BETHEL -- A volunteer-driven effort to give Bethel's homeless a safe, warm place to sleep during the coldest months is regrouping after a rough start this year.
Bethel's Winter House opened in a church on Dec. 1 only to close a week later after some clients were unruly, rude and drunk. The lone paid worker quit. Members of a Bethel Lions Club spinoff running the shelter said they need to re-examine policies to ensure a safe operation but also meet the twin goal of zero deaths from exposure.
Then on Friday night, the refuge from killing cold reopened with stricter policies to keep out alcohol.
Bethel's mayor, police chief and Winter House Lions Club president -- who also is the Bethel museum director -- were among the volunteers checking people in.
"I feel so great," Jeremy Lee, 26 and one of the clients, said Friday night. He'd spent the night before walking all over the Western Alaska hub, trying to stay warm. It got down to 4 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. On Friday, a steady snowfall blanketed Bethel.
"This is a big burden lifted off me. I don't have to worry about being cold and where to go," he said. "I know I can lay down and sleep tonight, have some good food to eat."
He was standing outside the shelter, housed in the Bethel Evangelical Covenant Church on Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway. He was looking forward to sleeping inside on a mat with a blanket on the floor. The church, in a repurposed Alaska Airlines hangar, also hosts a Friday night supper club for those in need of a meal or companionship.
Stricter policies
Under the new procedures, guests must check their backpacks and coats at the door. Volunteers will more closely monitor who shows up, and the no-alcohol rule that was already in place will be emphasized, said Eva Malvich, the Winter House Lions Club board president.
"If the people that come in don't want to comply with the rules, then we'll ask them to leave," she said Friday night. But she doesn't want to have to bar anyone long-term.
One woman walked into the foyer, then turned around, talking loudly as she left in the frosty darkness.
"She's just having a bad day," Lee said.
Malvich is "the guardian mother" for Winter House, he said.
"We are a family," he said. "We stay at this place together. We share our troubles and pains and laughs."
A Bethel Winter House Lions Club meeting Thursday night drew not only members, shelter volunteers and Bethel's police chief, but also a group of homeless people including Lee who wanted to ensure it runs smoothly. After about an hour, the club closed the meeting to the public to work on the new policies. They agreed to reopen with volunteers and no staff.
Without Winter House, Bethel's homeless sleep in abandoned cars and old houses, empty smokehouses and steam baths, under buildings and in alcoves. They fake sickness to stay the night in the emergency room. They drink to get into the sobering center, a sleepoff facility for those who are dangerously drunk.
A rash of homeless deaths
Two winters ago, six people in Bethel died from exposure outdoors, Bethel Mayor Rick Robb said at the Lions Club meeting. Then the community rallied. A core group first met in October 2013 and two months later an emergency shelter was open. Last winter in Bethel, just one person died from exposure.
"We wanted to do something," Malvich said. "Darn if it didn't work." She works by day as director of the museum at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center and turned her bedroom into an office for Winter House.
The cultural center also houses the community library, and Malvich would see people bundled up in snow pants and parkas hanging out there all day. Then they would search for somewhere to lie down at night, she said.
One was Norbert Kashatok. She didn't know him well but they would talk a little and she knew his family. He came across as a smart guy, she said.
He was found dead Dec. 4, 2012, in an unheated building right across the street, one of the six deaths two winters ago.
"I thought, 'That could be me.' The only difference between me and him is I stopped drinking five years ago and I have a job," said Malvich, who is speaking up publicly about her own alcoholism in the hope it helps others. Her drinking was interfering with her ability to do her job and her relationship with her children, she said. At the time, she was working for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. as a behavioral health compliance officer focused on accreditation. The Native-run health agency helped her get residential treatment, she said.
Police helping
The winter-only shelter serves 16 to 20 people between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Most arrive as soon as the doors open. Volunteers cook dinner.
But while it was always alcohol-free, some clients showed up drunk and then also sneaked in bottles of alcohol, getting louder and higher through the night, Malvich said. There were other substances being abused, too, including hand sanitizer, volunteers said. People trying to sleep couldn't do so even when the lights went out at midnight. There were no reported physical fights, but some people seemed headed that way, volunteers said.
"There are better ways to handle the situation rather than just let it be a circus," Lee told the Lions Club board at Thursday's meeting. In the effort to keep people safe from the cold, the shelter was too lenient with those who were intoxicated, he said.
Police were called to the shelter at least seven times and did respond, Police Chief Andre Achee told the Lions Club board. A news report that said police didn't come when called was incorrect, he said. But he acknowledged police might not have gotten there right away. They arrived within 15 to 20 minutes, he said later. At any rate, police cannot serve as shelter security, screening clients at the door, he said.
Still, for Friday night's reopening, Achee was there, helping to check in guests.
Bethel police also dispatch the city's community service patrol, which picks up intoxicated people and takes them to the sobering center. But those workers are not supposed to go into private residences or other private property such as a church, Achee said. And they can't arrest someone who refuses to leave.
When the shelter is open, people on the streets may not consume as much alcohol because they don't have to be drunk enough for the sobering center, Robb said at the meeting. Guests do a lot of the work, said Robb, who has volunteered at the shelter overnight and helped with training as well. "There's a lot of good that happens."
Five people who stayed at the shelter last winter now are on their own and working, said Ross Boring, board vice president.
A walk to Bethel
Lee lived his early years in Aniak and then spent 13 years in state foster care, he said. In July he returned to Nunapitchuk, a village of about 500 people about 22 miles west of Bethel, to be with his girlfriend, their baby and her other two children. He couldn't find work there. He didn't like living off public assistance. He didn't feel useful.
So a couple of weeks ago, he started walking to Bethel. He traveled about 17 miles on the frozen tundra before catching a ride on a snowmachine. He first stayed at Winter House last winter and figured that would be available again.
"They were nothing but welcoming," Lee said.
He walked all night Thursday then started a new job Friday at Swanson's, one of two main grocery stores in Bethel. He said it was hard to stay alert. Around 6 a.m. before work, he went into the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. hospital to get some coffee. But a security guard and police officer made him leave.
"Isn't homeless hard enough for us?" Lee said.
The hospital has had problems with inebriated people in its waiting areas and asks them to leave if they are not seeking treatment, Dan Winkelman, YKHC president and chief executive, said Saturday in an email. He said he hadn't heard what happened with Lee but would look into it. Lee said he has struggled with alcohol in the past but is sober now.
Lee was worried about survival if he slept outdoors. A cousin, who was drinking, froze to death in Aniak. He knows others who died of exposure, too.
With a job and a safe place to sleep, Lee said he is excited about Christmas. He wants to buy a walker, clothes and diapers for the baby, plus something to show the older children how much he loves them.
"I just want to start my life," Lee said. "It's not going to be handed to me."