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‘A model for the nation’: Boise’s Interfaith Sanctuary breaks ground for new shelter [1]

['Mia Maldonado', 'More From Author', '- April']

Date: 2023-04-18

During a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday, the Interfaith Sanctuary and its community partners celebrated the start of remodeling its new facility for Boise’s unhoused population.

Located at a former Salvation Army building at 4308 W. State St., the new location will offer recovery and mental health services, a computer library, classrooms for workforce training, emergency shelter beds and medical dorms.

After almost two years of trying to secure a permit to move forward with remodeling plans for a new location, sanctuary director Jodi Peterson-Stigers thanked community partners, donors and faith leaders for their support to upgrade the shelter.

“What we need to do is be such excellent neighbors and live up to everything we’ve promised and create a community hub where everyone feels welcome,” she said during the ceremony. “That’s our next job. Once this team gets this beautiful building built, we will build bridges and we will become a part of this beautiful neighborhood with all your love and support.”

Interfaith Sanctuary board of directors president Andy Scoggin during the ceremony’s opening remarks that the new shelter will give Boise’s homeless population a safe space to call home.

“We wanted to be a place where lives change, where people’s mental health, physical health, financial health, societal health, all could be better than improved as they prepare to go back out to wherever they’re going to go next,” Scoggin said.

Scoggin also announced that the Scoggin Family Foundation is matching up to $1 million in donations to help fund the organization’s new facility and its services.

“This will be a model for the nation,” Scoggin said. “When it’s done, little Boise, Idaho, is going to have a model for the nation about how we look out for those who are in great need within our community in a way that strengthens them and makes them healthier again.”

New building offers more space, services to unhoused community

Peterson-Stigers said the new building addresses the shelter’s most pressing need — more space.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Peterson-Stigers said her team used federal emergency funds to place unhoused people into hotels, allowing them to serve an additional 100 guests.

“When you put someone who is medically fragile into a hotel, and they have a place to be day and night and you can deliver medical services directly to them, they get a better quality of life and they move forward.”

Peterson-Stigers said she hoped to move into a bigger space knowing that the emergency funds would eventually end and the sanctuary’s current location can only house 170 people at night but only 24 people during the day.

“That means at 8 a.m., they have to go and figure it out,” she said. “Some go to work, some go to school, but many of them, because they don’t have a place to go, must navigate the streets to try to find a warm, safe place. They try to be welcomed somewhere, and when they come back at the end of the day, they’re frazzled, they’re tired and they have more trauma.”

Once remodeled, the new facility will offer 42,500 square feet of space on two acres of land, an upgrade from the sanctuary’s River Street shelter at 10,000 square feet.

Some community partners are bringing their services to the new facility. Medical partners including Terry Reilly Health Services and Full Circle Health will provide medical services on site at the building, and Primary Health is donating all the medical equipment to build an exam room and nursing station.

The Micron Foundation is also providing a workforce training program for shelter guests interested in working at the company’s new manufacturing fab.

Development attorney talks neighborhood backlash, concerns about location

Development attorney Geofrrey Wardle offered pro bono services to the Interfaith Sanctuary after it had announced it was purchasing the building.

Wardle said he grew up in the Collister neighborhood and his parents had been involved with the Interfaith Sanctuary. This inspired him to offer the organization legal services to face any backlash, he told the Idaho Capital Sun.

Early on in the process of purchasing the building, Wardle said the sanctuary faced objections from residents in the neighborhood who raised concerns that the building would create a concentration of people without housing.

“The sentiment is to go put it someplace else,” he said in an interview. “And there were a lot of suggestions about places we could put it elsewhere in the city, but at the end of the day you need services where people have an opportunity to access transit and employment.”

For information, visit the Interfaith Santuary’s website about the new facility.

Wardle said the building is an ideal site to continue the mission of the sanctuary because of its history under the Salvation Army building where it previously offered a food bank, substance abuse services, and other services that helped community members

“This is the neighborhood I grew up in, and this is the neighborhood I love,” Wardle said. “This is the neighborhood where my grandparents taught me that we fight for those that are the weakest and we protect them, not the gentrifiers that showed up opposed us for the last 766 days.”

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[1] Url: https://idahocapitalsun.com/2023/04/18/a-model-for-the-nation-boises-interfaith-sanctuary-breaks-ground-for-new-shelter/

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