EVERETT — Hope ‘N Wellness, which provides social services in downtown Everett, will be able to operate through the end of April after the city extended a deadline requiring the organization to comply with zoning laws.
Jasmine Donahue, who founded the organization in 2020 and currently heads it, is “very grateful” for the extension, she said in an interview Tuesday. But she still hopes to find a permanent solution to allow the organization to operate downtown.
Hope ‘N Wellness provides a place for those in need — particularly people experiencing homelessness or addiction — to warm up, keep track of appointments, and store belongings. The city has said, however, that the organization is violating a city code which prohibits social services from operating on the ground floor of certain streets within Metro Everett. Those codes, first introduced in 2006 and expanded upon in 2018, limit certain areas of downtown to retail shops and dining.
If the organization, located at 3021 Rucker Ave., was operating a few blocks away or above the first floor, it could continue to operate as a social service facility.
Initially, the city gave Donahue a deadline of October 2024 to meet zoning requirements, either by closing the organization’s doors or by finding a new location. The city later extended the deadline to Feb. 28 and, as of Feb. 12, extended it again to April 30. Mayor Cassie Franklin directed staff to do so, she said at the Feb. 12 City Council meeting.
The extension means Donahue can operate Hope ‘N Wellness through the end of winter, at a time when its services are most desperately needed. Finding other possible locations to move the organization, however, remains difficult. As of Tuesday, she has not found a suitable location to move to.
“There’s a lot of different pieces to all of that,” Donahue said. “We have found one good potential partnership, but it doesn’t necessarily include space. It’s all learning curves and trying a little bit of everything, keeping an open mind about how that could look.”
The extension is also contingent upon keeping the organization’s current schedule the same, a city building official, Tony Lee, wrote to Donahue in an email. Currently, Hope ‘N Wellness is open one day per week.
Trying to open the location on additional weekdays would “take some prep work anyways,” Donahue said, so the organization is already focusing its efforts on providing the best services it can once a week.
“Our hope is that this is a sign of good faith with potentially working with us to stay permanently,” she said.
The city is looking to possibly partner with social service providers like Hope ‘N Wellness to increase the availability of services in Everett, city spokesperson Simone Tarver said in an email. But the city also must enforce its code, put in place to activate Everett’s downtown and support the growth of small businesses, she said.
“We want to see our social service providers be successful while also ensuring we’re appropriately preventing and addressing impacts to the homes, businesses and public spaces in the surrounding area,” Tarver wrote. “And that’s why plans like the Metro Everett plan are important — they set a vision and provide a framework for future decisions that help us to make the community’s vision for that area a reality.”
Donahue is holding out hope for a permanent solution to keep the organization downtown, but isn’t “discrediting options on the table,” she said. Another option, she said, could be working with a number of other groups who share a similar vision to open multiple smaller social service day centers, increasing access to services city-wide.
Even if the building closes at the end of April, however, she insists she will keep working for those in need in Everett.
“As long as there is breath in my lungs, I will be out here supporting folks as best I can,” Donahue said. “We have a huge population of folks from all different walks of life that have felt hopeless and decided to trust a little bit, to try. I don’t see doing anything but trying to honor that as best I can.”
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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