Compass Opens COVID-safe Shelter
Happy Friday everyone.
This week, our friends at Compass Housing Alliance opened a COVID-19-safe shelter (their preferred term is “enhanced emergency housing”) for those experiencing homelessness in the Seattle area. They remodeled four floors of their existing Compass Center building to create 150 individual living spaces that meet COVID-19 safety protocols, including at least six feet of separation and solid walls between living spaces, individual storage lockers, upgraded showers and restrooms, and an improved air system. They’ve named the shelter “Otto’s Place” after Compass Founder Pastor Otto Karlstrom.
On other floors of the Center, Compass offers housing navigation services, showers and restrooms, medical care, banking, and mail services--the only trauma-informed banking and mail program of its kind in the U.S.
Otto’s Place replaces Compass’s First Presbyterian shelter program, ahead of its lease ending at the end of the year. Compass also operates two other 24/7 enhanced emergency housing programs, Jan & Peter’s Place and The Blaine Center. The plan is to renovate these sites to be COVID-compliant too.
This is another example of Compass’s heart, and why we can have a soft spot in ours for Compass as our two agencies work side by side to help those in need.
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