Pictured is a row of Pallet shelters in Everett, Washington. Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist in July toured the shelter village, which provides temporary housing for the city’s chronic homeless population. Photo by Eddie Sundquist

Could a pilot program to address homelessness recently implemented on the other side of the country be used as a model for city officials here?

It’s one of several options Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist said he is looking at locally.

Sundquist in early July toured a shelter village established in Everett, Washington in which 20, 64-square-foot homes were built. The need for temporary housing in Everett — with a population of about 112,000 residents and located 25 miles north of Seattle — grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Julie Willie, Everett Community Development director.

Willie said the city’s mayor, Cassie Franklin, also recognized there was a chronic homeless population that didn’t want to go into typical congregate settings and were not yet eligible for housing. The city began looking at options to complement programs already in place to assist those in need of shelter.

At one point, the city underwent a $40,000 cleanup effort of a homeless encampment on its riverfront. With the arrival of COVID-19, Willie said there was an influx of homeless in need of support.

“Everything changed,” Willie told The Post-Journal in a recent interview. “Our population, no longer were they just kind of hiding in the woods and next to our riverfront. We really had an influx of people in our downtown and we had more complaints from businesses and residents about concerning behaviors. That’s just continued with the behavioral health challenges and the fentanyl challenges that we’re having.”

Along with Franklin, Sundquist is part of the Mayors Innovation Project, a national network for mayors committed to shared prosperity, environmental sustainability and efficient government. During the group’s summer meeting in Tacoma, Washington, Sundquist drove to Everett to tour the city’s pilot shelter project.

“I was blown away with the work they were doing,” said Sundquist, who noted that Pallet shelters are just one of a “multitude” of options the city can explore for the growing homelessness problem.

“I see that as a potential,” he said.

Everett already had been looking into establishing a shelter village. The city partnered with the Everett Gospel Mission, which operates its own homeless shelter, to construct 20 tiny homes built by Pallet — a Washington state-based company. The village was placed on a vacant parcel of land already owned by the city and next to the mission.

Each shelter, Willie said, has water and electricity, and can be cleaned and re-used later during emergencies such as earthquakes. The shelters are designed to provide the chronically homeless with temporary housing.

There is access to food, showers and staff, and partnering with the mission as a management agency ensures security and proper sanitation, she said.

Elsewhere, Los Angeles opened its first Pallet shelters in early 2021, and a May report by NPR stated that LA has spent about $48 million to set up 10 villages.

“We care deeply for those that are unsheltered and are struggling, but we also care deeply for our residents and for our businesses and so we really try and have a balanced approached to meet the needs,” Willie said, later adding, “People aren’t sleeping on the sidewalks and building camps on the sidewalks, and the community is really happy with the shelter program and have no complaints of it at all.”

A report this spring, though, questioned the profiting off of homelessness. Amy King, founder and CEO of Pallet, said on NPR’s All Things Considered she would be “very happy to celebrate the day that we shut the doors of this shop because our product is no longer needed.”

Utilizing American Rescue Plan Act funding, Everett is in the process of expanding its pilot program by adding another 20 Pallet shelters as well as a separate village for women and children by partnering with Volunteers of America. For the women and children village, 100-square-foot homes would be built.

Willie said the pilot program, which kicked off in the spring of 2021, is meant to assist the chronically homeless and is just one of several options to provide shelter. Snohomish County, where Everett is located, also plans to convert a former hotel into emergency housing.

“We’re not providing people with a permanent home,” said Willie, who estimates that at any given time about 300 people are in need of shelter within the city. “We’re providing people with a temporary shelter so that we can make sure that they’re safe and their kids have a place to sleep and that they have some stability in order to move forward and find permanent housing.”