EVERETT — Eight tiny Pallet shelters will be giving families experiencing homelessness a place to re-ground themselves.
By late September, this quarter-acre dirt lot on the back end of the church's grounds will be the Faith Family Village shelter.
It was Roxana Boroujerdi's dream three years ago to create the space.
The church was happy to host. The city used a slice of its federal pandemic funds to purchase the shelters. The Interfaith Family Shelter was drafted in as experts to vet and coordinate families.
All is an extension of the charity work the church is already doing. Faith Lutheran, which is an Evangelical Lutheran Church, has long operated a weekly food bank and a hot meal service from its campus at Madison Street and Cady Road.
Officials broke ground Monday, Aug. 21.
“Roxana had the idea if we feed people, we can probably house people, too,” Interfaith’s director Jim Dean said.
Those who enter will get more than a roof. Boroujerdi said they’ll go through a re-entry program that includes classes on financial management and being a good renter. They will possess a certificate to show to landlords to help attain permanent housing.
Family shelters are becoming a recognized need, and one which U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen called “particularly urgent” last week.
“When you think of homelessness, you don’t think of the five or three-year-old sleeping in a car,” Boroujerdi said.
But they do.
In its annual countywide homelessness survey, of the 1,085 households counted this year, about one-tenth, or 125 households, had children in them. There were 202 homeless youth counted among the 1,285 people found in the informal survey.
A barrier for families with men and women together is they won’t split up the family nucleus. Except for homeless family shelters, the shelter systems predominantly go by gender. The women’s shelters take women and children; the men’s shelters take men.
In Everett, Interfaith is basically the exception at its dormitory in north Everett.
The village increases Interfaith’s number of available units from 21 to 29, Dean said. The impact is magnitudes more: Interfaith gives people 90 days of sheltering. Adding the eight tiny homes mathematically could help 32 families a year.
Each 100-square-foot tiny home has four beds inside. There also will be two bathrooms and two showers on the property.
Lutheran Northwest Washington Synod Bishop The Rev. Shelley Bryan Wee recited Isaiah 1:17, which calls to defend the oppressed, and Luke 4 in her remarks. The shelter represents the Lutheran call to serve, she said.
Donors gave bedding and more for this effort. When people leave, they’ll take the furnishings with them to their new homes, Boroujerdi said.
An adjacent church garden could teach kids where their food comes from, Boroujerdi said.
The majority of the neighborhood feels good about Faith Lutheran’s shelters opening, View Ridge-Madison Neighborhood chair Dennis Dudder said. There were numerous community meetings over two-and-a-half-years before last week’s groundbreaking, Everett community development director Julie Willie said.
Beyond the eight Pallet shelters at Faith Family Village, the city has funded Pallet shelters at the Everett Gospel Mission and is helping a 20-shelter program by the Phil Johnson Ballfields being set up by Volunteers of America Western Washington.
The shelters can be erected quickly, and are built at a plant in Everett.
