In Port Orchard, a new shelter shows a model that gets people housed

Kederang Ueda, Kitsap Sun

Mon, December 15, 2025 at 12:02 PM UTC

10 min read

Kitsap Rescue Mission was forced to shut-down its 26-bed homeless shelter on Bremerton's Sixth Street in 2019, leaving county leadership and homeless advocates at the time looking for a long-term shelter replacement. The aging building sat unused until Peninsula Community Health Services began renovations that will become a respite center offering healthcare for unhoused people, while KRM relocated several times.

Now, a renovated facility nearing its one-year anniversary in Port Orchard has become a large part of the long-term strategy to shelter unhoused residents and move people toward stability under Kitsap Rescue Mission's management.

In January 2025 the Kitsap Rescue Mission opened the Pacific Building in Port Orchard as Kitsap's only continuous-stay shelter, with room for 75 individuals at a time. Robin Lund, KRM's executive director, said during an interview at the building that the shelter is successfully helping unhoused families find permanent housing, though work remains to provide more similar resources for unsheltered people across the county.

“I think the resources in Kitsap are dwindling at this time," Lund said. "Salvation Army, out of the goodness of their hearts, have kept their shelter open, but they had never intended on doing an emergency shelter.”

The Pacific Building shelter, and the services provided there, have helped 204 people so far this year, Lund said, with 67 people moving into permanent housing and 40 securing a job by the time they left the shelter. Despite initial concerns from neighbors on Mile Hill Drive about the building, which was formerly a fitness center, Lund said some neighbors have become their biggest volunteers.

“Lots of volunteers in the community come in. We have a lot of banks, a lot of churches that are coming in to help support us," Lund said. "They actually built a beautiful organic garden in our backyard, so that we can have fresh vegetables in the springtime and summertime. We have over 100 active volunteers from the community and it's really becoming the community's program, which is what we wanted."

Carol Rocha, a case manager and intake coordinator, said tenants are referred to the shelter by the county's coordinated entry program that is managed by Kitsap Community Resources. Those interested can find an online intake application at KCR.org/housing, but Rocha said there is no specific timeline for being placed, noting there are people coming in every single day.

Kitsap Rescue Mission, which left a building in Bremerton in 2019 and moved its services to several locations in recent years, is now operating the Pacific Building on Mile Hill Drive as the county's only continuous-stay homeless shelter. The Pacific Building opened in January 2025.

A model of care moving people out of homelessness

David and Stephanie McDaniel first moved to Kitsap County in 2005, with David enjoying stable employment as a landscaper for more than a decade. But he said when his wage topped out at about $22 an hour, it caused financial strain for the family. Then both lost their jobs in 2019, and lost their apartment shortly after.

The McDaniels bounced around, first staying in a hotel, then staying at the Salvation Army's overnight shelter on Sixth Street in 2024. Since moving into the Pacific Building in February and receiving on-site services from Kitsap Rescue Mission (KRM), Stephanie McDaniel has secured a job and David McDaniel said he's worked consistently with a case manager to secure stable housing for the family, including their deaf rescue dog, Bruiser, who also receives care at the facility. Perhaps most importantly, it provided some stability in their lives.

"It's not really, you know, just providing a roof over your head, they're providing you an opportunity to better yourself," David said in an interview with the Kitsap Sun at the Pacific Building. "Even though this is not a permanent housing, it gives me comfort to where it gives me enough time to actually focus on finding a place without worrying about where I'm going to sleep next, where I'm going to find food next."

The full-time shelter model at the Pacific Building means tenants can stay at the facility all hours of the day, with access to KRM's 21 staff members, who have over 200 years of combined experience in the human services field, according to KRM's program director Helen Kuchera. Kuchera designed a badge system so that every tenant must check in and out, and it tracks who is in the shelter at any given time and the number of meals they've eaten.

The 40,000-square-foot facility also contains a medical clinic, operated by Peninsula Community Health Services, as well as veterinary services, kennels, and separate rooms for men, women, couples, and families with children. Three meals are offered daily with KRM's kitchen, serving a total of 18,662 meals so far this year, according to Kuchera.

An impact outside of the shelter facility as well

Lund said that the shelter being full-time with services on-site has led KRM's 911 calls to drop from 46 in 2021 to five this year, and emergency room visits for clients dropped from the high 60s to 19 in the same timeframe.

"Those are all emergency response systems that were being over utilized as a result of people not being sheltered," Lund said. "Now that they're here with us, they're able to get well, and we've got those services on site. So it's been a major cost reduction for those emergency response systems that were really overused for sure."

