St. Vincent de Paul reopens day shelter

According to Board Member Ed Elliot, this emergency day shelter not only provides The Dalles’ only free showers and laundry services apart from transitional housing, but also connects people experiencing homelessness with a network of community resources.

Board President Katheryn Gilligan said as time goes on, the shelter plans to add additional open days, hours and added services when the volunteer staff grows — and if things go well between their unhoused clients and the neighborhood.

“​​We have a new camera system that shows all around the facility, the outside and the inside. And anybody who is not behaving, or being ‘a good neighbor,’ as we put it, will be asked to leave,” Gilligan said.

She added that the camera system will allow St. Vincent de Paul to monitor anyone breaking city rules by loitering around the building, and deny them services if they refuse to stop.

In 2023, 282 individuals in the Columbia Gorge Region experienced homelessness, according to point-in-time data from the Mid-Columbia Community Action Council; 53% of those people were over 60 years old; 47% were under 24; and 27% of the total were veterans.

“St. Vincent de Paul is there to help, not just the unhoused, but also the fragilely housed and anybody who’s having any kind of difficulty or struggling. With the prices of groceries going up, our food pantry has been very busy,” Gilligan said. “Some come to do laundry there, because it’s free, and it helps them if they don’t have a washer and dryer.”

Since the shelter has been closed, Gilligan said she’s noticed more people living on the streets around town.

“I’ve always seen them hanging around the stores, but I see them under the overpasses and just walking down the streets, whereas I don’t recall seeing them as much before and certainly not before the pandemic.”

Neighborhood concerns initiated the shelter’s closure

For several years, residents living near the St. Vincent de Paul building brought concerns to the city council about the impacts of some of its clients on the neighborhood.

City Attorney Jonathan Kara told Columbia Gorge News he is prevented by law from commenting on the ongoing litigation due to the mediation terms, but he described the scene in the neighborhood surrounding the building prior to its closure.

“Pentland Street looked a bit like a war zone,” he said. “It was not a safe, healthy place.”

“We had 1,300 911 calls within a 12-month period resulting in — I think we cited something like 30 arrests in a month and a half,” he said, adding that approximately 10% of 911 calls in the entire city that year came from the single block where Pentland Street meets W. Third.

A Pentland resident with small children told the city council their family had been without access to their own front yard for four years, Kara said, with their property values plummeting.

“It became clear to the city after engaging with St. Vincent de Paul’s board, before the lawsuit was filed, that they were not equipped to handle the situation that they were causing.”

The city filed the public nuisance action on Sept. 11, 2023.

Kara said the city’s case is based on a municipal code saying that if visitors of a business commit certain violations within 300 feet of its location, that business is responsible. He noted that the State of Oregon lays out different statutes defining a public nuisance, which he argues apply to this situation, but haven’t been addressed in court.

“A lot of those arrests were multiple arrests of the same people,” Gilligan pointed out. She said these few disruptive individuals shouldn’t be the reason the peaceful majority lose access to services at St. Vincent de Paul.

Similarly, Elliot said, “Most of the people that came in the past have been good people, just a few have been troublemakers.”

New shelter has changes to the building and behavior policy

During the shelter’s closure, the St. Vincent de Paul society renovated the building. In addition to new paint and plumbing work, volunteers gave the building a deep clean and brand-new flooring.

New measures will also be in place to promote the shelter’s behavioral policy.

Gilligan explained, “Every time one of our clients comes in, we are going to make sure that they have read the policy, or it has been read to them, and they’re supposed to sign it so they understand the behavior that is expected of them in our neighborhood — not just in our facility, but in the neighborhood.”

The decision to stop providing meals had multiple factors, Gilligan said. The two partner organizations previously providing meals at St. Vincent de Paul, Bread and Blessings and Community Meals, have opted to serve them elsewhere. Elliot said the city’s requests played a role.

“The city has never had an issue with the provision of services. It’s just the manner in which St. Vincent DePaul Society of The Dalles provided those services. That was the issue. It was how they did it, it wasn’t what they were doing,” Kara said.

While Kara said he is unable to publicly disclose the specific changes the city is requesting St. Vincent de Paul to make, Columbia Gorge News asked him to describe what other homelessness service providers in the Gorge region are doing right, in the city’s view.

Kara pointed to the Gloria Center and Mid-Columbia Community Action Council (MCCAC), calling them the “gold standard.” He said their success lies in their consistent enforcement of their no drugs, alcohol and disorderly behavior policy.

“The fundamental difference between St. Vincent de Paul Society of the Dallas and Mid-Columbia Community Action Council is that Mid-Columbia Community Action Council offers transitional housing services that have rules for their clients,” he said. “Absent the ability to actually enforce those policies and to actually kick people out that are causing trouble or using drugs or drinking alcohol, I’m not so sure they would be in such a successful position.”

Gilligan said St. Vincent de Paul plans on denying services to individuals who refuse to respect the behavioral policy, and to ask these individuals to leave.

“We plan to stay on top of that, and the smaller hours will help us manage it a little bit better. That’s the other reason why we decided to start out kind of slow, so we can kind of manage things better,” she said.

When Columbia Gorge News asked Gillian how the open house went from her perspective, she said many neighbors attended.

“I’m sure there was a little bit of reservation about, you know, people coming back in the area that were causing problems before,” she said. “We assured them that we are going to be trying to keep on top of that.”

She also noted City Manager Matthew Klebes and City Council Member Tim McLoughlin came by, spoke to a board member briefly and left.

“We’ve heard a lot from people around the city and neighbors saying that they think that we need to be open, that we do provide good services and the people need the services,” she said.

“We are really, really happy that we are reopening and looking forward to being able to provide these services to anybody who needs them.”