Opinion - Our View

POSTED: Saturday, Jul. 25, 2009

Work continues to fight homelessness in county

Recent efforts to help homeless people in our community are very encouraging. At a forum Wednesday, July 22, local officials working with the homeless say new efforts have reduced the number of chronically homeless people in our community from 158 to 111.

The chronically homeless are just one part of a larger homeless community that includes as many as 1,300 people at any given time, according to a January survey. Many folks are homeless only for a transitory time - after they lose a job, for example, or immediately after they flee domestic abuse.

What's so heartening today is that a new effort we first told you about in a January editorial seems to have a chance of fundamentally changing the homeless problem in our community, based on the early results.

Since the middle of last year, those offering services to the homeless have been taking a different approach than ever before. Run out of the newly created Homeless Service Center, officials are finding housing immediately for the homeless, without conditions - an effort known as "housing first."

The "housing first" effort differs from previous efforts in that it doesn't move the homeless into shelters and then transitional housing where they must deal with their issues before moving into permanent homes. In the housing-first approach, people are given a place to live and then the other efforts - counseling, employment - begin.

Officials told the crowd at the Bellingham City Club on July 22 that many local landlords are participating in the effort by offering places to rent through the Homeless Service Center. We applaud all landlords who are taking part and urge more to get involved.

In other communities where it has been tried, the "housing first" approach works better than other efforts have, with as many as 80 percent of the population going through the system ending up never homeless again.

The new center is funded by a fee paid when property transactions are filed, thanks to a law passed by the Legislature in 2005. It also receives grants from the state and the federal government, depending on who is being assisted and how.

The timetable for the "housing first" plan and the homeless service center is a long one - with officials hoping to cut the number of homeless in half by 2015. Of course everyone in the community hopes it is that successful, or more. There are too many people with out stable housing in our community. And homelessness is especially hard on children, who made up about 20 percent of the homeless in Whatcom County in the January survey. That's simply too many kids on the streets and sleeping in cars or in other areas in our community.

We hope these new efforts, combined with long-established services from the Lighthouse Mission and others, continue to help reduce the number of homeless people in our community.