Port Townsend’s premiere affordable housing project is an eyesore. One of the most expensive real estate developments in Jefferson County–over $2 million in public funds for eight apartments–is boarded up, uninhabitable and detracting from the quality of the neighborhood around it. Your tax dollars at work.
You would think this would be an issue in the current City Council races, especially in Mayor Deborah Stinson’s re-election bid. Her opponent, Monica Mick Hager, has leveled criticism about the city’s $17 million deficit and large expenditures on beautification projects while fundamental needs go unmet. She told this writer that in going door-to-door she frequently hears complaints about the Cherry Street Project. But she has not made much of an issue of it beyond those face-to-face meetings with voters.
In City Council meetings discussing the project, only outgoing councilor Robert Gray questioned the numbers and the soundness of the volunteer organization to which city leaders gave land valued at $600,000 and hundreds of thousands of dollars in nonrecourse loans, secured only by the city’s former property and the uninhabitable building itself. When he did raise a question or two, Gray almost apologized for having doubts and concerns.
The building that sat on the equivalent of stilts–known in the industry as cribbing–for over two years is finally on a foundation. But work has again ground to a halt. The only activity since the foundation was added in June 2019 has been a hurried and rather sloppy job of throwing up plywood across open doors and windows.
The surrounding area, after 30 months since the sixty-year old building was barged here in May 2017 at great expense from Victoria, B.C., continues to look like an open wound in the city’s center.
One neighbor complained to us last month:
I own the property directly in front of this building and have been completely ignored and avoided during this process the entrance and parking lot they currently proposed with no mention of my home comes across my yard and takes out part of my garage they also ffail to mention the land they are on is not nor has it ever been zoned for multifamily residential i find it absolutely disturbing that they are waiting til the last moment to inform me at bare minimal leaving me no where to turn to..where do I go for legal help?
Several times we have asked the group entrusted with the Cherry Street Project, Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, when they expect the building to be ready for occupancy. They have not responded.
Homeward Bound is the recipient of over $2 million in public support from Port Townsend taxpayers, in the nature of financial and professional services, as well as fee waivers and free utility work. Their $834,000 loan from the City contains a nearly $500,000 hidden interest subsidy that is an outright gift. They also received a direct grant of $30,000 just to get their act together.
Homeward Bound used to be transparent, providing public notice of their meetings and posting minutes on their website. That is what an entity funded nearly 100% by taxpayers should be doing. Those minutes, as we reported previously, revealed how very far the Cherry Street Project is from ever providing living quarters to any human being, and how they may not ever be able to complete the project, even with the City opening its wallet and donating its engineers and work crews.
They no longer invite the public to their meetings. They don’t post minutes. They don’t answer questions.
Neither The Leader nor the Peninsula Daily News have done any significant questioning of this project. Occasionally they publish a puff piece, such as their last fawning coverage that was initiated by Homeward Bound’s PR push. When would the building be finished, how much would it cost? Our incurious local papers didn’t bother to ask.
Though Homeward Bound won’t respond we will get answers to our questions. As we have been doing for the past two years, we have again filed public records requests with the City. Through previous public records requests we were able to report on the soaring costs of the project, the recognition by Homeward Bound that their cost projections and funding fell short of what it would take to finish the job and the City’s determination that it would have to provide professional project management to get the building out of the air onto a stable foundation. When we finish studying the latest communications between Homeward Bound and the City of Port Townsend, and the loan records, we will be back with some answers.
In the meantime, a picutre is worth a thousand words. The photo accompanying ths article was taken October 23, 2019, and shows what is happening with the $2 million Cherry Street “affordable housing” project.
Check out our previous reporting. You will find the factual basis for statements made in this post and more:
Thank you to all the readers who helped us exceed 60,000 page views since our first investigative report was published a short seven months ago. Our most widely read reporting was on the Cherry Street Project–the extravagant waste of scarce affordable housing dollars on a sixty-year old building that has been sitting on stacks of wood going on two years, providing shelter to no one as its costs have risen above $2 million.
Our reporting on how Jefferson County Prosecutor Michael Haas dumped a rape case against a man with a long history of violence against women and mistreated a victim came in second, followed by our story on the pending mass exodus from the Sheriff’s Office if the incumbent Sheriff, David Stanko, were elected. (He lost, and we are told that morale has vastly improved in anticipation of new leadership.) That one article hit 1,000 page views in less than a day, making it our single “hottest” story.
Our reporting on the rising violence among Port Townsend’s transients and close-up looks at the work of police, sheriff deputies, and jail personnel also received a strong and positive response.
