Medical Lake’s Pine Lodge building won’t become a homeless shelter, mayors assure

A vacant women’s prison is at the center of a dispute between the cities of Spokane and Medical Lake tied to homelessness.

The Pine Lodge Correction Center in Medical Lake will not become a homeless shelter or reopened as a jail, Medical Lake Mayor Terri Cooper announced at a Sunday afternoon event held to denounce supposed plans that Spokane leaders said were not underway in the first place.

To the relieved cheers of hundreds of residents in attendance, Cooper called for more transparency and communication from the city of Spokane in its regional approaches to address homelessness.

Earlier in the month, members from the Spokane Homeless Coalition inquired with the state about using the building to address homelessness, Cooper said. Unrelated to these talks, Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown last week toured the state-owned facility with local Democratic legislators. The tour served to evaluate the condition of the building, which closed as a women’s correctional facility in 2010, Brown said. Cooper was also invited but was unable to attend, she said.

Cooper was caught off guard to hear Pine Lodge mentioned as a means to address homelessness, no matter how beginning-stage the discussion. Other than the tour invite, no one from her office was consulted, she said.

“We didn’t know about it. No one had contacted our city. No one had told us that this was a real viable thing; we all learned about it at the same time, and it was alarming,” Cooper told the crowd. “I wanted to say that I was astonished by the city of Spokane’s lack of transparency. Their actions were unprofessional. Their lack of collaboration of which they boast was alarming, and without consideration for another community’s needs.”

Brown said she hadn’t made plans for the building, and called Cooper’s assertion “disingenuous” and “false.”

“I didn’t communicate any plans because we didn’t have any plans,” Brown said. “It was simply to ask the Legislature about a fact-finding mission to see what the Pine Lodge facility was like.”

Not only does the city not have the money to purchase a building, a large homeless shelter is contrary to the city’s model in addressing homelessness, she said.

“To be clear, again, we are moving away from congregate shelters. We have requests for proposals for smaller, maximum 30-people scattered site shelters,” Brown said. “It was never considered by my administration.”

Hundreds attended the gathering outside city hall, creating a vocal audience for officials present: Cooper, County Commissioner Al French, Sheriff John Nowels and area lawmakers Jenny Graham, Mike Volz and Jeff Holy all spoke at the gathering.

Many in the audience carried signs declaring “Protect Medical Lake” and “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” A resident sold T-shirts from the bed of his pickup truck reading “No Medical Lake Homeless Camp.”