We’ve published our After Action Report on the 2025-2026 winter severe weather shelter (SWS), highlighting successes in both new and existing partnerships and ongoing challenges with recruitment, training, and scheduling of shelter staff.  

Key Successes and Improvements

We made changes this year based on what we learned from past winters, and we saw great results:

• New City of Bellingham Day Center Partnership: The City of Bellingham, in partnership with the Opportunity Council's Homeless Outreach Team, set up a daytime shelter so guests had a warm place to stay when the overnight shelter closed. Transportation was provided by Whatcom County Health and Community Services between the two sites for easy access. 
• Improved Transportation: We increased morning transportation services for guests, including to and from the City of Bellingham’s Day Shelter. 759 transports were provided to guests after they stayed overnight at the shelter to locations like the Way Station, DSHS, and didgwálič local services. 
• Better Sleep for Guests: We gave guests more space between cots and increased privacy by lowering the total number of beds from 80 to 60. This was based on guest feedback from the previous winter. The extra room allowed us to add a dining area, making the space more comfortable. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent), guests rated their sleep quality at 7.3, a major jump from 4.5 the previous winter. We also had no large sickness outbreaks, which may be because people were spaced farther apart.

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• Student Internships: We partnered with Western Washington University to promote work at the shelter to students. For many, the job doubled as an internship toward their graduation requirements.
• Hired More Seasonal Help: We hired almost twice as many temporary, on-call workers as the year before. This helped keep our permanent county staff focused on their regular daytime duties. 
• Neighbor Open House and Site Security: Before the first activation, we held an open house so neighbors and business owners could tour the building. We also put up a fence around the property. These steps drastically reduced neighbor complaints.

 

Numbers at a Glance

The shelter opened on the coldest nights between November 1 and March 15. Here is how the season broke down:

• 26 Nights Open: The total number of nights the shelter opened between Nov. 1, 2025 and March 15, 2026.
• 1,398 Total Bed Nights: The total number of overnight stays used by guests across the season.
• 232 Unique Individuals: The total number of unique individuals who stayed at the shelter over the course of the season.
• 2800+ meals: The shelter provided dinner, breakfast, and snacks to guests and individuals. This continued a successful partnership with Sustainable Connections' food recovery program that collects leftover meals from the Bellingham School District, as well as a new partnership with Opportunity Councils' Maple Alley Inn food program, which provided a variety of dishes to feed guests
• 36 Temporary Staff: We nearly doubled the number of temporary staff hired for the winter season in a combination of guaranteed part-time hourly and on-call positions. 
• 58 Volunteers: We partnered with the Opportunity Council to recruit and train volunteers again this season. Shelter volunteers worked 149 shifts, and many of these same people also volunteered at the Bellingham day shelter.   
• $357,436 Total Cost: We spent about $357,000 on the program. Over half of this went to staffing. The rest paid for the lease, utilities, food, and contracted services like laundry and security. No city funds were used, as the total stayed under our $450,000 county budget.

Continued Challenges

Even with these improvements, running a temporary shelter based primarily on forecasted low temperatures is challenging.

• Predicting the Weather: We attempt to open whenever the forecast calls for 32°F or below. We have to make this call 48 hours in advance to get staffing and supplies ready. However, forecasts change quickly. There were actually 46 nights where the temperature dropped below freezing, but because the forecast changed after our 48-hour window, we were only open for 26.
• Recruitment, training, and scheduling: It took a significant amount of staff time to hire, train, and schedule temporary, on-call workers. This is partially because we hired nearly twice as many as the previous year, to ensure permanent WCHCS staff are not pulled from their work to assist. The background check, hiring, training, and onboarding process is comprehensive and time-consuming, taking around two to three months to fully complete. Operating a winter severe weather shelter requires almost a year of work from initial job postings in the summer through the end of operations in March.

 

Thanks to our Partners, Staff, and Volunteers

This work would not be possible without the generous support of many organizations, community volunteers, donations of food and warm clothing from people throughout Whatcom, and the dedicated staff who showed up night after night to make sure our unhoused neighbors were warm and safe on the coldest nights of the year. Thank you! 

Read the full report here.