Ketchikan’s City Council voted unanimously Thursday to set up an overnight warming center for the community’s homeless population. The shelter is set to be located at the First United Methodist Church downtown and managed by Ty Rettke, who runs PATH (Park Avenue Temporary Housing), a 26-bed transitional housing facility.
Councilmember Mark Flora proposed the motion, which redirects city money to get the shelter up and running by Nov. 1. Flora said the move prioritized timeliness as the weather gets colder.
“What it does is, it allows us to move now. November is coming and we are out of time,” Flora said. “Mr. Rettke told me that in a perfect scenario, he can probably get this operation stood up [by Nov. 1], but as every day goes by, delays are likely to occur.”
Flora noted that the vote doesn’t require any new money from the community. The shelter will be funded with $43,000 left over from the humanitarian grant fund, plus $23,000 redirected from the city’s reunification program.
That initiative, created in June, aims to help people without stable housing who are interested in leaving Ketchikan get reunited with family or friends out of state. Councilmembers Riley Gass and Jai Mahtani expressed concern over removing money from the reunification effort.
Rettke, who also oversees that program, explained that they’ve only been able to reunify three people so far, and that they should still have enough funding for the handful of others who have expressed interest.
“At a certain point, we had to look at the writing on the wall and do a little bit of triage,” Rettke said. “What’s more important — helping people travel back home or preventing people from dying on the street this winter?”
The warming shelter is currently only funded until January 25, 2025 but is expected to be needed through March. Thursday’s vote authorized a formal request for the borough to also contribute funding, an idea which the Borough Assembly began discussing at their Sept. 16 meeting. Councilmembers were optimistic that other community organizations would chip in as well.
The push for the warming center comes as the community’s largest shelter, run by First City Homeless Services, closed in June after the city ended the lease on its building.
