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Council adds street medicine contracts and daytime navigation-center plan to tonight’s agenda after debate over timing and bed reductions
Summary
The City Council moved to add four items from Community, Housing and Human Services — including contract amendments for street medicine, a budget ordinance to extend state funding and a resolution endorsing a daytime navigation center at the Canon Street shelter — after debate over procedure, timing and how lost shelter beds will be absorbed.
The Spokane City Council voted to add four CHHS items to tonight’s agenda, including contract amendments for street-medicine work and a resolution endorsing a conversion of the Canon Street shelter into a daytime navigation center.
City staff and CHHS presented the items as linked steps in the city’s unhoused-services strategy: a contract amendment with the Washington State Health Care Authority, a contract amendment with a street-medicine provider (CHAS), a special budget ordinance to extend grant funding and a resolution endorsing funding for navigation-center operations and street outreach.
“By making that shift, we’re actually able to serve more people during the day,” CHHS staff said about the Canon Street change, adding that removing on-site overnight beds “allows us to serve more people during the day, which gives us a greater access to connect to more individuals.”
Council debate focused on procedure and timing. Council members questioned whether the items needed to move forward immediately or could wait for the October 6 agenda and whether certain members had conflicts voting on procedural steps. After discussion the council suspended rules and added the four items; the procedural suspension was recorded as passing 5–2 in the transcript.
Council members also pressed staff for operational details about the Canon Street transition. CHHS staff said the navigation center would maintain daytime services — laundry, snacks, case-management contacts and drop-in support — and that the 30 overnight beds previously at Canon Street would be “absorbed by way of other scattered sites” and other placements, including planned tiny-home sites and scattered-site contracts due before council in October.
Ariel Anderson, who briefed the council, said a portion of the shelter population has already moved: “There’s five individuals that are left. Four of those individuals have a permanent housing destination. One is still up in the air about what they want to do.” Anderson also said the change is timed to coordinate with scattered-site contracts so the system can continue to place people as the Canon facility shifts to daytime operation.
Opponents on the dais warned the change could reduce overnight capacity if the replacement options do not materialize on schedule. Council members asked for more detail about the scattered-site contracts, which staff said expire Sept. 30 and will be before council in October; staff added that failing to renew those contracts would terminate related management agreements and could reduce bed capacity by roughly 200.
The council also debated the urgency of acting tonight to permit a planned October 6 opening under the new operator. CHHS staff said the timeline was advanced because of a town-hall scheduling conflict and to permit keys and operations to transfer without further delay.
The council’s procedural votes to suspend rules and add the CHHS items were recorded in the meeting transcript; the substantive contracts and the resolution will next appear on the council agenda for final action.
The action leaves open questions on timing and capacity: staff pointed to scattered-site renewals and other planned placements as the means to replace overnight capacity, while some council members said further outreach and written contract details are needed before final approval.
