PORT ANGELES — Clallam County’s main agency for housing homeless people needs shelter from its creditors.
It’s short $350,000 of its $2.7 million annual budget. And it needs the money fast.
Serenity House owes that in bills that are overdue a month or more, said Kim Leach, executive director.
They include tardy rent payments to some private landlords who’ve started turning out newly housed people back onto the street, according to Leach.
The nonprofit organization has asked for aid from Clallam County commissioners, who made no promises Monday when Leach — along with food banks from Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks — approached them during their weekly work session.
The food banks asked for a combined $47,000 to fund a pilot project to get food, especially produce, to needy families, while Serenity House requested help with its shortfall.
Commissioners said they would consider contracting with Serenity House and the food bank requests at a later meeting.
Serenity House served nearly 4,000 people in 2014, when it helped house almost 1,300 families, including 372 veterans’ households, according to Leach.
Serenity House once received $300,000 in annual sales at its thrift stores in Port Angeles and Sequim, and had such success getting state and federal grants that it hasn’t held a fundraiser in recent years.
But thrift shop competition and shrinking grants put it in the same position as many of its clients, said Leach and Scott Schaefer, the agency’s board president.
On Feb. 17 it closed the Street Outreach Shelter, 505 E. Second St., that housed 16 to 18 people overnight. Fixing its failing sewer would have cost $40,000.
The Salvation Army started an emergency overnight shelter at 206. S. Peabody St. that will remain open at least for two more months.
But there will be no such angel for the Hygiene Center that Serenity House opens for three hours each day at 516 E. First St., or for a gender-segregated single adult shelter for women.
Although it’s where homeless people can clean their clothes and themselves to be presentable for employment, closing the Hygiene Center by March 31 could save $1,700 a month.
Housing single men and women — although separately — in a single building will recoup about the same amount starting April 1, said Leach, although some women tell her they’re rather return to the streets than to share a building with men.
Serenity House is partly a victim of its own success, expanding its programs and achieving the goals of a 10-year Program to End Homelessness.
It set up prevention strategies; adopted a “housing first” policy for solving related problems of joblessness and mental illness; and opened one-stop Housing Resource Centers in Port Angles, Forks and Sequim;
In late 2006, it received a $1 million state grant. But that funding, which began in 2007, was spent over the next three-years.
Serenity House received other state and federal grants, but they required matches from unrestricted funds — mostly from its thrift shops — because grants can’t be used to match grants, Schaefer said.
Furthermore, those grants have dried up, creating a deficit that mounts by $31,000 a month, Leach said.
One person Leach and Schaefer don’t blame is Kathy Wahto, who retired Dec. 19 after heading the agency for 13 years, during which it became a model for programs around Washington state and across the nation.
“We’d been dealing with this for several months before she left,” Schaefer said, “but we hadn’t started to cut expenses.”
Speaking for herself, Wahto told Peninsula Daily News last week the Serenity House board had tried to close the Street Outreach Center last year, but such encountered fierce opposition from its volunteers that board members allowed it to stay open.
So what went wrong?
First, the Port Angeles thrift shop, 502 E. First St., “ran into some headwinds,” Schaefer said, shuffled through three directors after store founder Sally Garnero died in 2008 and cofounder Ruth Scheie left the area.
“But since Deanna Price has been store manager (beginning in October 2014), the sales have come up close to 40 percent a month,” Leach said.
Meanwhile, however, Goodwill Industries opened a store in Sequim in July 2010, and the competition halved Serenity House’s revenue from its shop at 215 N. Sequim Ave., Wahto said.
Serenity House moved its thrift shop in 2012 into a center named Serenity Square, 551 W. Washington St., where revenues are climbing, Leach said.
“I think right now we are very comparable to what we did at the old store before Goodwill,” Wahto said.
The agency’s annual budget is $2.7 million, but that’s minus millions the agency received prior to 2009 that the state Legislature withdrew and provided no alternate funding.
However, Serenity House’s payroll still totals $1.2 million for 55 employees, Leach said.
It distributed $600,000 in rent to private landlords in Clallam County last year.
Electricity for its subsidized apartments totals $88,000.
Garbage collection costs $6,000, and water and sewer utilities in Port Angeles and Sequim run up another $165,000.
Schaefer said the agency has sought utilities forbearance from the city of Port Angeles but has been refused, except to perform energy audits on Serenity House shelters to determine if they qualify for low- or no-cost weatherization.
Other money-saving steps have included cutting $5,800 a month in wages, and eyeing around $10,400 more, almost all of it by reducing hours, not cutting positions.
In the meantime, Serenity House employs many people whose wages are subsidized by other sources, including elders reentering the job market and Peninsula College students pursuing work-study courses.
The hardest-hit programs are those for the people hardest hit by homelessness, Leach and Schaefer said: people with brain disorders, disabilities or addictions who are highly challenged to find and keep jobs while they try to lead stable lives.
If they hadn’t found shelter through Serenity House, they might be in hospitals, prisons or jails, Schaefer said, if not living in cars, tents or beneath bridges.
One volunteer plans a Zumbathon fundraiser, Leach said, and Schaefer said the board is considering a “celebration” in 2016 of Serenity House’s success at meeting its 10-year goals.
Until then, they said, people can help by mailing tax-deductible donations to P.O. Box 4047, Port Angeles, WA 98363; by donating clothing, furniture and household goods to the thrift stores; and by shopping there.
“Every penny that comes in supports our programs,” Leach said..
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
