Effort tries to count Whatcom County's homeless population in single day

BELLINGHAM - Every year, housing advocates take to the streets, the shelters and the missions to count homeless people. This one-day snapshot of the homeless population, conducted this year on Thursday, Jan. 26, helps those who mind Whatcom County's safety net scale and focus their service.

The count is also used to measure the success of recently instituted housing programs.

The point-in-time count, as it is called, is also required by state law and is a condition for receiving funding from state and federal governments.

Those conducting the count will tell you that while it is important, it is also flawed. It doesn't count everybody - not even close.

Agencies such as Northwest Youth Services compare the number from the point-in-time count to the number of people walking through their doors each year, seeking help.

"We get a third" of the total, said Northwest Youth Services Executive Director Riannon Bardsley, who was talking to young people Thursday on Railroad Avenue as part of the homeless count.

The count was difficult, she said, because her agency doesn't have the resources to reach every homeless youth. Many of the teens and young adults on the streets didn't recognize her or the other volunteers and staff from Northwest Youth Services who were with her.

"We've spent a long time explaining we don't want to hurt anybody, ultimately, and we try to get some housing for them," Bardsley said as she and her colleagues were finishing their census late Thursday afternoon.

Even with the long explanations, most of the homeless people her group contacted didn't want to talk.

"It's because we have no relationship with them," she said.

That wasn't true of everyone on Railroad Avenue that sunny afternoon. Kasper Robinson, 20, is widely known on the street. She has been homeless since last summer.

"I went to jail and lost my place," Robinson said. "I wasn't there to pay rent and stuff, so I got evicted."

The most dangerous part of having no place to take shelter is the winter cold, Robinson said. Regular meals are provided at churches and at the Lighthouse Mission.

"You won't starve in Bellingham," she said.

Shia Teague, 15, successfully petitioned to enter a foster home after almost six months homeless. Much of that time was spent at the Northwest Youth Service shelter in the Barkley neighborhood.

What scared her most about being homeless had nothing to do with the insecurity of not having a place to live. She decided to leave home to escape an alcoholic parent.

"The scariest part for me was the thought of going back," she said.

She made it clear she was better off with her new family, even if the arrangement was probably temporary.

"I didn't really know what I was going to do the entire time," Teague said of those months she was homeless. "Every time I was at a place, I was figuring out where I was going to go next."

Volunteers for the 2011 homeless count found 57 youth who were unaccompanied, and 1,311 homeless in the county overall.

Homelessness in the county skews young. The median age of a homeless person is 22. Less than 1 percent of those counted last year was 65 or older.

Homelessness appears to be trending downward, even after a recession that started as a housing crisis. The number of homeless in the county declined 2 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the point-in-time count.

That was similar to the national trend. From 2009 to 2011, homelessness in the United States declined by 1 percent, according to "The State of Homelessness in America 2012," a report issued by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The report said the decline was likely due in large part to housing initiatives included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

In the county, the results are mixed. The number of homeless dropped 18 percent between 2008 and 2011. In 2008, the county instituted a 10-year program to end homelessness. But during that same period, the number of people who moved into other households to avoid homelessness grew 24 percent.

Northwest Youth Services Housing Program Manager Hannah Fisk said lower numbers from the point-in-time count are "a double-edged sword" because they don't show how much need is out there.

"The kids coming through our doors is way higher than the count," Fisk said.

Then again, she said, there's always hope those lower numbers will begin to really mean something.

"We as a staff say, 'Wouldn't it be good if we could work our way out of a job?'" Fisk said.