Three Christmases have come and gone since the Inn at Port Hadlock closed abruptly and a group of affordable housing advocates started wishing those clean, still furnished rooms could be put to use.

This Christmas, that group is celebrating.

Part of the Inn at Hadlock is destined to be reborn in 2015 as Bayside Hotel, a place where those in need of clean, affordable lodging.

The inn, which was closed by the state Department of Revenue when the previous owners failed to pay state taxes, was officially purchased on Dec. 12, 2014 for $852,000 by a private company, Inn Properties LLC of Port Townsend. The new owners are leasing 33 of the rooms on the east side of the property – in the “tower” building, not the main building – to Bayside Housing & Services, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit led by John Cantlon, Julie Knott, Vince Verneuil, Kim Hammers, Chris Eagan and Karen Riel.

Bayside aims to run its side of the property as a hotel for those in Jefferson County in need of decent housing.

Plans to reopen the restaurant and remaining 14 rooms in the main inn are under discussion, says Knott, who has one foot in the nonprofit and the other in the for-profit business, Inn Properties.

If all goes as planned, the first guests could check in to Bayside Hotel sometime this spring, with the nonprofit having the goal of not just providing lodging those guests, but connecting them with job skills and other services, and then having them check out and into a better permanent housing situation.

UNIQUE MODEL

Anyone paying attention to the low-income-housing situation in Jefferson County knows there is a need.

“Yeah, I’m worried about an application flood,” admitted Knott on Dec. 15, the date the deal closed. “I’m anticipating a flood.”

The reality is, there will not be any “vacancy” sign on the outside of Bayside Hotel, and checking in won’t be as easy as making a typical reservation.

“And this is not going to be a homeless shelter," says Cantlon, who volunteers as a monitor at the Winter Shelter in the basement of the American Legion Hall in Port Townsend four nights a week – and spends his days volunteering as board chair of Bayside.

“You'll get into Bayside through a caseworker. You'll have had to demonstrate a need and a desire to get out of the situation you're in," says Cantlon.

Bayside plans to connect with service providers, including Dove House Advocacy Services, St. Vincent de Paul, Jefferson Healthcare, the Peninsula Housing Authority and Olympic Community Action Programs (OlyCAP). Those agencies would refer people to Bayside Housing & Services for lodging assistance.

And at first, Bayside won't be able to serve families with young children.

“We’re going to take families, we just can't take them at first. But we absolutely will take families” after the licensing and insurance and nuts and bolts of the plan are worked out, says Cantlon.

JOURNEY INTO POVERTY

To demonstrate what is inspiring Bayside Housing & Services and the property's new owner, who currently wishes to remain anonymous, Cantlon wants to take a drive through Irondale before meeting up with the rest of the board.

Irondale is minutes away from where the gracious Inn at Port Hadlock, at the south end of Port Townsend Bay, has sat frozen in time since the day it closed on June 30, 2011. That was the day officials from the state seized the property for unpaid taxes. The beds were made. They still are. The dining room was immaculate. It still is.

Today, a winter day in 2014, what Cantlon wants to do is to check out the other side of Jefferson County, not the picturesque venues presented to tourists on websites, but the nitty-gritty reality of how many people in Jefferson County live.

Head west on Irondale Road and take the right just after the Irondale Evangelical Free Church. Go a block or two or three. See the windowless trailer covered in moss? Someone lives there. Head west and you’ll find a home surrounded by dozens of rusty cars. Cantlon knows a child who lives inside that small building.

Everyone from Bayside Housing & Services and those who own the main inn have all been to the poverty side of Jefferson County, where the median price of a home (half being higher, half lower) is $242,700.

“This is the motivation behind everything we're doing at Bayside," says Cantlon as he drives through sections of Irondale. "It's comforting for people to think people make bad choices and live like this. But nobody chooses to live like this. The farther west you go, the situation deteriorates.

"It's generational. The kids grow up knowing nothing else."

At the end of one road is a dilapidated camper that a man who had been homeless was able to buy after he got a job and saved up his money. Now, he's not homeless. "But is that an existence?" asks Cantlon.

"There are thousands of people here in Jefferson County living on minimal Social Security and food stamps," says Cantlon as he turns around and heads back to that waterfront inn. There, he and the others will be meeting for yet another day to figure out the details of a project that is driven largely by the faith-based community and by housing advocates associated with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Community Outreach Association Shelter Team (COAST), which co-operates the Jefferson County Winter Shelter in Port Townsend.

Cantlon has met so many people in need that he almost can't stop talking about them.

Like the 29-year-old woman whose husband left her.

"All she had was Section 8 [housing voucher], which allowed that family to live on $720-a-month subsidized housing and food stamps. I look down at the paperwork and I'm talking with a 29-year-old woman with four kids, including her 14-year-old daughter."

Cantlon lets the math of that sink in. Get it? She's 29 with a 14-year-old daughter.

"She needs the kind of help she can get at Bayside,” he says firmly.

"There's better housing if you have better job skills, better parenting skills, better life skills. The people we encounter are people who go to the store to shop for a meal instead of shopping for a week.

"Once you develop a plan, you begin to take control of your life."

THE DETAILS, THE MODEL

Cantlon and the others have taken control of those 33 rooms and they are developing a plan, too.