We were pleased to highlight the lamentable abuse of marijuana by our county’s teens at a time when voters were putting on the county commission and giving oversight of teen marijuana prevention programs to a man with a history of violations at his marijuana store and a practice of promoting the increased use of marijuana while downplaying its known health risks.
Our other most widely read stories included good news on the opening of the Crazy Otter in Port Hadlock and Sugar Hill Farms in the old Beaver Valley store.
Scott Hogenson’s op-eds and accurate reporting regularly provoked a lot of discussion and heated debate. That’s what facts and new insights can do in the face of a local political monoculture that seeks to stifle dissenting speech and keep unwelcome truths from voters.
To this editor, the most rewarding posts came from the seventeen-year old Ravyn as she shared her most personal thoughts and feelings during her pregnancy. Readers who followed Ravyn’s story could share in her joy, springing from the depths of despair, as her young husband stepped up to the responsibility of being a man and a father and her faith in God gave her strength and hope. She has promised one last installment after she holds her new son in her arms.
Now for some less happy news.
This is a solely volunteer effort. We have done well and have made an impact with our small contributions to bring light to facts unreported, ignored or misrepresented by our local newspapers. We earned those 60,000-plus page views with primarily Facebook as our delivery system, and with the invaluable help of readers who shared our posts. We must also credit our detractors who reacted as we’d hoped and in mindless outrage spread our stories around the community. While they were attacking us, we saw our readership and Facebook “likes” and “follows” steadily grow.
We thank all our contributors–Sky Hardesty, Kara Kellogg, Brett Nunn, Mike Howard, Ravyn and the anonymous city official who spoke honestly about who the “homeless” in Port Townsend really are. Our biggest thanks goes to Scott Hogenson, a real pro, one of the smartest people we’ve ever met. His standards of excellence in journalism are sorely lacking from today’s media. We were truly honored that someone with his impressive journalistic credentials would want to provide his time, talent and wise counsel to this humble foray into citizen journalism.
There is so much more to write about, so many more voices needing to be heard, so many investigations to conduct…but we’re not going to be able to do it in the near future.
The editor has faced the fact he does not have the time, at least over the next six months, to give this project the care, attention and mental energy it needs. He has an employment commitment and an ongoing fiduciary obligation that will call him out of Washington state, as well as other personal and church obligations that leave no time for the Port Townsend Free Press.
We’ll keep the site up as an archive of our work. It can be always be reactivated, if the need arises.
With that said, we wish all of you a successful, happy and healthy 2019. Thanks everyone. God bless you all.
The first six months of Ravyn’s journey opened with happiness and hope then crashed hard into the reality of being a teen mother. We encouraged readers not to rule out this young couple just because of the hopelessness and despair described in Ravyn’s First and Second Trimester accounts. They could have aborted the baby but instead they married and determined to bring their child into this world, whatever it took. Ravyn is now one week from her due date. And things are turning around for her and her husband. We have been privileged to get to know them and see their true character and to share Ravyn’s words with our readers.
As I move into the final weeks of my pregnancy, it hits me that this journey has gone by so fast. It feels like only yesterday that I was taking The Test and telling my parents The News. It’s hard to believe the formation of a human being could take so little time.
I have started to notice that as I travel along this road I am growing as a person along with the son growing inside me. God’s loving hand has led me down a very complicated and obstacle-filled path. Despite the difficulties and challenges—maybe because of them—I believe I am becoming better in many ways. In the first part of this story I had written than I had been a horrible person. That person who was is not me anymore.
My son moves around and stretches my belly, running out of room to move. I go in for my thirty-five week appointment and learn he is still sideways and has not turned. I also learn that the incessant itching and red bumps I have acquired within a week are called pupps (a rare skin rash that only happens to only pregnant women and then only 1 in100) and that it will not go away until sometime after birth. With my hormones going wild, I worry to no end that my son will not turn. I prepare myself for the next appointment that will tell me if I need to try an inversion or if I may need a Cesarean section.
The week between thirty-six and thirty-seven is a quick seven days. While I have been waiting for my son to head in the right direction, my husband has found his way forward. I have written about my frustration, fury and sadness at how he has not been the person I needed, and how I had I realized I could not make him into the man I wanted him to be. But he has changed from within, found strength and determination. He has taken stock of who he is and what he can do to be the father this family needs, and how he can be the man he wants to be. He will be a soldier, committing himself to serving and protecting this country…and us. It is a huge decision, a turning point in his own life that points him toward the exit door of the life he is leaving behind.
