PORT TOWNSEND — The annual Point in Time count of Jefferson County’s homeless people will wrap up Sunday after 22 volunteers have fanned out to all reaches of the county this week.
“I actually go to the campsites with other people,” said deForest Walker, director of the Housing Services Division for Olympic Community Action Programs who oversees the count.
“We’ve got a lot of people camping out in East Jefferson County, and West Jefferson County as well.
“And they’re moving around, and parking in different places, and they’re scared and parking where there is not too much light.”
Walker said the count is necessary to get a handle on the extent of homelessness in the county. It is an attempt to count every person in the county who is homeless or living in substandard accommodations.
The snapshot of homelessness is an annual, national endeavor. It is necessary to receive homelessness assistance funds.
While the fourth Thursday in January is typically the day each year the count takes place nationwide, Walker said, rural areas such as Jefferson County are given a week because the homeless population is scattered and not concentrated as is the case in urban cities.
“Climate and geography make is difficult for us to get a count,” she said.
Cars, couch surfing
Besides living in cars, the homeless in East Jefferson County sometimes “couch surf,” Walker said, temporarily staying with family and friends but often ending up at the Emergency Winter Shelter in the basement of American Legion Post 26 at Water and Monroe streets.
Volunteer counters carry forms to identify homeless people and their living circumstances.
Those forms ask for age, any form of disability and where people last slept, along with other information.
“In general, everybody agrees, including law enforcement, that the numbers are lower” than the real number of homeless people, Walker said.
Profile has changed
While the county’s homeless populations declined in 2009, largely because of two federal programs that helped the find transitional housing and jobs, the economy has changed the profile of the typical homeless family.
No longer are young, single mothers with children the typical homeless family found.
“We’ve got whole families pushed into homelessness,” Walker said, perhaps after a key bread-winner loses his or her job.
“We’re seeing older families.”
In 2009, 203 homeless people, a 35 percent decrease over 2008, were identified in the county’s Point in Time count.
Of that number, 114 were identified as members of households and 50 percent were temporarily living with family or friends.
The 2008 count found 316 homeless in Jefferson County, while 250 were counted in 2007, 187 in 2006 and 170 in 2005.
Of the 2008 number, 55 were identified as children, or 17 percent, while in 2009 63 children were found to be homeless, or 31 percent of the count.
Assistance programs
The decline in the homeless population was in part because of the Rental Assistance Accessing Community Housing program that puts homeless people into permanent housing and keeps them linked with services. That three-year-long program is about halfway through.
The Family Transition Housing Program helps homeless people find rental housing and jobs. It also helps them earn a reference to find future rental housing.
“The bad economy has had every reason in making that program successful,” Walker said, because landlords are more open to it in a soft housing market.
Of those counted in 2009, 12 percent were found to have untreated dental troubles, 22 percent had mental health problems, 15 percent had medical and/or physical disabilities, 5 percent were in jail, 18 percent were living in a vehicle and 13 percent were living outdoors.
The count found that 25 percent were living with family or friends and 13 percent were living in transitional housing, including transitional domestic violence housing, while 26 percent were living in the emergency shelter or a domestic violence shelter.
The declining 2009 homeless numbers reflect progress.
“We’ve made a little dent, but that might be all wiped out with the recession,” Walker said.
The county’s only homeless shelter is seeing an average of 20 to 21 people staying per night this season, she said.
The most the shelter ever held was during last year’s bitterly cold winter — 24.
Since the shelter opened Nov. 29, there have been 55 individuals who have visited it.
Of that number, 62 percent are men and 38 percent are women, Walker said, adding that is a pretty typical ratio.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
