WHATCOM COUNTY, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Whatcom County is considering the possibility of giving more support to homeless individuals looking for refuge.

The Whatcom County Council discussed a draft resolution last week that would ask County Executive Satpal Sidhu to explore options to expand the county’s year-round homeless shelter capacity. The proposal includes the potential for shelters that would be managed by the county in an effort to reach “functional zero homelessness” in the next ten years.

Council member John Scanlon was among those who introduced the resolution and says it would fit a need identified by key stakeholders in the community.

“I’ve been spending time in the past few weeks doing and sit alongs with the response divisions teams and one of the things I hear from them is that when they go to help folks in the community one of the things that they see as a gap is access to housing, and access to shelter,” Scanlon said.

The resolution includes a request to create a homelessness and shelter subcommittee of the Whatcom County Housing Advisory Committee. Several council members at the meeting still raised concerns that simply housing people doesn’t address the root of the problem.

County Executive Sidhu chimed in to emphasize the need for rehabilitation efforts to go along with the added shelter space.

“It is supposed to be transitional. This is not the end of the pipeline; this should be a piece of the pipeline so that people move on to more permanent housing or something,” Sidhu said. “Just sheltering itself does not solve the issue, so it has to be more than that.”

The draft resolution comes while Lighthouse Mission Ministries is in the process of relocating its shelter to an expanded five-story facility on W. Holly Street to meet the rising demands its current Base Camp is facing. The new Lighthouse Mission shelter is expected to open in October 2024.