Still, he needs my help with paperwork he must assemble for enlistment. All the turmoil and getting everything prepared for the baby and organizing his documents, I forget all about the upcoming appointment. When we go in to see my doctor at my thirty-seven week mark, I get the bad news: my son is still inverted. My baby is positioned sideways in my belly and the doctor says they can’t do inversions at our local hospital. It’s either a C-section, go to Tacoma, or wait. I chose to wait, praying my baby would turn on his own. I have faith. After all, I know my prayers for my husband have been answered.
While waiting for the thirty-eight week appointment there is so much bustle with the holiday coming up, my husband’s GED testing (he passed and, Lord, was I thankful and proud of him), and getting ready for the baby doctors tell me I will see the first week of January. We went through clothes (ours and the baby’s), blankets, put up cleaning supplies, and talked about the plans for the future since so much had changed so quickly. My husband did his swearing-in to join the Army and we needed a plan for the months to come when I would be without him.
I have a warm, safe place for me and my child until I join my husband wherever he will be stationed. A wonderful woman from our church will take me in and allow me to live in a private space in her home. This is such a blessing. The place where we had been living lacked proper plumbing and heating. It was all we could afford, two kids without high school educations, no money and a child on the way.
The doctor tells me my son is now head down, aimed for the exit out of me and into this world. Our baby is finally in position. Now it is just a waiting game. The next appointment will be December thirty-first. Christmas and family events keep us busy. The start date for my husband’s basic training has been moved up. He will be leaving us sooner than we first thought. The Army needs him, but so do I. Now I have to think about these months ahead when I will be alone with my new child. My thoughts are focused on time and events: When would the baby show himself? Will he be born before his daddy leaves? Would we risk inducing birth if he hasn’t showed or showed signs of coming?
This third trimester has brought more anxiety than the first two—and they were hard enough. But I close out this last stage of my pregnancy filled with so much joy. In the depths of despair and hopelessness, unexpected loneliness and fear for the future, I never thought I would again be this happy.
(We rejoin Ravyn, who asked to share her journey with us. In the first installment (click here), she and her nineteen-year old boyfriend decided to marry and do what it took to bring their child into the world. Pregnancy radically changed Ravyn, a “horrible person” as she has described herself, into a young woman finding strength and determination. But her teen husband has not been growing with her. In this installment she describes a very rough patch for anyone, let alone one so young and without resources or family support. And though this installment is filled with despair, we have a preview of what it is to come. The boy and girl who created a new life are becoming a man and woman building a family. Please return for Ravyn’s final trimester installment.)
How much pressure and disappointment and let-down can a person experience without falling to their knees in tears? How much can one fight for their love when there is so little love to fight for? I couldn’t keep going without my God to help me…I wouldn’t have been able to survive this second trimester without His guiding hand.
My baby is growing. Soon we would find out the gender and whether my child is healthy. Why was I so unhappy? I worked myself to the point of crying in pain most of the time; my feet, ankles, back, and head, seemed to be my enemies. At the end of the day, coming back from working to support us, who did I have waiting for me? No one…no one who wouldn’t frown and sigh when I asked for a back massage. This was when people started to tell me, “He won’t change.” “He isn’t gonna try.” “He isn’t ready for this”, “He’s just not gonna do it…” not even “For the baby.”
It kept hitting harder and harder with every word they spoke. They were right. The husband I loved wasn’t ever going to change. Not now when change in him was what I really needed. I prayed for help and watched for the slightest reason to be optimistic. I shouted at him like a fool when I got exasperated and I was too hurt to think. His actions were killing me.
Between the fighting and the silence there was nothing. There is nothing when the other person isn’t willing to fight. Not for himself. Not for us.
Twenty weeks “with child” and I got so excited. I had made it to the halfway point…and I got nothing out of him. I was truly alone in this. There was no excitement or real joy on his part. He was soaked in fear and rejection of the responsibility he wasn’t prepared to take on. We grew distant. I worked more, prayed more, I wished and hoped he would just see how much I needed him. I tried to have conversations, all the while feeling the child move inside me, feeling my baby grow stronger.
But no matter how many talks…there was no change, even after he said he would make an effort. The ultrasound for our baby’s gender rolled around, and he sat through the appointment on his phone playing games, and my heart turned cold. He got a job for two days a week and quit looking for anything more that could possibly help. He then lost his little job and I covered that month’s rent with help from our church. I talked to him about it, our uncle talked to him, his step-mom, friends, family…no one seemed to get through to him. It was about him, the games, not us. Not our family. I was watching the one person I really wanted fade away because of this child inside me.
