Homeless in Washington now equal to population of Mercer Island
January 27, 2011
OLYMPIA—As volunteers and people who work with the homeless reached out across Washington for the annual state count of the homeless, state leaders in Olympia focused attention on the realities of homelessness.
Gov. Chris Gregoire proclaimed Jan. 27 as Homeless Awareness Day and the House Community Development & Housing Committee held a special work session on the plight of homelessness.
“America’s homeless are among the great unseen,” said committee Chair Phyllis Gutiérrez Kenney (D-Seattle) as she convened the meeting. “They are tucked away in temporary shelters, under the bridges, under the freeways, in abandoned cars, and on the streets. And even when they are in our presence, we instinctively turn away.”
Experts said the number of Washingtonians who are homeless on any given night is now equal to the population of Mercer Island. The 2010 point-in-time count recorded 22,619 homeless persons in the state.
Kenney recounted how she was raised in a family of migrant farmworkers who had struggled with homelessness, “sleeping in cars, sleeping by the river, sleeping in chicken coops.”
The lead presenter at the committee’s Realities of Homelessness meeting was Norm Suchar, who directs the Center for Capacity Building at the National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington D.C.
Suchar told the committee that America is at a crossroads in the effort to reduce homelessness.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when there have been so many positive things happening with respect to new solutions to prevent and end homelessness, at the same time there is so much hardship,” said Suchar, who spoke to the committee through a live audio hookup from the nation’s capital.
Suchar said Washington state is at the forefront of homelessness prevention. He singled out the supportive housing center at 1811 Eastlake as a national model for reducing the trauma and costs of chronic homelessness. The program saves taxpayers an average of nearly $2500 per person per month by reducing the need for hospitalizations and other high-cost services
But Suchar added that Washington has recently seen a rise in homeless children and families. He also said that one in six foster youth become homeless after they age out of foster services.
Committee members were visibly moved as they listened to Amanda Urwiler, a 16-year-old foster youth who cycled in and out of homelessness for three years before getting help for herself and her baby. Urwiler pleaded with lawmakers to continue funding street youth outreach programs. Without the outreach programs, “I would either be in the juvenile justice system right now, without my son … or quite possibly dead,” Urwiler said.
The number of homeless children appears to be soaring in Washington. Bill Block, Project Director for the Committee to End Homelessness, pointed to an alarming increase among homeless school-aged children. He said the official count of homeless students in Washington has climbed 56 percent over the past four years, reaching 21,000 students in 2009-10.
Everyone who spoke at the Realities of Homelessness work session agreed that Washington is a leader in providing services that are effective in preventing and reducing homelessness. But lawmakers were warned that we could soon face a homelessness crisis as key funding for homeless prevention and services runs out.
“With the right investments, we can prevent and end homelessness,” said Alice Shobe, the Deputy Director of Building Changes. The problem, she said, is that critical state funding to address homelessness is set to expire, and that without legislative changes the state’s resources for combating homelessness will plummet from $52 million currently to only $20 million in 2013.
Kenney said the chief lesson she drew from the meeting is that lawmakers, business leaders and community leaders must work together to preserve and if possible increase the resources devoted to preventing homelessness.
“We must work together,” she said. “We cannot turn away. We must act.”
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