More local people are living in cars and on sidewalks in Olympia. Is Congress doing enough?
More and more people are living on the streets of Thurston County’s cities, as well as in makeshift encampments or their cars — or what the federal government calls “other places not suitable for human habitation.”
The county’s 2019 homeless census officially found 394 unsheltered people living in the county, up from 320 last year and 124 in 2017.
The unofficial estimate for unsheltered people is between 800 and 1,000, a discrepancy attributed to the high percentage of people who refuse to participate in the voluntary homeless census.
“Our exit polls of census workers revealed a high rate of refusal — as high as 50%. Not everyone wants their name in a government data base, either because of criminal status, distrust of the government or basic inability to answer questions due to mental health status,” said Anna Schlecht, 2019 Thurston County Homeless Census Coordinator.
“That’s a lot of people we know nothing about, which is a problem because effective programs must be tailored to individual needs. One shelter program does not fit all.”
And while Washington state and Washington D.C. win praise from many advocates for promoting programs and funding to help, they also acknowledge there’s much more to be done.
“I don’t think the money is being misspent. There’s just not enough available,” said Daniel Malone, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center in Seattle.
Washington, D.C. lawmakers say they understand the gravity of the problem. The issue got unusually unified political support this year, as House and Senate budget-writers quietly agreed on more spending.
Congress wants to spend about $2.8 billion in fiscal 2020, the 12-month period that began Oct. 1, on homeless assistance grants, the major funding source to help the homeless. Final votes are likely sometime this month on what would be about a 6% increase over last year.
Virtually all the increased spending, however, is to maintain and improve previously funded projects.
That’s not enough to keep pace, particularly in high-cost areas.
“The cost of building is so high, the level the funding is not sufficient,” said John Parvensky, acting executive director at the National Coalition for the Homeless.
He noted that the 6% increase would not be enough to cover rising rents in many cities. In Thurston County, average rents are up 31 percent in the last 10 years, while median household income is up just 3.2 percent, according to the Thurston Regional Planning Council.
While it’s critical to spend to keep already-housed people in place, current funding levels make it difficult to even help people now on the streets or in emergency shelters, Parvensky said.
“The bottom line is that current HUD funding is very effective for those who are targeted – which are generally some of the more vulnerable and chronically homeless people and some families,” said Michael Ullman, National Homeless Information Project coordinator.
But stopping the flow of new people into homelessness, and the streets or shelters, is much more complex, he said. Ullman urged a “complete rethinking of the problem and the definition of homelessness.”
“The white upper class policy maker cannot fathom living 10 or 50 to a large room — maybe it’s not great, but it’s not homeless. And two-thirds of the people currently defined as homeless live in congregate housing,” he said.
Homeless in Washington state
Nationwide, 35 percent of homeless people last year were in unsheltered locations, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development data. HUD says unsheltered homelessness refers to “people whose primary nighttime location is a public or private place not designated for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for people.”
The “unsheltered” population in Washington state has grown substantially since it hit 31% of all homeless in 2014. Now at 47.6%, it trails only California, Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii.
Eight percent of unaccompanied Washington youth were without shelter, the second highest percentage in the nation after California.
Still, state officials say some progress is being made.
Tedd Kelleher, senior managing director for housing assistance at the state Department of Commerce, pointed to the state’s management system, which allows officials “to really know where the money is going,” he said.
“We’re still early in the journey,” Kelleher said, “but we think we’re making the best use of the resources we have.”
Olympia hired a homeless coordinator last year to plot strategy. Earlier this year, the city opened the first “mitigation” site to serve as a temporary camping site that it said “provides a level of order, safety, dignity and cleanliness to reduce human suffering and the impacts of unmanaged camping on the community.”
The first site is in downtown Olympia on a city-owned parking lot, where there are port-a-potties, potable water and case management.
The city also opened a tiny house village managed by the Low Income Housing Institute, modeled after its Seattle projects that offer small, heated dwellings with central latrines and services.
Olympia also is launching its first church-hosted tiny house village that will house eight people at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Boulevard Road. Between these three sites, the city can house about 140 adults.
So more help is needed. “Without stronger regional partnership to create at least five more of these tent camps,” said Schlecht, ”we won’t make much of a dent in homelessness.”
Whether Washington, D.C. will do more to help is unclear. What’s needed, advocates say, is political pressure.
“We know this approach works and our country has seen the success of these efforts,” Joseph Horiye, Western region program vice president at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which promotes community programs, told Congress earlier this year.
“We know that progress can be made when the federal government provides adequate resources.”
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