County homeless population up from 2015

Published 12:39 pm Tuesday, February 2, 2016

More than 1,100 volunteers spent three hours combing the streets throughout King County last Friday in the annual effort to count the increasing number of men, women and children who are homeless and sleeping outside.

Included among the volunteers were eight dedicated islanders who counted 38 people on Vashon without shelter between 2 and 5 a.m. on Jan. 29. In total, the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness (SKCCH), which organizes the count, found 4,505 people sleeping in cars, tents, blankets under bridges or in doorways, riding late night buses or just walking.

“This is surely what an emergency looks like,” said Alison Eisinger, executive director of the coalition, in a press release of this year’s tally.

With this year’s total reflecting an increase of 19 percent over last year, King County has seen a staggering 40 percent increase in its homeless population in the last two years alone. And the numbers are understood to be low, as it would be logistically impossible to count everyone, and this year six count areas were excluded on the recommendation of the Seattle Police Department due to last week’s shooting at an encampment near Interstate 5 in Seattle.

In a statement released Friday, King County Executive Dow Constantine called for action.

“The results confirm the state of emergency and underscore the urgent need to work together — at every level of government and with our community partners — to create the housing, treatment, employment and other services that thousands of adults, children and families in King County need right now,” he said. “We continue to call on our Legislature and Congress to recognize this growing humanitarian crisis and take immediate action.”

And all of this comes one year after the county’s self-imposed deadline for ending homelessness, as it promised 11 years ago.

According to a KUOW report from March of last year, county officials have estimated that more than $1 billion has gone toward helping the area’s homeless in the last decade, and as of 2015, nearly 6,000 units of affordable housing had been built — more than any city in the U.S. outside of New York and Los Angeles. But at the same time, Seattle/King County also had the fourth highest homeless population in the country, just barely missing third behind Las Vegas, with New York and Los Angeles topping the list (cities that have 12 and six times Seattle’s population, respectively).

In the past year, the King County Medical Examiner’s Office recorded 91 deaths of homeless people, including six homicides.

The extent of the homeless crisis in the county is so overwhelming, that in November, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and Constantine declared it a state of emergency in Seattle and county-wide. Both have said they will call on state and federal officials to react the same way as they would to a natural disaster.

While city, county and state officials struggle to understand the issues and come up with viable solutions, island agencies and service leaders are working hard to help those without shelter on Vashon.

Islanders Eden Bossom, who works with the King County housing authority, and community activist Hilary Emmer led a team of volunteers last Friday to count Vashon’s homeless as part of the greater One Night Count effort. Typically the SKCCH has focused its efforts in urban areas but brought the island into the mix last year.

“We’re the trial for rural areas,” Emmer said, but noted that last year’s count had many issues logistically.

“It’s of the utmost importance to follow the methodology from the SKCCH, but it needed to be adapted for us to be able to collect any useful information here,” Bossom said.

SKCCH’s Eisinger stated in an email that the coalition agreed to allow the Vashon volunteers to adjust their protocol in order achieve a more accurate count.

“It’s an advantage for us,” Emmer added, “in that we know (mostly) who is homeless here. We have relationships with them.”

This means they also know, generally, where to find them.

The Vashon team of Emmer, Bossom, Kathleen Johnson, Dan Auer, Mike Yates, Jennifer Coe, Elise Morrill and Theron Shaw counted 31 people in vehicles (including RVs) and seven in “structures” — which is defined as any structure not intended for human habitation, such as tents and sheds.

“Through the relationships with organizations like the Vashon Social Services Network and the Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness, they know who is sleeping where,” Bossom said.

And even with the community connections, Vashon’s number is, in all likelihood, low.

“We know there are people living in the woods,” Emmer said. “But we’re not going to count them. … It would be an intrusion.”

“If people don’t want to be found, we are not hell bent on finding and counting them,” Bossom added. “If people are deep in the woods, we have to respect their desire for privacy. And there are safety issues. We don’t want volunteers tramping around the woods at 3 a.m.”

Understanding the numbers are low, despite how soberingly high they are, puts the scope of the issue into stark perspective.

“Our hope is that by participating in the One Night Count, Vashon will become eligible for federal funding for affordable housing and service programs,” Bossom said. “Participating in the count is actually required for much of the money coming from the federal level, and that’s the big money.”

Emmer agreed. “Vashon Youth & Family Services (VYFS) lost funding for its VIVA (social service) and homeless programs, which was a crime. This data could help bring those kinds of programs, which we desperately need, back. That is really the hope,” she said.

Kathleen Johnson, executive director of VYFS and one of the Vashon count volunteers, was blunt in her assessment of the situation.

“We need more action. The homeless situation in King County is intolerable,” she said. “Someone needs to stand up and say, ‘we need housing first’ in this county. We can’t keep coming up with incremental solutions while people are dying on the streets. We can count, but we need action first. We should be ashamed of ourselves that we have homeless — nobody should have to live outside.”

The coalition invites all concerned community members to register for Beyond the One Night Count: Homeless Advocacy 101.

These free workshops will take place in Ballard (Feb. 24) and Kent (Feb. 27). Participants will learn how to speak up for housing, tenant protections and other important policy proposals in Olympia.

For more information, see homelessinfo.org.