Category: Shower Outreach Project

A mobile shower trailer is getting closer to providing hot showers for people living outside — and it’s got a new name. Food with Friends aims to get the Shower Outreach Project, or SOP (like sopping wet), operational in the next few weeks. Last summer, local outreach volunteers looked into getting a shower trailer after Share House discontinued providing showers to unsheltered clients, citing wear and tear on the building and sewage problems. Portland-based PDX Cart Builder finished building the trailer, which has two showers, and it was recently moved to Vancouver. However, it still needs to be insured, registered and otherwise made street legal. Jamie Spinelli, a volunteer with Food with Friends and a case manager at Community Services Northwest, said there’s ongoing fundraising for the operational costs of the trailer. Also, she said, they’re looking for locations that could host it. The trailer connects directly to water, power and sewer. Those sites could offer as many or as few showers as they want, and provide volunteers to help staff it. “We’re working on solidifying a schedule with locations and volunteers,” Spinelli said. The aim is to bring the showers to different locations in the county, not just downtown.

Rick Bannan / rick@thereflector.com One elected member of north Clark County government is doing her part in a countywide effort to help those experiencing homelessness. On a relatively dry day in January, Battle Ground Deputy Mayor Cherish DesRochers showed off a new bathroom unit stationed at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Vancouver. “The pod,” as DesRochers has dubbed it, is more permanent than a more mobile shower trailer, but is an extension of the nonprofit’s overarching “Shower Outreach Project” or the “SOP.” The pod features a full shower, toilet and sink, which are all connected to heated plumbing. It is the latest effort by Food With Friends, a nonprofit started by DesRochers and Jamie Spinelli. Spinelli now serves as the city of Vancouver’s homelessness response coordinator. “It’s been a couple years in the making,” DesRochers said. DesRochers said she raised roughly $4,500 to buy the pod at a Portland-based auction around 2019. DesRochers said the China-made unit is intended to be at construction sites for workers. When she purchased it, the unit didn’t have plumbing or a heater for hot water. Prior to its installation at the church, the pod made several moves across Clark County while Food With Friends figured

Jonathan Haukaas/jonathan@thereflector.com In 2016, now Battle Ground City Councilor Cherish DesRochers and her friend Jamie Spinelli, a case manager at Community Service Northwest, spearheaded an outreach program in Clark County called Food with Friends with a focus on bringing food, toiletries and other supplies to the homeless. The outreach, described in simplest terms by DesRochers as a grassroots effort to fill gaps in service for the area homeless, quickly expanded and became an official nonprofit last year. Along with the street outreach, they now do volunteer screening and training for emergency shelters and run a coordinated outreach hotline. Last year they partnered with an organization based in Portland called PERIOD., which was founded in 2014 and supplies feminine hygiene product kits to girls and women in need, to provide hundreds of tampons weekly throughout the Battle Ground school district. The most recent gap they’ve discovered and are working to fill allows Clark County homeless the opportunity to shower for free — the Shower Outreach Project (SOP). “When we learned the Share House downtown was eliminating showers we knew we had to do something,” DesRochers said. They first looked into seeing if a portable shower in Portland could make a routine