School started and he did so well. He completed the courses on time and I got hopeful, I prayed as my child started to be able to be felt by others when they placed their hand on my belly. My miracle was really going to happen when this child was born. But thoughts circled me throughout everything. What if this baby was better with someone else? With no real help, I can’t possibly cover the costs of this new life and all it needs to thrive and be whole. I begged my Father to help me. To be softer and more loving so I could help my husband find the right path. Where is it all going? What lies ahead now frightens me when at the beginning, with the joyous news of the life inside me, all I felt was hope and excitement and confidence that we…we, the two of us together, helping each other…could be the kind of people our child needed us to be.
Just memories now. Only a few months have passed but those bright days seem so long ago.
All these emotions and feelings, the physical and mental realities that seem so much larger than me, a seventeen-year old without a high school diploma facing this blessing that is such a challenge, feeling so alone. I need calmness and there is only frenzy and worry. I need a sense of some sort of control and all I see is the world slipping away from me.
I keep trying to return to the arms of my God. I know he is the only one who can truly help me through this.
Over the past few months there has been an orchestrated effort to spread defamatory and libelous information about the editor of the Port Townsend Free Press.
This information is absolutely and unequivocally false.
Some of this information was spread by Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Haas, who was defeated for reelection November 6. He posted the libelous material following a series of investigative reports by the Port Townsend Free Press about questionable activities during his tenure. Mr. Haas is not alone in this effort to defame and libel the news site’s editor.
We are currently in litigation with one party responsible for disseminating this false and defamatory information, and are engaged in tracking other sources through ISPs, social media profiles and other identifying information. Repeating a libel, under law, is no different than originating a libel, and we will vigorously pursue any and all such activity to the fullest extent of civil and criminal law.
We will not be cowed by these libelous attacks. Thank you to all our readers and volunteers. Our readership continues to grow.We look forward to bringing you more news and opinions about what is happening in our county.As always, we welcome submissions, regardless of viewpoint so long as they are well-written and thoroughly researched.
Once upon a time the Boiler Room was a good thing for teens and Port Townsend. We have all heard the stories of rewarding friendships, of lives changed and lives saved.
But when news of the Boiler Room’s closing made its way around town, we also heard more than a few parents saying, “It should have closed long ago. That’s where my kids learned to do drugs.”
We heard much the same from police: The Boiler Room had become a marketplace for things parents weren’t sending their kids there to get.
Somewhere along the way, the Boiler Room became as lost and confused as the teens it had set out to serve.
Work on a story regarding conflicts between the Boiler Room and its neighbors was shelved when the Boiler Room announced its closing. Some of the people interviewed had volunteered there, but as they saw and learned more their attitudes changed. They wanted the Boiler Room out of their neighborhood. The didn’t see troubled teens getting help; they saw the problems besetting teens being enabled and ignored. They told us of screaming and fights on the street, of tires slashed, of being accosted at their doors by people drawn to the area by the Boiler Room’s wide-open door and free stuff.
The Boiler Room leadership has admitted that they lost control of their facility. They let their youth service program become a hangout for transients and people no parent would want within arm’s reach of their teenage daughter or son. The Boiler Room leadership could not decide whether it was better to be perceived as “welcoming” and “nondiscriminatory” or take action to preserve and protect its original, laudable mission.
Perhaps if the Boiler Room’s leadership had been able to make that choice it would still be open and doing what it had been created to do.
During the Prop 1 campaign in 2017, a man was arrested for slashing signs in broad daylight along roadways in Port Hadlock. As soon as his name was released, social media spread the word. He was known at the Boiler Room where he had been aggressive towards young women. He had a record of violence. He was described as a stalker, volatile and dangerous. He is man in his fifties.
David Faber, President of the Boiler Room, said in comments after this story was published that this man had been excluded from the Boiler Room since 2011. Faber related in comments on the Rural Rebels Facebook page at the time of this man’s arrest that he had threatened to kill at least one person and had severe mental health issues that made him very dangerous. Faber said he was so dangerous that the man had been prohibited from coming “anywhere near” Faber’s law office. Another commenter, who volunteered at the Boiler Room, said his picture had been posted to alert staff if he came inside despite orders to stay away. At the time of this man’s arrest, we had seen social media posts that he had been there more recently. Visits to the Boiler Room were reportedly one of the reasons he came into town from his home in Quilcene. Regardless of when the Boiler Room learned of this man’s dangerous nature, when they decided to keep him out and whether they succeeded without exception, a more consequential question remains unanswered by Mr. Faber and Boiler Room leaders: Why was he ever permitted to spend time inside? Why would the organization let the kids it was supposed to be protecting and helping ever be exposed to anybody like this? To repeat, this is a man in his fifties. He was not a teen looking for help and friendship. [This paragraph has been updated since publication to take into consideration comments and attempts to verify Mr. Faber’s statements. We were unable to verify all that Mr. Faber told us but are including his side, nonetheless].
