PORT TOWNSEND — The Board of Jefferson County Commissioners will defer the role of lead grantee for the Consolidated Homeless Grant.
The state Department of Commerce-administered grant provides funding to county jurisdictions for services essential to homeless communities. If the county had accepted the lead role, it would have needed to meet an acceptance deadline for next Monday.
The grant has been administered in the area since at least 2015, county grants administrator Amanda Christofferson said. Olympic Community Actions Programs (OlyCAP) has been the lead grantee since then, she said.
In the current state biennium, $1.6 million was awarded to OlyCAP to fund various services aimed at supporting the homeless in the county, according to a board document.
Late in 2024, in response to a Department of Commerce prompt, county staff started engaging questions about whether the county should take on the role of lead grantee.
When the county started expressing interest, OlyCAP officials were caught off-guard.
“We were just made aware of this, I think in mid-December, when we were asked for documentation, without knowing what it was for,” said Viola Ware, OlyCAP’s director of housing and community development.
The county always has the right of first refusal, OlyCAP Executive Director Holly Morgan said. Historically, the county has always passed on the role.
“This year, the county started to look at it a little differently,” Morgan said. “They popped in on us and asked us for a lot of information. We didn’t find out what they were getting at until a couple of weeks in.”
OlyCAP shared a lot of information and had several meetings with the county before learning the motivation behind the inquiry, Morgan said.
“We have had very little time, honestly, to kind of circle our wagons and get ourselves in a position to speak to our performance both in the past and the future,” she said.
County commissioner Greg Brotherton serves on OlyCAP’s board.
“OlyCAP’s taken a few hits,” Brotherton said at Monday’s commissioners’ meeting. “We’ve talked about the rebirth of OlyCAP with a lot of new staff and new leadership, but there have been other grants that they’ve lost. Each one of those comes with a capacity hit. This would compound that, and we want to make sure that OlyCAP is still there providing services.”
Brotherton said he trusted the organization when leaders said the loss of the grant would hurt their capacity to offer services.
“A little time, a little grace for OlyCAP I think is not just due, for the good service they provide, but also would benefit those services downstream,” Brotherton said.
The three county commissioners discussed moving toward taking on the lead grantee role in the biennium following the one currently approaching. The biennium begins July 1 and runs through June 30, 2026.
“Most counties do accept CHG funding and act as the body that coordinates the homeless response system for their county,” Christofferson said. “They sub-grant multiple housing service providers in order to achieve all of the administrative goals and requirements of the CHG program.”
Morgan said she was relieved when she heard that the board had deferred managing the grant in the approaching biennium.
“We would like to think, and we will be working towards this end, that the county won’t feel the need to take it on in the next biennium, that they will be content with services that we are providing,” Morgan said.
Both Morgan and Ware started with the organization last summer. Morgan said OlyCAP has been working to regain community trust. Work is currently being put toward a 2025 strategic plan focused on transparency and collaboration with other homelessness service providers, she said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
