Children comprise majority of Grant County homeless

Volunteers help council count population

GRANT COUNTY - More volunteers aided the North Columbia Community Action Council to determine how many people in Grant County don't have a home.

The council conducted its annual homeless count in late January.

Council Community Services Director Thomas Bonnington said the five volunteers who helped out were really critical.

"As bad as it sounds, I hate to say it, but we kind of get into a rut with the same clients, the same agencies we work with, the same areas we travel in," he explained. "So having the volunteers come in brought us good knowledge of the area outside of what we normally deal with, which allowed us to get a better count."

Bonnington estimated this year's counted numbers are probably within 10 to 15 percent of the actual number of homeless people.

"It's much, much higher than previous because we had the extra help, we were able to actually find in some cases where homeless had been sleeping, but we couldn't find the homeless," he said. "So we know there's a few out there we missed because they weren't in their beds at the time."

Bonnington said he contacted some of the other agencies, which will try to bring those people out of that situation.

Children comprise the highest number of homeless people in the count. Seventy-one children aged zero to five years old are homeless, 53 are aged 6 to 12 and 19 are between 13 and 17.

"Which is concerning, obviously," Bonnington said.

A total of 368 people are homeless, two-thirds of which are male. The highest adult population of homeless people falls between the ages of 26 to 35, numbering 66. There were six homeless people aged 65 or older, Bonnington said.

"Homelessness is an issue here, regardless of what you want to believe, regardless of what you see or may not see," he said.

Even though temperatures are warming up, Bonnington noted it was 7 degrees in the Grand Coulee area with a 30 mph wind the day of the count.

"There's people trying to live in those

conditions outside," he said. "It's not just an issue for the community, but it's a life and death issue for some of these people."

Homeless people have more difficulty becoming employed, getting medical attention or any of the things people take for granted, Bonnington said.

The council was able to get a good count from Grant County Jail, Bonnington noted.

"People go through whatever in life. They get in trouble. They get sentenced to jail," he said. "Well, if you leave your apartment and don't pay your rent, that's abandonment. So you've lost your apartment because you're in jail for 60, 90 days or whatever. If you're on any form of public assistance, it's suspended while you're in jail and it takes time to get it back up and running, so now you have no income when you come out of jail. Those people are in a difficult situation because they've lost what they have and may, in fact, depending on how long they're in jail, have lost their possessions because the landlord has the right to eventually sell them off."

About 76 people were counted out of the jail, and about 125 people count for transitional housing situations, Bonnington said.

"The rest just came from people who don't have a house," he added.

Bonnington said the majority of people who are being counted are shocked.

"These people aren't usually well aware of what's happening in the community because they're kind of on the fringes," he said. "A lot of them are intrigued we're actually doing this, trying to get actual numbers to better use our services."

Funding is limited, so the better the count, the better the council can determine if the process is working.

"If not, we need to start looking at changing our process and trying to do something that's improving the homeless situation," he said.

This year's numbers don't give much information in that regard yet, as it's the first year Bonnington feels the count is accurate.

"Next year we'll do another count, and I'm going to have to compare those to the change in population of the county," he said. "As long as the county's increasing in population, your homeless numbers will always go up. There's no way to avoid that."

Another issue is how long people spend in the homeless situation.

"Some people, by virtue of the people, they're going to end up homeless at one time or another," he said. "The hope is to prevent chronic homelessness so people don't repeat the issues and they don't stay homeless for any length of time. Right now from those that reported, we have a very good turnaround of between one and three months of homelessness or less."

To the average person, such numbers might seem extreme, Bonnington said, but he noted there are people who have spent 30 years homeless.

"We've got a good turnaround that way, and that's due to a small community, being able to rapidly see clients and get them turned around through the system," he said. "Our landlords we deal with have been very helpful. We've been able to kind of explain more of the process and why we need specific assistance for certain clients, and they've been real receptive to that."

Motels have been helpful to get people off the street in an emergency, and the local law enforcement are extremely helpful, Bonnington said.

"Between law enforcement and the landlords and the motel people, we've got a fairly decent network going to kind of cover emergency situations and then moving them onto more permanent housing," Bonnington said.

The biggest need in the county is for more low-income housing, Bonnington said.

"There's such an absolute shortage of housing in this county, it's very difficult to find a place for someone," he said. "It's kind of like, one person gets evicted for something and we have 10 waiting to take that place. You almost feel like a vulture waiting for an opening."

During the recent cold weather, the council spent about twice what it normally does for motel space.

"It's just simply a matter of, we don't have a choice because we don't have housing and we can't leave them on the street," he said.