Technically, the deal between the private company that bought the foreclosed property at auction and Bayside was finalized on Dec. 15, a few days after Inn Properties cinched the sale on Dec. 12.

The deal gives Bayside a 10-year lease for its side of the property, with an option of three more 10-year leases for a total of 40 years to change as many lives as it can, Cantlon says.

All of the Bayside board members have some sort of background in housing or working with people who are often called "at risk": veterans who have been traumatized by war, young women or middle-aged women and families who have suffered abuse or what Cantlon calls generational poverty.

Almost all the board members are also associated with St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Port Townsend, although the project is not connected to the church.

Hammers and Riel are founders of the Winter Shelter and have been involved in COAST since 2005.

“This is such an answer to an incredible need in the community,” says Hammers. “I was so honored to be invited into this conversation.

“What I see in all this is that we are all here on this earth to care for one another and to be able to do something like this, to give something to people that they need. … It's a miracle that this got through in two and a half years,” says Hammers, who remembers a time when her own housing situation as a teen was less than ideal.

Eagan is a retired trial attorney from Seattle whose wife, Carolyn, is vice president of Habitat for Humanity of East Jefferson County. He is also associated with St. Vincent de Paul as is Verneuil.

“It's unique to Jefferson County,” Eagan acknowledged of the project. “It's one of the more unusual concepts for providing low-income housing to people.”

Over the years, Knott's heart has been in caring for young people. She ran West Camp for Girls for years.

"We're grassroots," says Knott, who also works for Inn Properties. "This is a complex business model," she acknowledged.

While the project is unique to the Olympic Peninsula, Knott says using a hotel for housing is not unheard of in Washington.

Sea Mar Community Health Centers operates two hotels in Pasco/Tri-Area as temporary housing for seasonal farmworkers, and specializes in service to Latinos, according to its website.

Jesus Sanchez, who is on the board that overseas Sea Mar, is also involved in Gov. Jay Inslee's Center for Regulatory Innovation and Assistance. Knott says Sanchez and Rogelio Riojas, president of the Sea Mar board, have provided assistance in learning how to manage, finance and support the project.

"We’re 100 percent into the hotel-motel regulations, so people can't stay more than 28 days," says Knott. "We don't intend this to be a long-term housing option."

Rooms will all be cleaned. Garbage will be taken out. Although cooking won't be allowed in the rooms, there will be refrigerators and microwaves, the same amenities that any hotel guest would expect.

And after 28 days, then what? Well, people can check back in, just like they would be able to do in any hotel, Knott says.

DeForest Walker, who used to work for OlyCAP and now runs the Winter Shelter, has been named as executive director of the new hotel.

NO GOVERNMENT

To date, there has been no government money involved and little public fundraising. The project has been funded through private contributions, many in the faith-based community.

While the project is only now making its public debut, the proposal has been on the radar of everyone interested in affordable housing in Jefferson County for several years.

The affordable housing issue weighs on Bayside board members.

The waiting list for getting financial help with housing – known as Section 8 housing vouchers – has been closed for several years in Jefferson County, Cantlon notes.

Federal and state funding for affordable housing is given now to the Peninsula Housing Authority for both Jefferson and Clallam counties. As a result, money is divided between the two counties based on population, and Jefferson’s population is on the short end of that arrangement.

“Money for the Olympic Peninsula gets split 70-30. The population is 80,000 in Clallam and 30,000 in Jefferson, so it's the sensible way to split it up,” acknowledged Cantlon.

But what that also means is that there is never enough funding for affordable housing in Jefferson County to do much in the way of making a dent in one area of need, he says.

“We don't have an aversion to government. It's just that all those funds are being used right now. None of the social service agencies have a whole bunch of money,” says Cantlon.

A PLACE TO CHANGE

Back at the inn, Cantlon and other board members have hours and hours of work to do, and they are meeting in the main inn for now, on a fairly routine basis.

It's a big, spacious, currently empty place, although today, the heat and lights are on.

“This place has class. It's beautiful, and we'll just be continuing to use it as a hotel," says Knott of the intention to use the 33 rooms for affordable housing, hinting that news of what will be done with the rest of the building will be forthcoming.

Knott also knows that some people might wince at the notion of using part of a waterfront hotel for lodging the less fortunate.

And she has an answer and is quick with a comeback.

"It's been for sale since 2011. It went to auction, and no one bought it. You want a luxury hotel to be an abandoned building?

"Someone in town saw an empty building, a hotel fully furnished and a lot of people who needed a place to stay," she says.

For now, that individual wants to remain anonymous, she says.

Like Cantlon and the others, that person has visited the other side of Jefferson County – the deep, dark poverty side.

And the visits made an impression.

“How can it not get to you?” says Cantlon of what he's seen, noting that he's met people who have no food and no place warm to stay on cold nights. “It tears your heart out to see so much unnecessary pain and suffering.

“This is the land of the free and home of the brave and the richest country in the history of the world. That’s where you live. That’s the neighborhood where you just left. That’s what Bayside Housing is all about,” says Cantlon.

Changing lives by giving a hand-up with housing is what Bayside is all about, say Knott, Hammers and Cantlon, and the reason why they all are excited about the sale of the inn right before Christmas when the story of “No room at the inn” is on the minds and in the hearts of many.