Staff recommends contracting with a new service provider — and hiring a full-time city staffer to oversee operations

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news

Interim City Manager Sabrina Cotta and Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns made the case to Ashland City Council that the demands of homelessness services have reached beyond the capacity of city staff. 

Operating the city’s severe weather shelter has been “truly a full time job,” and a “heavy lift” while also carrying the responsibilities of the city’s emergency management, Burns said at the Monday Ashland City Council study session. 

Housing and Human Services Housing Program Manager Linda Ried, Cotta, Burns, Ashland police officers and other city staff have all picked up various aspects of addressing the city’s growing homelessness problem with increasingly adverse effects, Cotta said. 

“We are at a point where we cannot absorb it anymore so there is going to be more expense regarding homeless services going forward. … I don’t believe we’re going backwards on the services we’re providing,” Cotta said. 

While OHRA has been the city’s service provider for shelter, the city no longer has a contract with the nonprofit as previously reported by Ashland.news. 

“OHRA has the shelter for us for a while and…it would be nice to see if there are other providers out there,” Burns said. Many of the former residents of the emergency shelter at 2200 Ashland St. are now living at OHRA. The “emergency shelter” offered 24/7 shelter to those in need, while the “severe weather shelter” is only open in periods of extreme weather, and only overnight, not during the day.

Cotta said OHRA has been an “outstanding partner,” but the issue of homelessness is now countywide and the city needs to expand and improve its offerings. 

The city’s dusk-to-dawn sleeping area, also known as the night lawn, ​​behind the Ashland Civic Center buildings at 1175 East Main St., has been experiencing problems with behavior and safety. Staff have determined it needs some form of supervision. The severe weather shelter has previously been unreliable when relying on volunteer staff and should instead be a consistent resource connecting shelter guests with other homelessness services, Cotta said.

Without the contract with OHRA, the city does have the ability to hire staff or stand up shelter through the help of a partner, Burns said. 

The severe weather shelter is also a consistent challenge to manage due to the random nature of shelter operations. Whenever weather conditions reach the temperature highs, lows or air quality index prescribed by the city for shelter, staff or volunteers have to be rapidly organized to stand up the shelter. This requires consistent monitoring of the weather and finding staff willing to come together at short notice. 

Smoke and heat also make orchestrating the shelter more complex and time consuming. Smoke rising to the level that triggers shelter — 150 on the air quality index — can happen in such a short period of time that consistently monitoring the fickle nature of smoke and rapidly coordinating staff or volunteers presents a unique challenge, Burns said. 

Over the 2023-2024 “winter” season — November to March — the severe weather shelter cost the city $25,575.43,  with the exclusion of the March 2024 invoice which has not yet been sent by OHRA, Burns said. The shelter was active during this period for 39 nights and rose steadily in capacity over time. The shelter saw as few as 12 guests in November, but by the end of the season it reached capacity at 28 guests, he said. 

Avram Sacks, longtime volunteer coordinator for the severe weather shelter, warned council this capacity won’t be enough. The city got lucky with a mild winter this year, he said. Last year, storms during Christmas time sent the shelter capacity up to 45 guests. 

“Far as I know, we just basically lucked out at 28,” Sacks said. 

If the shelter could expand further into the building at 2200 Ashland St. it could better serve women and families who are often afraid to take refuge in a low-barrier shelter operating in one open room, Sacks said. Burns said the city’s new fire marshal would need to make the determination if the portion of the building formerly used as the emergency shelter could be opened up for use as part of the severe weather shelter. The building currently has separate occupancies for the two spaces used for two separate shelters, he said. 

To solve these problems, Burns and Cotta proposed the city put out a request for proposals for a new third-party provider to operate both the dusk-to-dawn sleeping area and the severe weather shelter. By combining the two, it could create an “economy of scale” more likely to attract service providers, Cotta said. The pair also stated the city should create a full-time homelessness services coordinator position.

Councilors assented, saying they understood the pressure of these services for city staff. 

“What we can foresee at this point is that we have a need for these services,” Councilor Bob Kaplan said. “I have been concerned it’s been a distraction for the city manager and our emergency management coordinator and other staff.”  

Councilor Paula Hyatt advocated finding a balance for the city between its fiscal limitations, the workload for city staff and the potential to work with partners to provide the necessary services and to provide them well. 

“We don’t just do it because it needs doing, we want to do it right and we want to do it well,” she said. 

Councilor Eric Hansen stated he has been concerned about the safety for those using the dusk-to-dawn sleeping area but he was also concerned about the city’s fiscal limitations. 

Graham agreed the city needed to pursue additional resources, but worried too much investment ahead of the next budget could create, “something we can’t feed.” It was difficult to pull together the $100,000 per fiscal year allotted to homelessness services for this biennium, she said. 

The city’s initiatives for information and planning around homelessness services are not done yet, making acting on this request challenging, Graham said. The city’s Homelessness Services Masterplan is not expected to be complete until June. The city has also only begun to call for applicants for an ad hoc committee to plan for the future of the 2200 Ashland St. property. The city’s dusk-to-dawn sleeping area would also likely require multiple full-time positions to fully supervise the continuously operating “shelter,” she said. Graham advocated a possible creative solution. 

“Find someone who lives on the lawn, someone who prefers not to be indoors — we have folks in that circumstance and there might be a person from within that community who would be willing to do this and would have a stronger ability to manage the different personalities that come on site,” she said. 

The mayor said she wanted to see a larger program to address homelessness carefully developed for the next biennium (the two-year budget cycle starting July 1, 2025).

Burns urged council to allow him to put out the request for proposals (RFP) to operate the severe weather shelter as soon as possible to start the process before the heat, smoke and pressure of fire season envelop his position — and increase demand for the severe weather shelter. 

Graham and councilors gave staff direction to pursue the RFP and draft a job description for a homelessness services coordinator. Hansen stated he wanted to reassure Ashland residents the city was not “pursuing any side roads,” and would still make future decisions for 2200 Ashland St. and the city’s shelter services by “coming together as a community.” 

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].