Advocates: For the Hundreds of Kitsap Homeless, Too Few Beds

• By Rachel Pritchett

BREMERTON
A couple with a newborn baby lose their home and are desperate.
The community responds by covering the $17-a-night cost for space at Illahee State Park.
"Thank God for the weather; it's good," said Pastor Art Speight of Taking it to the Streets Ministry.
Too few emergency shelter beds and transitional-housing units were quickly recognized as the biggest frustration in helping the homeless during a first-ever summit devoted to the subject Thursday at Holy Trinity Catholic Church.
More than 100 social service workers, politicians, landlords and pastors compared notes and made recommendations at the summit, convened as the Kitsap County Homeless Housing Plan undergoes an update in this pain-filled economy.
The goal of the plan is to reduce homelessness in the county by 50 percent by 2015.
Waiting lists for transitional housing in Kitsap County have soared into the three digits. People routinely are denied space at emergency shelters because all the beds are full, first-line homeless responders said.
There are roughly 48 shelter emergency beds and another 15 emergency housing units in Kitsap. About 60 transitional-housing units are here, according to a Kitsap Community Resources spokeswoman. Emergency beds are used for a short periods; transitional housing is used for periods lasting into months.
Just a few of the other gaps in helping the homeless that were identified included:
—Too few support services for mentally ill people;
—A pervasive lack of education about homelessness in the community;
—Depleted shelves at food banks that are seeing supplies disappear three times faster than a year ago; and
—Lack of emergency beds for large women.
Agencies counted 715 homeless people in January. The real number could be in the thousands, Speight said.
"If we don't deal with this, we could have a tsunami that could hit and make us respond to the situations that are prevalent today," he warned.
The answer, they agreed, starts with housing.
A Pierce County homeless worker, Troy Christensen, said it costs $14,000 a year to provide housing and services to one homeless person. That's sharply down from the $35,000 it takes to provide services for a person living on the streets, he said.
Homelessness today is being fueled by the high cost of housing, lack of jobs with decent pay, lack of health-care insurance, and the high cost of gas and food, said Larry Eyer, KCR executive director.
Another cause is addiction.
"Certainly our old menace, alcoholism, continues to plague us," Eyer said, adding that the use of methamphetamine and crack cocaine added to the problem.
Yet another cause: domestic violence.
Eyer said Kitsap County has a higher percentage of domestic- and child-abuse victims than other Washington counties. No one is sure why.
Bishop Larry Robertson of Emmanuel Apostolic Church said homeless people need mentors to "serve as a bridge" back to the community.
There was acknowledgment of the strengthened role the faith-based community is taking against homelessness, like One Church One Family, a group of local churches that provides housing, along with care teams.
Part of the solution can be a 10-year plan, said Paul Carlson, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
"You are not starting from scratch today; lessons have been learned," Carlson said.
Kitsap's plan is among 49 such plans in the Northwest. The effort for communities to have a plan started with the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2000. The Legislature directed counties to have plans in 2005.
The local summit to update the plan was sponsored by agencies including KCR, Kitsap Continuum of Care Coalition, Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council and others. The updated plan goes to the KRCC at the end of the year.