PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Winter Shelter opened its doors for the season at 4 p.m. Sunday.
By 4:05, a half-dozen mostly middle-aged men in caps and bulky coats were making up their cots for the night in the basement of American Legion Hall.
More stood talking to the volunteers from Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, veterans of the six-year-old program who always take the first of the 16 weeks the shelter is open.
The guests helped themselves to fresh coffee, and there were cheese and crackers and muffins. A hot dinner was scheduled for 5:30.
William Gawne, 48, a wiry man with mental health issues, sat on a dark green wool blanket that covered his cot and haltingly told his story.
“Here’s the truth,” said the Navy veteran.
“I went to treatment, and I went to a halfway house on Thomas Street. That didn’t work out, and I just kind of ended up on the streets.
“I kinda fell through the cracks.”
People with mental health and substance abuse problems make up about 40 percent of the shelter’s guests, which last year totaled 82 over the season, said deForest Walker, the housing services director for Olympic Community Action Programs, or OlyCAP.
Most are older than 40, many are frail from ill health and disabilities and 30 percent are military veterans, she said.
And some have turned their lives around, getting sober while without permanent shelter.
That’s what Michael Rosser, 46, plans to do.
He quit drinking a year ago and goes to regular AA meetings. He’s in Port Townsend to be near his nine-year-old daughter, who moved here from California, and has been living in his van for two years.
“I do a lot of volunteer work up here because it helps me stay connected and stay sober,” said Rosser, who hopes to start up a little day-labor business with friends.
Gawne and two of his running buddies, Don Pruitt and Erik Huwyler, spend their days looking for work, walking around or hiding out at their camp, the tents they use during the warmer seasons when there is no shelter for single adults in Jefferson County.
“It’s hard,” said Pruitt, who is plagued with physical problems.
Huwyler said he’s been without a permanent home for nearly a decade and has come to the shelter every year.
“I don’t know what I’d do without this place,” he said.
Single women are accepted at the Winter Shelter on a temporary basis because there’s only a small separate room in the Legion’s brightly lighted downstairs room to house them, said Skip Cadorette, chairman of Community Outreach Action Shelter Team, the six-year-old crew of individuals, churches and service organizations whose sole mission is the Winter Shelter for people who are homeless.
“COAST is really responsible for galvanizing this community,” said Walker.
There is other local shelter for people with children, and the shelter team can usually find better shelter for single women, Cadorette said.
It’s a team effort for the big three, COAST, OlyCAP and the Legion, said Cadorette, whose day job is pastor at Port Townsend Baptist Church.
When they started, the shelter rotated from church to church, he said. A permanent location was a godsend.
“None of us could do this alone,” he said.
COAST organizes the 450 volunteers who will help the shelter stay in business, but there’s one week still open, Cadorette said.
“We can find ways to put folks into the process,” he said. “If we got an organization that wants to step in, that would be golden.”
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Julie McCormick is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend. Contact her at 360-385-4645 or juliemccormick10@gmail.com.
To volunteer at the Winter Shelter, call Skip Cadorette at 360-385-5669.