According to the Kitsap County 5-year Homeless Housing Plan, which was published in November for public review, the average cost per day per person for housing intervention services in Kitsap County increased from $56 in 2023 to $81 in 2024, mainly due to investments in emergency shelters and their services. But the cost on Kitsap resident's tax dollars for other interventions is significantly higher, with the cost of Kitsap County Jail being $204 per person per day, while local hospitals cost around $4,076 per day.

KRM uses a mix of funding from private donors, the state's consolidated housing grant (CHG), and the county's Mental Health, Chemical Dependency, and Therapeutic Court (MHCDTC) program fund from a 0.1% sales tax to cover operational costs at the facility, which Lund estimates is around $90,000 a month. Lund said the situation with grant-reliant funding and rising costs in the economy has led KRM to pursue a 3-year sustainability plan with the goal of improving partnerships, like with Peninsula Community Health Service, to better leverage KRM's funding.

"I'm just really proud of the way Kitsap County organizations come together," Lund said. "I was just on a meeting with all of the providers talking about how we can work more closely together. So we all lean on each other. It takes a village, and we're kind of a microcosm of that same idea but it takes a village in the larger community too."

KRM's funding has allowed them to hire full-time substance-use and mental health counselors, medical professionals, case managers, cooks, and many more staff who have been trained in trauma-informed care over the past year, according to Lund. The model, she said, has helped traumatized people who were living unsheltered build up a sense of security before moving towards permanent housing, which is the whole goal of KRM's program.

"It takes time and it takes nurturing for people to know that they're safe," Lund said. "It takes, you know, a safe environment for people to trust enough to be able to start making those changes. All of the guests that are here have had significant trauma.”

Port Orchard Mayor Rob Putaansuu commended the work of KRM at the Pacific Building in a recent interview, noting that despite initial concerns from neighbors about trouble from the facility's clients, he's heard of no problems since it opened.

"The folks up there are just doing a phenomenal job," Putaansuu said. "The couple of facilities that have opened here in the last couple of years are definitely a step in the right direction. But there needs to be more, you know."

A continuing need for emergency shelter countywide

Kitsap County's update to its Homeless Housing Plan, which is under review for funding by the county commissioners, states a countywide need of 1,390 new units of emergency and transitional housing through 2044 to accommodate people experiencing homelessness or facing housing instability.

"I'm optimistic that more (shelters) will be built, you know, in other locations throughout Kitsap County," Putaansuu said. "This is the only one down here on the south end, but I certainly hope to see similar facilities, you know, built in Central and North Kitsap, too."

The Salvation Army in Bremerton has hosted a winter shelter, which has been expanded to year-round since the City of Bremerton funded an extension of services, at a city cost of around $200,000 a month. The shelter offers places to sleep overnight, meals and services and a day room for individuals to stay during the day. Despite filling large gaps in available beds, the Salvation Army building was never designed to be a shelter in the first place, meaning individuals must leave every morning and evening so the non-profit can take down or set up the shelter area in a common room.

Several attempts have been made in recent years to establish a more permanent emergency shelter facility in Bremerton, where individuals could just walk in for a place to stay, to alleviate the burden on Salvation Army. The most recent effort is a purchase by Bremerton Housing Authority of a roughly 5-acre property along Sheridan Road near the Warren Avenue bridge, a site that has been discussed as a shelter with 80 congregate beds and 60 pallet shelters. City leaders have not funded a request for an additional $1 million for operating costs, which was included in a presentation to the city council in September.

In Kitsap, there were 245 people living unsheltered by the end of 2023, which was 62 more than in 2022, while there were 297 people counted this January who were living unsheltered in places not meant for habitation, like vehicles, encampments, abandoned buildings, and boats, according to the county's annual point in time count.

Characteristics like health conditions, physical disabilities, and substance-use disorders were reported by over 40% of surveyed people who were unsheltered, while mental illness was reported by over half. These factors can be especially fatal without intervention, like when nine people experiencing homelessness in Bremerton died in the summer of 2023, while hypothermia can set in below 50°F in the winter, according to the National Weather Service.

Kitsap Rescue Mission also experienced the Kitsap's need for shelter beds after moving from its Sixth Street building. KRM temporarily hosted a shelter with the Salvation Army in 2019, then set one up at the Kitsap Pavilion at the Fairgrounds in 2020, when the COVID pandemic stopped other public rentals of that facility, and then moved individuals to rooms at Quality Inn in 2021. At the Quality Inn, on Kitsap Way near the west Bremerton interchange with Highway 3, KRM rented rooms to serve 110 people. The transition to the Pacific Building dropped that to a cap of 75.

"So I think there's been a reduction in beds in Kitsap and we need more help," Lund said. "We need more help."

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap Rescue Mission in Port Orchard seeing success in service, housing

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