Although a recent survey showed homelessness dropping by 31 percent this year in Snohomish County, local social services agencies say weather may have played a role in the decline.
Volunteers found 1,819 people who reported they didn’t have permanent housing.
That’s a drop of 31 percent over last year, when 2,666 people reported they were homeless.
However, employees of some social service agencies say subfreezing temperatures on the day of the survey may have been one factor in the drop in homeless numbers.
“I have a sense weather played a significant role,” said Sola Plumacher, a human service specialist for Snohomish County. She was one of 180 volunteers participating in last month’s six-hour, countywide survey.
Plumacher said she checked one place well known as a homeless camp. “There were blankets and tarps and buckets all around,” she said. But it appeared that no one had been there for several days.
When checking for the homeless near Everett Mall, she said she talked to one man who said that typically 10 people camp around the shopping area.
“You won’t find anyone there,” he told Plumacher. “It’s too cold.”
The state Department of Social and Health Services reported that the number of homeless people is significantly higher than found in the survey, Plumacher said.
Nearly 4,300 people living in the county and receiving state payments reported they were homeless, she said.
And calls to 211, the social service hotline, asking about emergency shelter have continued to climb, with some 4,444 people asking for help last year, up from 3,550 in 2006.
Mary Ellen Wood, interim executive director of the Interfaith Association of Northwest Washington, she said she couldn’t guess what may have caused the decline in numbers in this year’s homeless count.
At the organization’s shelter for families in north Everett, demand for emergency housing continues to outstrip available bed space, she said.
“We are at capacity, the most we’ve been at for a long time,” she said. “Knowing that there’s a waiting list, I can’t say that homelessness is down.”
Bill Humphreys, a vice president for Volunteers of America, said he would like to think that the number of homeless in the county has declined. But he said he has no certain way to measure it. “I just don’t know,” he said.
Weather on the day of the annual homeless count the past several years may have been rainy, but the temperatures were much warmer than they were this year, said Dana Libby, who helps administer the Salvation’s Army’s chapter in Snohomish County.
“I think the weather clearly played a role” in the decline in this year’s homeless numbers, he said. “People are doing everything they can to get out of the cold.”
Herald reporter Sharon Salyer at 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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