Jewels Helping Hands (JHH)
Jewels Helping Hands (JHH)
Website: jewelshelpinghands.org
Founded: 2018
Location: 3923 N Cedar St, Spokane, WA 99205
Contact: jewelshelpinghands@gmail.com | Phone: (509) 723-6201
Social Media: Facebook | Instagram
How To Get Involved
- Join Our Efforts: Volunteer with us at an outreach event, cook food, deliver supplies, or provide your services to people in need. Sign Up
- Provide Basic Needs: Contributions of food, clothing, and hygiene supplies will be distributed directly to individuals and families in need. Contact Us
- Donate: Your generosity makes our work possible. We rely entirely on community donations to fuel our work. Take a minute and support our work with your donation via PayPal! Donate Here
Our Mission
Through kindness, compassion, and respect, we ensure people who are houseless have their basic needs met—to survive, thrive, and connect to community resources.
Our Programs
We provide a wide variety of services including a warming center, street medical teams, mobile outreach, food, mobile showers, hygiene supplies, and connection to community resources and services. Our programs are designed to enable people to survive their journey through homelessness.
Core Values
As a community we are accountable to ensure all people are treated with dignity and respect. All people deserve to be valued, cared for, and have their basic needs met.
History
Jewels Helping Hands grew from a single mother's desire to heal others after healing from traumas in her life, having stayed 16 years in an abusive marriage. Although Julie Garcia did not experience homelessness, she empathizes with people on the street. So in the winter of 2017, she started handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in front of the House of Charity.
Julie continued the next winter and, when it was cold, she recruited friends, family, and neighbors to give coats, blankets, clothing, and shoes to hand out. Reaching out on social media, she was amazed by the community support.
In 2018, they opened a warming center and delivered hot, home-cooked meals that volunteers served every night on the streets and by bridges. They served 100,000 meals.
In 2019, Jewels Helping Hands became a nonprofit so it could apply for the City of Spokane's Request for Proposal (RFP) to open a shelter in the old Grocery Outlet at Havana and Sprague. They did not get the contract. They do run a shower trailer for people who are houseless, citing the dignity of a shower.
Jewels Helping Hands' employees are formerly homeless people or currently homeless so they can gain job skills to move out of homelessness.
Video Series
JHH board member Maurice Smith, executive producer of Rising River Media, produces documentaries on Youtube about Spokanites experiencing homelessness and Spokane's homeless crisis, some in conjunction with Jewels Helping Hands.
Every 36 Hours someone in Spokane dies from a drug overdose. 64% of those overdose deaths are from Fentanyl. "Every 36 Hours" is a new documentary underway from Rising River Media about this Crisis. We will be posting new footage as we build out the documentary. Our goal is to keep you engaged on the issue and following our work as it progresses. So stay Tuned. More to come! Every 36 Hours
Our 2022 documentary filmed in Spokane, Washington, that focused on the issue of insufficient shelter beds and the inevitable result of significant numbers of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Night of the Unsheltered Homeless
Camp Hope started as a protest on the steps of City Hall highlighting the lack of low barrier shelter capacity in our community in the winter of 2021. As an imminent sweep was threatened, 68 of those people experiencing homelessness moved onto the lot on the corner of 2nd and Ray, at its peak count of 689 people in the summer of 2022. Here are all of our published videos and documentary productions regarding the largest homeless encampment in the State of Washington, located on WSDOT property along I-90, with WSDOT permission. Camp Hope Documentary Playlist
"The Least of These" was filmed at the City Church Spokane Warming Shelter during the winter of 2020-2021, from November of 2020 through February of 2021. The Least of These
"Give Me Shelter" is the story of the Cannon Street Warming Center and how there needs to be somewhere for people without shelter to be able to go. Give Me Shelter
We filmed this documentary at the Westminster Congregational Church in Spokane in late October & early November of 2020 during the COVID 19 pandemic. What we filmed was a temporary "Pop Up" homeless warming center hosted at the Church. The warming center existed for roughly 10 days during a period of extreme winter weather. The issue of inadequate adequate shelter and/or warming center beds during Winter weather has been (and, unfortunately, continues to be) a perennial issue in City homeless policy. It was simply made more difficult due to the onset of COVID 19. Pop Up Warming Centers
"The Hidden Homeless" documents families experiencing homelessness, as well as educating viewers about misconceptions and the obstacles faced by those without shelter. The Hidden Homeless
"Everybody Has A Story" is a project of allowing people experiencing homelessness to tell their own stories in their own words. Homelessness is made up of people with personal stories of how they became homeless, the challenges they've faced, the obstacles they've overcome, and their own hopes for the future. We encourage and allow people to tell their stories without interference from us. Everybody Has a Story
JHH Lawsuits
Jewels Helping Hands & Ben Stuckart v. Brian Hansen, et al: On October 25, 2023 local homeless advocates sought a judicial declaration invalidating an initiative placed on the November 2023 general election ballot in the city of Spokane. The initiative seeks to expand an existing ban on camping at certain locations — within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, and day care centers regardless of shelter availability — within the city.
