Organizations share service information during homelessness panel

Monroe Library managing librarian Phil Spirito hosted a panel discussion on homelessness last week, to provide a real-time inventory of local nonprofit service organizations that operate in the Monroe area.

The panel included Monroe Gospel Women’s Mission director Dorothy Stima, Cocoon House outreach director Elysa Hovard, Beck’s Place founder Melanie Ryan, Sky Valley Food Bank director Neil Watkins, Monroe Police Deputy Chief Ken Ginnard, Monroe Cold Weather Alliance director Amber Mehta and Take the Next Step youth navigator Michael Lorio.

Each organization representative gave an overview of the services they provide. With the exception of the Monroe Police Department, all organizations are nonprofits, requiring donations, volunteers and grant funding to operate. 

Monroe Gospel Women’s Mission

Stima provided attendees with a brief overview of services available through the mission, which provides shelter to approximately 16 to 18 women every night. It serves approximately 100 women per year, who are allowed to remain at the mission for a period of 90 days or longer. While at the mission, women are provided with shelter, clothing, food and basic hygiene products.

Women are able to attended weekly community dinners and classes at nearby Take the Next Step, and are invited to attend a PTSD support group at the Monroe Baptist Church. The mission is located near downtown Monroe off Lewis Street, and strives to provide a non-institutional, homelike environment. 

“We try to be a very soft place for the ladies to land,” Stima said.

The mission receives a large amount of community support, Stima said, with both the Monroe Kiwanis and Monroe Rotary clubs providing monthly dinners, and the churches of Main Street bring lunch every Wednesday. Thrive Fitness in Monroe provides mission clients with a free membership during their stay, and they receive food donations from the Sky Valley Food Bank.

The mission has both volunteer and permanent staff, including its own cook.

“We have a cook who is just beyond belief; she is such a wonderful cook,” Stima said. “She said she always wanted to run a bed and breakfast, but she never imagined that this would be the kind of bed and breakfast she would run.”  

Clients are routed to the Monroe Gospel Women’s Mission via 2-1-1, a countywide resource hotline that is operated by Volunteers of America. The mission relies on private donations, grants and annual fundraising events. For more information about the mission, visit http://monroegospelmission.org/.

Cocoon House

Cocoon House is a countywide organization that serves youth in the Monroe community ages 12-24. The nonprofit is based in Everett, but the organization has nine mobile case managers it deploys throughout the region to respond to youth in crisis. Through the “Safe Place” program, any teen in crisis can seek services in any facility that displays the yellow, triangular-shaped Safe Place logo. A teen could arrive at the Monroe Library or any other designated Safe Place, contact Cocoon House and a caseworker would be dispatched to reach them within 45 minutes. Caseworkers help with shelter, detox, obtaining identification and other services.

“Whatever their needs are, our case managers walk alongside those youth and connect them to services,” Hovard said.

They also operate a six-bed shelter in Monroe for youth under the age of 18, which will accommodate them for up to two weeks. The shelter has beds designated for state-dependent youth, who are able to get referrals to a long-term shelter once the two-week period is up.

They have also implemented preventative strategies to help struggling parents.

“There’s also another program that we have for parents called ‘Prevention,’ ” Hovard said. “This is really to provide support to those parents that are struggling with their teenagers, so that we can prevent them from going on the streets and becoming homeless teens.”

For more information about Cocoon House, visit www.cocoonhouse.org.

Beck’s Place

Beck’s Pace is a new organization that is currently awaiting 501(C)3 nonprofit status. Melanie Ryan said she founded Beck’s Place out of a passion for the bond between humans and animals, and a desire to help homeless and low-income individuals and their pets. Her goal is to provide services that enable people to stay with their animals whenever possible, and to provide shelter for animals so that their owners can remove themselves from unsafe situations.

“If we have a domestic violence victim who will not leave their situation because they have no place to put their animal because no shelter will take animals, we provide boarding services,” Ryan said. “If we have somebody who is ready and willing to go into treatment, but again, has no place to put their animal, we can provide those services.”

