BOISE — Providing dignity and expanding partnerships has been the central focus of Jessica Abbott’s work as executive director of the Corpus Christi House.
Corpus Christi is located at 525 S Americana Blvd. and adjacent to overnight shelter Boise Interfaith Sanctuary, which is scheduled to move to 4306 W State St. in 2025, and CATCH Idaho, an organization dedicated to connecting persons experiencing homelessness with permanent housing. Corpus Christi has been a staple in Boise since 2003.
The city’s dynamics have changed much since then and, until recently, Corpus Christi had changed very little. Nonetheless, it has always been a place for Boise’s homeless population to seek shelter throughout the year.
CHANGE IN EXECUTIVE ARRANGEMENTSAbbott, who was brought into the operation in September of last year, now fills a central role in Boise’s apparatus of organizations that are working to reduce homelessness in the area. Before coming to Boise about 20 years ago, she worked for Concerned Citizens, a non-profit operating out of Forks, Washington, that provides childcare and preschools services, offers employment programs and operates an adult family home.
Since moving to Boise, Abbott had been working for Wells Fargo in branch and business management and for Harmon Smith Financial, a Boise-based wealth advisor, as the investment director.
“I was looking for something to do that was more service-based,” Abbott said. “I actually came here in September as the office manager to get the financials and books in line. At that time the board was an executive board.”
For its first 20 years of operation, the Corpus Christi House had been a volunteer-run and community-funded operation under a “hands-on” board that had been making all of the decisions for the shelter, Paul Hatab, Corpus Christi treasurer and governing board member, said. Shortly after Abbott arrived at Corpus Christi in September, the board moved to rearrange itself as a governing board and establish Abbott as the executive director for the shelter.
While the new arrangement retains the former characteristics of being volunteer-run and community-funded, Abbott and Hatab said that the influx of people using Corpus Christi’s services after the COVID-19 pandemic made the executive board no longer tenable. Abbott said that the restructuring will allow for quicker day-to-day decisions and allow Corpus Christi to be more involved with the community and partner agencies.
In 2003, the shelter saw between 40 to 60 people on a given day. Now, numbers are as high as 200 per day. Having a more “traditional” model of an executive director that reports to a board makes the whole operation more responsive and decisive toward those increased demands, Hatab said.
“It’s one of the big changes we’ve made over the last 25 years,” Hatab said. “If we could go back in time, maybe we would have made it a year or two ago.”
Abbott said that the new governing board will retain control of budgeting, fundraising, agency partnerships, branding and staffing.
Since taking over in December, the last half year has been spent “calming things down” at Corpus Christi and restoring a sense of “dignity and respect” for the residents, including newly cleaned outdoor spaces, Abbott said.
Additionally, clothing offered at the center has been moved to racks, boosting its ease of access.
“It’s sort of ironic that moving to this newer model has really allowed us to go back to our roots in terms of the things we always tried to do which was … to ease the burden of homelessness, but it was always about providing dignity to our guests,” Hatab said.
Hatab said the shelter has improved in the area of relationship building. In recent years, the shelter has seen significant volunteer turnover, making rapport with long-term guests difficult to foster. These relationships can be crucial for building trust with guests, especially with those experiencing a mental health issue who need to have someone at the shelter that they know.
Abbott’s work as executive director has also placed emphasis on the shelter’s external engagement by seeking to establish the operation among other relevant shelter and housing organizations in the Boise area.
BOISE’S ONLY DAY-TIME SHELTERCorpus Christi is the only day-time shelter in the city of Boise. Other shelters in the area such as Interfaith Sanctuary and Boise Rescue Mission offer services in the morning and overnight.
Interfaith’s move to its State Street location will change this dynamic as it becomes a 24-hour shelter. The new location — located at the previous Salvation Army Building– is expected to open for its doors in October 2025, Jodi Peterson-Stigers, Interfaith Sanctuary director, said.
Until then, Corpus Christi remains the first shelter that members of the homeless population turn to for assistance. Abbott described the shelter as being akin to a central “hub” that takes people in and connects them with relevant services in Idaho.
“We’re big, we’re the entry point. We see everybody before anybody else does,” Abbott said. “We’re like the spokes on a wheel. They hit us first and then we try and get them to where they’re best going to be served and build trust with them.”
This process of service connection is not devoid of difficulty. Individuals experiencing homelessness can present significant reservations due to skepticism about outreach services.
“This community is not trusting,” Abbott said. “They have been knocked down, hurt, discriminated against, and it takes a while to build that trust.”
