Vancouver Safe Stay site provides 'sense of stability' by allowing pets
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The latest Safe Stay community for people who are homeless in Vancouver is getting an upgrade Thursday with the goal of making the village feel more like home.
At Kiggins Village Safe Stay Community, the people staying there are offered the creature comfort of allowing their pets to stay with them.
The hope is that improving this Safe Stay village helps improve outcomes for people transitioning out of homelessness. It gives them a place to be proud of and a place to stick together with the only living things some people may still have.
“Everyone deserves a home and a space that feels comfortable and safe and inviting,” said Lisa Horness, the community partnerships manager for Do Good Multnomah.
“We are doing a day of service to kind of beautify the stay safe community,” added Chris McDowell, of the Home Building Foundation of Greater Portland.
By residents having the ones closest to them — human or otherwise — advocates say it can make their stay at the village more meaningful.
“When you build spaces that inspire dignity, you empower people to make those next steps,” Horness said.
Part of Thursday’s beautification process of the pod homes at the Kiggins Safe Stay Community includes installing front porches and a dog run. This helps nail down a space for people who are homeless and the dogs that make sure they don't have to go through it alone.
“We see people who will self-select out of certain types of programming because they cannot bring their family, their pets with them,” Horness explained.
For many Safe Stay village participants, they often come from circumstances in which they’ve “lost almost everything,” said Sam Ellington of the Humane Society of Southwest Washington.
”And when they can keep that pet with who means everything to them. When they can stay together, that's going to benefit their emotional well-being, their health. It's going to give them an additional sense of stability.”
Kiggins is the fourth and latest Safe Stay village in Vancouver, serving 40 people since it opened in December.
“We need to just, you know, find ways to build housing as quick as possible, permanent or transitional,” McDowell said.
The area around the first of the city's Safe Stay communities experienced a decrease in crime in its first year. The program is part of the city's effort to build a permanent shelter site and safe park sites around the community.
“By providing a variety and continuum, you allow folks to start where they're at, to start to build trust and in the process, and then be able to find those next steps,” Horness said.
There's no timeline for when Vancouver's bridge shelter will open but the city has budgeted money to open a second safe park site in the city sometime this year.