PORT TOWNSEND — Alison Capener wishes that the East Jefferson County homeless shelter were open year-round.

“I wish it was open now, given the mess we have,” Capener said of fall rains swamping the county.

Still, she is glad that the Jefferson County Emergency Winter Shelter opens Nov. 30 in the American Legion hall’s basement at Water and Monroe streets in Port Townsend.

Capener and other volunteers helped found the shelter three years ago through Port Townsend-area churches, Olympic Community Action Programs and American Legion Post 28.

“Our long-term hope is to get a permanent facility,” she said.

The shelter, which normally houses 12 to 16 people overnight each week — including up to three women — can now take in up to 22 in an emergency, she said.

The shelter will run from 4 p.m.to 8 a.m. each day into March.

Space for women is limited in the shelter, in which men and women must be separated, said Capener, who organized local churches to help the homeless after her son died in a shelter in Hawaii.

The timing of the shelter opening coordinates with Thanksgiving weekend, Capener said, when homeless individuals and families are in special need of food and other services.

New furnace

American Legion Cmdr. Joe Carey was excited Friday to show off the new furnace installed for the shelter, and drainage improvements made in the Legion’s driveway to prevent the basement from flooding.

The furnace and drainage improvements were funded by $14,000 in donations given in three months during fundraising, including a raffle, last summer, he said.

One person donated $3,000, he said.

“Everyone pitched in,” Carey said as he stood in the shelter’s basement.

He thanked the Legion’s auxiliary and Community Outreach Association Shelter Team, or COAST.

The Legion’s back delivery driveway now has a sump pump installed in its drainage system, which pumps water up into the city rain garden in the parking lot behind City Hall, adjacent to the Legion hall.

Opened in 2005-2006, the shelter has about 200 volunteers and two paid overnight monitors, paid by OlyCAP.

Each paid monitor is assisted by a volunteer.

Capener said the public, especially youths under 18, are invited to a cleaning party at 10 a.m. Nov. 22 to get the shelter into shape as a comfortable place to sleep and eat.

The shelter serves breakfast and a bagged lunch to help those without a roof over their heads get though the day.

“The cleaning will be a lot easier because facility has been built up,” Capener said.

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Port Townsend/Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.