This lack of trust can be compounded by a lack of hope. Permanent housing waitlists can be years long and shelter users can start seeing places like Corpus Christi as their “new reality.”
Rather than looking to the future for hope, individuals would start working to figure out how to adjust to the world as someone that is unhoused, adopting the culture and lifestyle that comes with that, Abbott said.
Peterson-Stigers said that the Interfaith Sanctuary, who has been in partnership with Corpus Christi “since COVID hit,” is working with Corpus Christi staff on a daily basis.
She highlighted Abbott’s changes to increase summer operating hours and begin Sunday operation, saying that the latter has lifted a lot of the “pressure” from the Interfaith Sanctuary system.
“She’s awesome,” Peterson-Stigers said, of Abbott. “The skill set she’s bringing to Corpus Christi is a game-changer.”
This work with other agencies has allowed Corpus Christi to develop better relationships with guests, as outside groups with an existing knowledge base about certain members can be used for a “better coordinated response to the unique situations of each guest,” Hatab said.
Abbott said that she has been working to bring the facility “out of the shadows,” through direct partnerships with Interfaith Sanctuary, Our Path Home and CATCH Idaho, all of which are organizations dedicated to bringing shelter and housing to the homeless population.
The population that Corpus Christi serves, however, is not exclusively homeless. Abbott said they also serve the financially unstable who may need to visit the shelter for particular services. A host of services are run through the Corpus Christi House.
“We do showers, we do laundry, we do breakfast, lunch, IDs, birth certificates, bus passes,” Abbott said. “We were the mailing address for 1,700 people last year.”
The shelter is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. According to its website , Corpus Christi provides as many as 6,000 showers per year and washes more than 15,000 loads of laundry.
Abbott said the shelter had been serving about 150 meals a day for both breakfast and lunch. In the last few months, however, the number of meals served has “skyrocketed.” Now the shelter serves around 200 for both breakfast and lunch daily.
ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES
Expansions to the available facilities and the hours of operation have also taken place during Abbott’s tenure. Among the most impactful is the shelter’s move to operate on Sundays, when its doors had previously been closed. This has coincided with the shelter fulfilling the role as a community cooling center, with professional misters, provided by the Boise-based Mr. Misters Idaho, operating seven days a week through September from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The shelter has also opened a learning center next to the Corpus Christi House, with over a dozen computers for guests to utilize.
Though shelter services have expanded significantly, they remain limited to eight full-time staff members.
To account for present and future expansions, Abbott has made strides to revitalize the shelter’s volunteer situation.
According to Abbott, two primary factors “imploded” the shelter’s volunteer base: the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in guest capacity.
The day-time operation of the shelter significantly limits the available volunteer base. Though the shelter does have some “die-hards” who have been volunteering for years, the majority of volunteers are retirees — older volunteers who would be most affected by the health risks posed by COVID-19.
Abbott said that she has hired a volunteer coordinator and is continually working to expand the number of regular volunteers, including through coordination with Boise State University, which provides around five interns at a time through the year.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
In recent weeks, what the future would hold for the homeless population in the United States has been uncertain. A Supreme Court decision in Johnson v. Grants Pass ruled that homeless people could be ticketed or otherwise criminalized for sleeping in public places, regardless of whether a municipality had adequate shelter space.
Asked about how the Grants Pass ruling would impact the lives of homeless people in Boise, Abbott said that the impact has been minimal, partly because of the city’s response to the ruling and partly because of the way homeless people are already treated.
“The guests already have the concern, they’re already treated that way,” Abbott said. “They are criminalized for being homeless and I think there’s so many misconceptions about how people become homeless and what it used to be. ... They’ve been pushed out of housing, they can’t afford it. The jobs aren’t here. The pay is not here.”
Abbott was positive about Boise Mayor Lauren McLean’s quick response after the ruling to reassure it will not change Boise’s response to homelessness and the city’s work to investment in permanent supportive housing.
Regarding continued changes for the community, Abbott said that she will be looking to either expand the shelter’s current space or move to a new building. As it stands, the shelter has “overflowing capacity,” she said.
One guest, in his assertion of the need for facilities like Corpus Christi, acknowledged how Abbott has been a welcome addition.
“People need to get off the streets, they need a place they can come to,” Allen Miller said.
Miller said that residents who may not want to go to Boise Rescue Mission or the Interfaith Sanctuary yet know that Corpus Christi will provide a cup of coffee and a place to hang out.
“She’s very kind, she’s outgoing, she’s wonderful,” Miller said of Abbott. “The best director we ever had.”
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