Even scarier was the man banging on the Boiler Room’s door one morning this past summer. He wanted free coffee before he went looking for someone to kill.
Neighbors had seen and heard him: a frightening presence on their street, drawn to downtown because the Boiler Room was known to admit anyone inside its doors.
Later that day he hunted down a harmless homeless man and nearly stabbed him to death at a spot just two blocks away.
Shortly after, the Boiler Room announced it was closing. It had been losing volunteers. Its financial support had “fallen off a cliff,” in the words of its executive director. Parents did not want their kids there. It traded future teen success stories for a faltering existence as a “day shelter” for transients.
What does this have to do with a comment policy for Port Townsend Free Press? It persuades us to act.
We had allowed unrestricted comments when we were on the Blogger platform before our move to WordPress and our new website. Our Facebook page has always been open to comments. We have been watching and learning as we consider opening the website to comments. What we’ve learned is that we need a comment policy before we activate the comments at ptfreepress.com.
One particular official of the City of Port Townsend has been a prolific commenter on our Facebook page. We like a good debate and encourage contrary points of view. But his contributions rarely rise above insults and abuse. Invitations for civil and substantive discourse are met with more insults and taunts. Profanity in his comments is not uncommon.
In a recent give-and-take around an article on the state of Jefferson County finances, he revealed that his sole purpose all along has been to “f### around in your comments.” He showed himself to be nothing more than a vandal.
We put the decision to our readers as to whether we should block this Port Townsend official from commenting. It was a vigorous discussion. We got a fair share of profanity, abuse and insults from his friends, people he called into the discussion who had never before appeared in our comments. We also heard from others who had blocked this Port Townsend official from their Facebook pages because of his inappropriate behavior. They encouraged us to do the same. And we heard from people of the opinion that excluding anyone, regardless of what they say or how they say it, would make Port Townsend Free Press the antithesis of “free.”.
Several comments by Sky Hardesty of Port Townsend, who is a contributor to PTFP, steered us toward a decision. He observed that the city official was using his “insults, intimidation and relentlessness…to drown out free speech.”
We have readers who will not wade through profanity and threats to follow a thread of serious discussion of local issues. They drop out and do not express their thoughts. They know that if they dare speak up, they, too, might become targets for the profanity and abuse.
The sight of profanity and taunts in comments also can drive away new readers.
We will not by inaction and indecision let such conduct do to our young effort what happened to the Boiler Room.
So we announce our comment policy: “We welcome contrary viewpoints. Diversity of opinion is sorely lacking in Port Townsend, in part because dissenting views are often suppressed, self-censored and made very unwelcome. Port Townsend Free Press was launched to do something about that situation. Insults, taunts, bullying, intimidation and profanity do not qualify as serious discourse. They deter and drown it out. Comments of that nature will be removed and offenders will be blocked.”
Rural Rebels Facebook page at the time of this man’s arrest that he had threatened to kill at least one person and had severe mental health issues that made him very dangerous. Faber said he was so dangerous that the man had been prohibited from coming “anywhere near” Faber’s law office. Another commenter, who volunteered at the Boiler Room, said his picture had been posted to alert staff if he came inside despite orders to stay away. At the time of this man’s arrest, we had seen social media posts that he had been there more recently. Visits to the Boiler Room were reportedly one of the reasons he came into town from his home in Quilcene. Regardless of when the Boiler Room learned of this man’s dangerous nature, when they decided to keep him out and whether they succeeded without exception, a more consequential question remains unanswered by Mr. Faber and Boiler Room leaders: Why was he ever permitted to spend time inside? Why would the organization let the kids it was supposed to be protecting and helping ever be exposed to anybody like this? To repeat, this is a man in his fifties. He was not a teen looking for help and friendship. [This paragraph has been updated since publication to take into consideration comments and attempts to verify Mr. Faber’s statements. We were unable to verify all that Mr. Faber told us but are including his side, nonetheless].