The following article was submitted by Maura Garrett.

In Thurston County

How does Thurston County care for the most disabled among us?

One Thursday night, a man in a wheelchair facing homelessness for the first time came to City Gates Ministries' "Street Lights" program. He joined the crowd behind the bus transit center on Franklin for sack lunches and God's Word. I do not know where he had come from. Despite frantic searching, City Gates Ministries' volunteers could not get him into a shelter or find placement for him. Another homeless man offered to stay with him to help out.



That night, one of the women volunteers was taking pictures for the new website and brochure. I have a photo of that man. His picture haunts me. None of the City Gates Ministries volunteers ever saw the man in the wheelchair again.

I fear for him.

During the August 2007 Thurston County Task Force Meeting, Gail Wells (City Gates Ministries Executive Director) and I were stunned. A member reported that in Thurston County, if you cannot take care of yourself physically and you are homeless, no emergency shelter is able to take you in.

No shelter in Thurston County is physically capable of providing shelter or the personnel to care for someone with physical limitations. Salvation Army and other emergency shelters are not equipped and not staffed to take care of the disabled.

So, the most helpless among us are just left to their own devices?

There's a rip in the social safety net in Thurston County big enough to drive a fleet of wheelchairs through.