of revenue — Jewels Helping Hands reported about $717,000. (Because Salvation Army and Volunteers of America are national organizations that funnel money through a parent organization, it’s hard to know how much is spent locally.)
JHH says they just didn’t have enough cash in the bank to float the organization while it waited for payment, so Garcia, Thompson and other members of leadership had personally decided not to cash their paychecks to ensure the organization could continue its work.
Thompson and Garcia both told RANGE it was more important to pay front-line workers to continue their street outreach efforts and non-management staff like Char (who asked to be referred to by her first name only), who lives and works at Morning Star while simultaneously battling cancer.