JHH argued the initiative — funded almost entirely by Larry Stone — (1) improperly seeks to exercise powers reserved solely to the Spokane City Council, (2) impermissibly conflicts with controlling state law, and (3) is outside the scope of the local initiative power because the measure is administrative, not legislative, in character. (Stone bought an industrial-zoned warehouse in 2023, lobbied for Spokane to use it as a homeless Trent Shelter, and raised rent dramatically despite the lack of running water and accessibility.)
Jewels was granted the emergency injunction less than one day before the ballots were sent to print. The court commissioner found the likely harm from potentially placing an improper initiative on the ballot outweighed the potential harm of wrongfully removing the initiative, as it could appear on a future ballot.
Hansen immediately appealed to modify the commissioner's ruling. With less than one day before the ballot deadline, the court said it did not believe it could perform its due diligence in preserving the right of litigants to have their case decided by a panel of elected judges. So the emergency injunction was therefore lifted, and the initiative appeared on the November 2023 ballot, where it was passed by Spokane voters.
SCAR shared analysis — published by RangeMedia — that this initiative transformed over 40% of Spokane into a maze of restrictions.
Judge Tony D. Hazel reaffirmed the superior court's decision post-election on December 7, 2023. Appeals Decision
The Supreme Court overturned Martin v. Boise — the 2018 court ruling preventing cities from enforcing anti-camping ordinances when there are no available shelter beds — with City of Grant's Pass v. Johnson in 2024. This new ruling allowed cities to criminalize homelessness, and Spokane began enforcing Prop 1 — resulting in a massive increase in citations.
The Washington State Supreme Court overturned Proposition 1 on April 17, 2025, saying it "exceeds the proper scope of the local initiative power." The ACLU of Washington released a statement where they
urge local governments to focus on compassionate and effective solutions, such as increasing access to affordable housing and supportive services, rather than resorting to punitive measures that exacerbate the challenges faced by our unhoused neighbors.
Upon hearing WA State Supreme Court's decision, Julie Garcia said,
It is not necessarily that I disagree that people should not sleep next to schools or daycares. I agree that nobody, not just people experiencing homelessness, that nobody should exist in those spaces. But if we tell people where they can’t go, we have to have somewhere for them to go. Otherwise all we do is take away their right to exist.
No reparations have been offered for those negatively impacted by Prop 1's illegal overreach.
Disability Rights Washington and Jewels Helping Hands vs City of Spokane, Spokane County, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl: October 28, 2022 federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Camp Hope 2.0's residents camping on WSDOT property — with WSDOT permission. The lawsuit asks for protection from Spokane leaders and law enforcement who stated their intent to clear out the homeless encampment through arrests — despite Spokane have no available shelter space for Camp Hope's (intended) displaced residents.
The location of Camp Hope 2.0 — off the I-90 between Ray and Freya — is now an empty field, but it once contained buildings capable of housing thousands of people. Over 600 buildings were razed to expand the I-90, displacing thousands of residents. Spokane has never recovered the amount of lost housing.
Attorney Andrew Biviano said of the lawsuit,
Governments are not allowed under the constitution to just arrest people who have committed no crime, who have permission from the landowner to be where they are, and working their hardest to get themselves a better spot.
December 12, 2022 a federal judge signed JHH's temporary restraining order, protecting Camp Hope 2.0's residents from Spokane law enforcement, after multiple visits from police threatening to sweep the people from camp.
On the same date city council passed 5-2 Resolution 2022-0108 which included their position "against...supporting unauthorized actions to remove unhoused individuals from Camp Hope" including providing legal defense for rogue law enforcement. The city was sued in 2019 over their actions removing the first Camp Hope.
In January 2023, Spokane officially agreed to not illegally clear out Camp Hope 2.0. Julie Garcia said,
I'm glad with the agreement. I believe that in order to finish clearing this camp and to solve homelessness, or move the needle in homelessness in our community, we need a community table, everybody at the table, and this is a good step in the right direction on all parties to building bridges instead of hurting them.
Camp Hope
Camp Hope was formed in November-December 2018 on the public sidewalk in front of City Hall in an attempt to highlight the lack of sufficient low-barrier warming centers and beds. When threatened with a sweep — facing freezing temperatures and no where to go — members of the community chained themselves together as a protective barrier for Spokane's unhoused citizens.
Camp Hope 2.0
City employees had been harassing residents of Camp Hope 2.0 for the entirety of its existence.
