After an 18-month effort, homeless advocates in Kitsap County have scrapped plans to turn a former Bible camp there into a housing project for chronically homeless men.
Kitsap County residents affiliated with the nonprofit West Sound Treatment Center (WSTC) had dreamed of starting a housing project called Village at Camp Calvinwood, which would have provided mental health services and job training for up to 24 men. The advocates had their eyes on a largely unused former Presbyterian summer camp in South Kitsap, which has six cabins, a recreation hall, kitchen, and laundry and shower facilities.
Robin O’Grady, executive director of WSTC, said over the past six years, she’s witnessed an increase in chronically homeless people in the county. The camp could have been a second chance for men in need. But there wasn’t enough support to turn the plan into a reality, she said.
“There were issues,” said O’Grady.
One issue appeared to be stiff opposition from South Kitsap residents. At a presentation advocates made to county commissioners in February, a group of 15 potential neighbors denounced the plan. The Kitsap Sun reported one of the residents said, “I tell you right now, I have guns,” which he said he’d use to protect himself from homeless people it they moved in.
O’Grady told Real Change that the statement disturbed some of the plan’s supporters, including herself.
“I [was] more concerned about protecting the residents from some of the neighbors,” she said.
Advocates also ran into red tape trying to acquire the right to run a housing project at the camp, because Kitsap County, the state, and the state county parks department all have an interest in it.
O’Grady said that even though the need exists, there is no active search to begin a new housing project for Kitsap’s chronically homeless population.
“But it doesn’t mean we’ll stop working to help them,” she said.