Spokane’s largest homeless shelter still doesn’t have permanent bathrooms. It likely never will.

More than a year after the city’s largest homeless shelter opened, the facility still does not have permanent bathrooms, showers or laundry facilities.

The portable toilets and showers the city has used in the interim have been expensive to maintain, and prone to maintenance issues and unclean conditions City Council members have called “inhumane.”

But despite commitments stretching back to at least last November, it now appears likely the bathrooms may never be built.

In May, the Spokane City Council approved spending $1 million to help pay for around $1.5 million in improvements to the city-run Trent Avenue homeless shelter, including bathrooms that would replace the expensive and often unclean portable toilets.

Construction still hasn’t started. Now, facing a looming budget deficit and uncertainty about how to sustainably pay to keep the doors open, some city council members have begun to say that money is needed elsewhere.

“There have been so many questions about if this is really a good use of $1.5 million if we have no intention of staying for longer than a year,” said Council President Lori Kinnear.

These concerns aren’t entirely new, though some on the City Council say they’ve gotten worse.

Four months ago, local lawmakers expressed myriad concerns about the cost of the improvements, uncertainty of long-term funding and whether it was responsible to invest the money in a building the city didn’t own and did not plan to operate in perpetuity. Those arguments swayed Councilman Michael Cathcart, who voted against the spending until a funding plan could be identified, but he found himself alone in a 6-1 vote.

“I don’t disagree with you, council member Cathcart, but it is a humanitarian need,” then-Councilwoman Kinnear said in May. “We don’t know where we’re going to get money next year to pay for a provider, but here we are with folks who need a humanitarian solution.”

Despite the steep upfront cost, the cost to maintain temporary bathrooms and showers and to do laundry off-site was so high that the infrastructure improvements were also slated to pay for themselves within 18 months after construction.

It wasn’t the first time the City Council had committed money to improve conditions at the Trent Avenue shelter. Back in November, the council approved a $117,500 contract with Coeur d’Alene-based Architects West to design the addition of restrooms, showers and laundry facilities, as well as “pods” that would have provided significantly more privacy for those staying at the facility.

The pods have never come to fruition, and now the city appears poised to claw back the $1 million already dedicated to build out the rest of the infrastructure.

“I think when all of the information came together over the last few months, and the reality of what we’re facing for 2024 hit us … it’s a great deal of money that we’re struggling to find where it’s going to come from right now,” Kinnear said.

It has become increasingly unclear whether the facility will remain open long enough for the city to recoup the upfront costs of building bathrooms and other improvements.

The city agreed in 2022 to a five-year lease with Mayor Nadine Woodward ally Larry Stone, of the Stone Group of Companies. But local lawmakers, facing tough budget decisions, uncertain funding sources and ongoing conversations about a future regional homelessness coalition, have essentially all acknowledged that the facility will close before the lease is up, possibly before the end of next year.

“I don’t know how we’re going to fund it in 2025,” Kinnear said Wednesday.

It may be an unexpected chance to change direction. Several council members said they had expected construction of the bathrooms to take place over the summer, which would have put the funding out of reach of current negotiations. Councilman Zack Zappone, who said he was now concerned with spending money on the bathrooms if the shelter is soon to close, said the initial delay was further evidence that the Woodward administration had never had a plan for the facility.

“Those things were empty promises,” Zappone said. “There was never a vision of how to make this a good shelter and make it work.”

Cathcart acknowledged the “terrible” conditions at the Trent homeless shelter, but said Wednesday his longterm funding concerns had not changed since May. However, he added that he was concerned that the administration appeared to have unilaterally decided not to move forward with construction, despite the Council’s vote four months prior.

“If the council has taken the step to say this is the vote we should take, it’s concerning when an administration can simply decide they’re not going to follow through with it,” Cathcart said.

City spokesman Brian Coddington, who acts as Woodward’s unofficial chief of staff, blamed a number of factors, but said the City Council was ultimately responsible for funding decisions, including waiting until May to allocate money for the bathrooms.