Beck’s Place has four core objectives. It wants to keep families, including pets, together whenever feasible, simplify access to human services, reduce the number of animal surrenders at local shelters and improve the health and welfare of animals.

Ryan is not taking monetary donations currently, but is seeking volunteers to help her build her organization. For more information about Beck’s Place, visit www.becksplace.org.

Sky Valley Food Bank

The food bank, which is located adjacent to the Monroe Boys & Girls Club, serves community members who live within the Monroe School District. The food bank is open 9-11:30 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 6-7 p.m. every Monday. Watkins said the food bank serves 275 families every month on average, distributing about 80,000 pounds of food. In August, the food bank distributed 95,000 pounds of food. The food bank has a base staff of around 80 volunteers, who help pick up donations, work in the office, manage the warehouse and distribute food.  

The food bank also provides food and snacks for the Monroe Cold Weather Shelter, snacks for the YMCA’s after-school kids’ program and food for the Monroe Gospel Women’s Mission. Every school year, it provides a weekend backpack program for kids to ensure they have enough food to get through the weekend. This year, a total of 100 kids have signed up for the weekend food program, which starts in a couple weeks.

The food bank also provides school supplies at the start of each school year, handing out 531 backpacks filled with grade-specific school supplies this year.

Typically, an individual needs to have a photo ID and some proof of address, such as a power bill, in order to use the food bank. Watkins said they will serve homeless individuals who cannot provide address verification documentation. Currently, the food bank is serving an average of 40 homeless individuals each week.

“The homeless individual gets a 10-pound bag, and it’s all food that doesn’t have to be cooked or can easily be cooked on a portable stove or something like that,” Watkins said. “So we give them 10 pounds of food and they can come and get it once a week.”    

Monroe Cold Weather Shelter

Amber Mehta’s cold weather shelter serves homeless individuals in Monroe any time the temperature dips below 32 degrees between Nov. 15 and March 15. Open from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., the shelter is located on West Main Street near downtown Monroe, and can accommodate up to 14 people a night – sometimes more if needed. Cots are provided by the Monroe Fire Department, which has access to more. The shelter also allows clients the opportunity to shower.

“We would never turn anyone away,” Mehta said, adding they also accept pets that are in crates. 

Donations to the cold weather shelter can be made through Take the Next Step, which serves as the organization’s fiscal agent. Mehta said she is always looking for volunteers to help cover the midnight to 4 a.m. shift at the shelter.

To raise awareness of her shelter, Mehta is holding a youth-oriented event called “A Walk in Their Shoes,” on Friday, Oct. 23. During the event, Monroe School District kids in grades 1-8 will have the opportunity to obtain a meal from the Sky Valley Food Bank, where they will receive the same type of food that would be given to a homeless person. From there they will walk to the Monroe Library, which is also frequently used by the homeless, and then on to the shelter where they will spend the night.

For more information about the cold weather shelter, visit http://monroecoldweathershelter.org/#.    

Take the Next Step (TTNS)

TTNS is a nonprofit agency dedicated to assisting homeless and low-income individuals and families in the Monroe area. The agency’s mission is to offer “friendship, help and hope to our neighbors in need,” which it seeks to accomplish through a variety of targeted programs. TTNS staff and volunteers have worked to create an all-inclusive community available to those that need them the most.

TTNS programs include weekly community dinners and life-skills classes, a program for young moms called Growing Together, a community drop-in resource center and the Kidz Club.  

Kidz Club takes place 3:30-5:30 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon during the school year. Kids receive a healthy snack and help with any reading, math and other homework. The community drop-in resource center is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The resource center features a computer lab, and provides food and other basic needs items for clients.  

The goal at TTNS is to help low-income and homeless community members transition out of hardship by taking the next steps necessary to improve their lives. This means targeting the root cause of the issue by connecting clients to things like drug and alcohol treatment, mental health counseling and other services. Once a month Everett Community College nursing students attend the community dinners and provide free medical screenings to clients, including blood pressure checks, lung function tests, blood sugar and body mass index.

For more information about TTNS, visit www.ttns.org.