When the city of Vancouver’s first homelessness expert quit after six months, the public reason was that he wanted to be closer to his family near Puget Sound.
But last week, Jackie St. Louis officially took a new job right in Vancouver’s neighborhood, as a contractor to help Clark County.
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County officials confirmed to OPB that St. Louis signed a contract March 2 to help the county’s behavioral health programs and develop new initiatives for people experiencing homelessness.
The contract, which lasts through Dec. 31, pays slightly less than $50,000, county officials said.
The hiring will bring St. Louis, who lives in Puyallup, back to southwest Washington on a regular basis. He will make the drive for meetings and to conduct research, he said.
“I will be spending time in Clark County and I’m happy to do that because I’ve built a lot of relationships and I do still hold a passion for the community,” he said. “I believe there’s a lot of movement around addressing the issue of homelessness.”
The job will also bring him back to Vancouver, which he left early this year when the city's homeless initiatives went into an upheaval.
Vancouver's Navigation Center is pictured Tuesday, March 10, 2020, in Vancouver, Wash.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
As Vancouver’s first homeless resources manager, St. Louis helped oversee the Navigation Center, a city-owned day center for homeless residents.
He joined the city in August, about nine months after the center opened. By then, neighbors had complained the center brought disruptive behavior to their doorsteps.
Two months into his tenure, a third-party report surfaced that called the Navigation Center poorly managed. The center’s operator, a local nonprofit called Share, soon announced it was ending its partnership with the city.
St. Louis helped train the city’s Parks and Recreation staff to take over day-to-day duties at the center. By January, however, he also prepared to leave the city.
City officials said publicly that St. Louis stepped down because he struggled to relocate his family to Vancouver. His resignation letter, obtained by OPB, suggested St. Louis also disagreed with Vancouver’s approach to homelessness.
“I believe that my vision for this work does not align with your requirements of the position and therefore, I feel that resigning is the best option for me and for the city,” the letter read.
Carol Bua, a spokesperson for Vancouver, told OPB on Monday the city is unsure what St. Louis meant specifically in that letter.
“We aren’t aware of the reason why he said that his vision did not align with the city’s in his resignation letter,” Bua wrote in an email. “The city valued the work Jackie did on the homelessness program and with the community during his time here.”
In an interview, St. Louis said the long commutes from Puyallup to Vancouver factored heavily into his choice to leave. He said he left when his young children were asleep in the morning and came home when they were already in bed.
But, he added, the job at Clark County is “forward-thinking” and won’t require him to “put out fires.”
“I’m not going to be in perpetual crisis-response mode, right?” he said. “For me, that’s the difference. I want to do change work — work that is cutting edge. If you’re in a perpetual state of managing crisis, that doesn’t allow for that to happen.”
The Clark County Center for Community Health is pictured on March 3, 2020, in Vancouver, Wash. County officials say they expect federal coronavirus relief money to help pay for public health costs.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
At Clark County, St. Louis already has his first project underway. He will soon visit Eugene, Oregon, to ride along with a team of first-responders specializing in behavioral health, called CAHOOTS. County leaders want to copy the success of that program if they can, but say they needed someone like St. Louis to help with planning.
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Vanessa Gaston, director of the county’s Community Services Department, said St. Louis meets a crucial manpower need.
“My staff are tapped out,” Gaston said. “We have a ton of projects we have to do. With all these changes happening, I just tried to figure out if there’s somebody in the community that has behavioral health knowledge and experience in the system who can help.”
Homelessness is growing in Clark County. The latest official data showed there were 958 people experiencing homelessness, up from 795 in 2018.
Likewise, the number of people with no shelter whatsoever — no car to sleep in, no friends to stay with — tallied 487. That’s up from 374 the year before.