Grays Harbor County Commissioners made three requests for proposals from “apparently successful bidders” for a cold weather shelter in Aberdeen, hotel/motel vouchers targeting homeless families, and a “pallet structure” emergency shelter at their meeting on Tuesday.

An apparently successful bidder is an entity selected to perform the services subject to completion of contracts and fulfilling certain requirements for final approval.

After a request for proposals for a cold weather shelter got zero responses earlier this month, Grays Harbor County Public Health scrambled to put together another request, with input from the county commissioners, and got three responses.

WHOLE Harbor submitted a proposal for a 25-bed cold weather shelter. WHOLE Harbor is a nonprofit group formed in 2019 and established the Aberdeen Sunday Market.

As described in a report to the commissioners, before a contract is officially executed for the shelter, WHOLE Harbor will be required to “identify a location that meets the standards of the Board (of County Commissioners), the City of Aberdeen, and any relevant enforcement authorities.” It must also “submit a county-approved staffing plan before executing a contract.”

Coastal Community Action Program (CCAP) submitted a proposal to administer hotel/motel vouchers targeting homeless families, a new program where CCAP will find hotels and motels willing to participate in programs and provide vouchers for stays.

The selection committee “recommends the board fully fund CCAP’s proposal given the agency’s extensive experience providing vouchering services, established connections with local hospitality businesses, and established staffing and administrative capacity,” read the report to the commissioners.

A third proposal from the Moore Wright Group is “to install a temporary pallet shelter structure that would serve approximately eight clients in the parking lot of their current facility,” said public health Healthy Places Division Manager Cassie Lentz.

With the commissioners naming this proposal an apparently successful bidder in the request for proposals process, “county staff will be working with them to verify this use is allowable via City of Aberdeen building codes and under their current lease with their landlord.”

A pallet shelter is a modular building that can be put together in a short time. It’s not a “pallet” in terms of what you see used for shipping — panels are made of fiberglass reinforced plastic with a foam insulating core, and the structures are aluminum framed. They have been used up and down the West Coast, including six shelters in Washington with 516 beds.

Funding for these projects come from a couple of sources. The 25-bed emergency cold weather shelter and the Moore Wright Group pallet shelter structure would be funded with up to $250,000 in local document recording fees. The hotel/motel voucher funding is allocated through the state, which approved the program in its last legislative session.

Because funds are available for both the Moore Wright and WHOLE Harbor proposals, commissioners were given the choice to fund both or just one; they made both apparently successful bidders Tuesday.

“We have the funds from the Emergency Solutions Grant and the Homeless Housing Fund available, and both programs fit under the criteria outlined in the request for proposals, and we do have funding for each project with that stipulated amount,” $125,000 per project, Lentz told the commissioners.

Commissioner Jill Warne asked if there was room for expansion at the Moore Wright site.

“The proposal they submitted was for eight beds and that’s what the committee reviewed, and that was the budget amount recommended as an apparently successful bidder,” said Lentz. “If the county received additional funds and wanted to put out another request for proposals we could consider that” if the Moore Wright Group wanted an expansion.

After getting no takers for an emergency cold weather shelter in the first request for proposals, Lentz was “pleased to see three proposals, and two of them are from providers we haven’t worked with before. It’s always good to expand the scope of potential providers.”

These are not done deals by any means yet. The commissioners Tuesday approved all three proposals as apparently successful bidders. Now, each must go through the additional legwork to show they can fulfill the obligations of the proposals.

In the case of WHOLE Harbor, for example, that means securing locations that are acceptable and approved, and providing proof of adequate staffing. Then, contracts will be drafted and brought to the commissioners for final approval.

The goal is to have these locations and programs firmed up and operational by mid-November, but is dependent on securing locations and the necessary permissions from landlords, the city, etc. With cold wet weather already invading the region, ”Time is of the essence,” said Warne.