Homeless families with kids overwhelmed agencies. Here’s what Whatcom County is doing to help
The Whatcom County Council approved more than half a million dollars in funding to keep temporarily sheltering homeless families with children in motels at its Tuesday evening meeting.
The Council voted six to one, with only council member Ben Elenbaas voting no, to provide $618,121 in additional funding to the Opportunity Council. This brings the total contract to more than $1.5 million. The additional money will be used to provide rental assistance and emergency shelter in motels for homeless families with children, according to council documents.
There are roughly 65 homeless families with children who are currently being housed temporarily in motels in Whatcom County, according to Anne Deacon, Human Services Manager for Whatcom County.
The money to continue housing the families would have run out this week had the Council not approved the additional funds, Deacon said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald.
The motel voucher program is a partnership between the county, the Whatcom County Health Department, Opportunity Council and Lydia Place. The additional money approved at the April 6 evening council meeting will come from the county’s COVID-19 relief fund, a consolidated grant to support chronically homeless families with children, local recording fees and from local sales tax revenue for rental assistance, according to council documents.
At the Tuesday evening meeting, council member Kathy Kershner asked whether there was a discussion held in the day’s earlier finance committee meeting about directing some of the money to other providers in the Whatcom County community. Kershner said while there are benefits to consolidating and efficiency in working with specific service providers, she said there are downsides to not supporting smaller programs that have innovative ideas to help solve problems.
Kershner said she was considering voting against approving the funding, but changed her mind and ultimately voted to approve it.
Elenbaas did not return a request for comment Wednesday regarding his vote at the evening meeting.
An unforeseen crisis
Deacon said the request for the additional money was in response to an unforeseen crisis that was borne out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the pandemic took hold, Deacon said social service providers across the state began seeing a significant increase in the number of homeless families with children in a short amount of time. Local service providers realized they needed additional funds to keep the families sheltered and to avoid the families having to live in cars or outside, she said.
While social service agencies are still attempting to determine why there was such a steep increase of homeless families at the start of the pandemic, Deacon said a few common themes have emerged. When the pandemic hit, families that were sharing households with other families split up, eventually creating a situation of homelessness for one of the families, she said. There were also landlords who moved back into the homes they were renting out, evicting the families that had been living there — one of the few exceptions to Gov. Jay Inslee’s eviction moratorium, Deacon said.
Before the pandemic, Whatcom County had reached the point where homeless families with children were sheltered in a motel temporarily and quickly moved into a permanent housing situation, she said. But, since the pandemic began, there have been more families in need who are requesting help through the Whatcom Homeless Service Center. With more families in need, the number of shelter options for them is now insufficient to meet the need, Deacon said. Families are also staying longer in the motels while waiting for permanent affordable housing, which has become hard to come by, Deacon said.
“That’s why this has been such a disturbing surprise to us,” she said. “The impacts of the COVID pandemic are widespread and really our country just couldn’t predict all of the repercussions. It’s like a rock in a pond with all the ripples that go out, it’s just hard to know all that was going to be impacted.”
Deacon said it was unclear just how many families were in precarious housing situations before the pandemic. She said there is significant money available to provide rental assistance to families with children until they can independently support themselves, so social service agencies aren’t worried about a large spike in the number of homeless families after the state’s eviction moratorium lifts.
“Making sure we provide suitable housing for families with children is our No. 1 priority. Children are most impacted by the trauma of homelessness, and they can carry it with them for a lifetime,” Deacon said. “We’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from occurring.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2021 at 11:00 AM.
