Downtown Wenatchee homeless shelter changes owners

Steele said she and her husband bought the shelter, which they renamed the Saint Francis House, after several years of running overnight winter shelters through local churches.

“We wanted to be able to help homeless people more than just covering them for the winter,” Steele said.

Lighthouse director Shawn Arington said Lighthouse is using the sale as a way to refine its focus on preventing homelessness and elevating who it can out of homelessness. He said the Gospel House struggled to achieve life changes in its residents after partnering with Wenatchee as a low-barrier shelter.

Arington said many of the people Lighthouse used to help at Gospel House are people it continues to feed at its soup kitchen. Now, the organization is able to focus more of its efforts on connecting some of its patrons with opportunities to improve their lives, Arington said

Arington also said Lighthouse may use some of the money from the sale to purchase and remodel an abandoned school building in Malott, in Okanogan County, to use as a food bank.

“Our main goal is to start preventing (homelessness) before it happens,” he said.

Steele said Saint Francis House is currently housing high-barrier residents — people she described as sober or in rehabilitation programs — while the building undergoes construction to make more private sleeping rooms and create spaces to host Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

When the construction is complete, the shelter will be able to separately house low-barrier residents overnight. The People’s Foundation is also working with Catholic Charities and local businesses to connect residents of the Saint Francis House to employment opportunities, Steele said.

Steele said her and her husband’s goal is to “really help people make a change in their lives and get off the streets.”

“Now with the Saint Francis House, we have a chance to do that,” she said.