Task force zeroes in on ways to address homelessness

EVERETT — Tracy Vorderbrueggen came into Everett from Lake Stevens one day in August to get her oil changed.

On the way her family made a pit stop at the McDonald’s on Everett Avenue so one of her sons could use the bathroom. He came back out quickly.

“He said, ‘Mom someone’s in the bathroom throwing up,’ ” she said.

She opened the men’s room door enough so that she could hear the activity, then went to the women’s room to see if it was vacant so her son could use it.

“There was a lady doing her laundry in the sink,” she said.

They ended up going down to the YMCA, but the experience left a sour taste in her mouth.

Vorderbrueggen, who grew up in the area and remembers hanging out on Broadway when she was younger, really hopes something will get done.

“It just kind of hurts the community where people don’t want to come and hang out,” she said.

Vorderbrueggen’s experience is shared by many residents and visitors to the city, and the increasingly visible problems of homelessness, aggressive panhandling, drug addiction, untreated mental health problems and overall public safety spurred the creation of Everett Community Streets Initiative.

Mayor Ray Stephanson appointed 23 people from businesses, social service agencies and churches to a task force that is holding a series of nine meetings to draw up a list of recommendations for action to present to city leaders. They’ve also been studying what other cities, ranging from Seattle and Tacoma to as far afield as Santa Monica, California, have been doing to address their own problems with homelessness.

With four meetings remaining, the conversation is shifting from information gathering to whittling down the list of nearly 50 recommendations the group has generated so far.

It’s a challenge, said task force co-chair Sylvia Anderson, who is also CEO of the Everett Gospel Mission.

“Because the issue is so broad, it’s like a 90-headed monster that everyone is trying to contain,” she said.

But one central theme that has emerged from the discussions and presentations so far has been housing, and the lack of options in Everett for the city’s population of transients, addicts, people with mental problems and those who for one reason or another cycle through the criminal justice system.

At a public hearing held Sept. 9, Mark Smith, executive director of the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County, told the task force that according to current population growth estimates, Snohomish County will need to build 22,000 new units of affordable housing by 2035, and 5,600 of them will need to be in Everett.

“That’s a dauntingly expensive proposition, and it doesn’t address what the current need is now,” Smith said.

With a waiting list for public housing that is three or four years long and many charities dealing with a shortage of beds, there’s a need for more housing at every level of need, ranging from overnight emergency shelters to long-term supportive housing.

Capacity isn’t the only issue. Rev. Bill Kirlin- Hackett, director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, relayed the struggles of trying to put a homeless shelter in the city of Kent, which wouldn’t cost the city anything.

“The argument is (over) where it would be, where it wouldn’t offend business,” Kirlin-Hackett said.

Anderson also set up a meeting at the Gospel Mission on Sept. 24, the only emergency men’s shelter in the county, to allow the men there to talk about their own needs and experiences. Two members of the task force attended that session, and the session was recorded and will be distributed to the other task force members unedited, Anderson told the group.

The approximately 35 men in the room Tuesday talked about the difficulties in finding a safe place to sleep where they won’t be harassed by the police, the use of alcohol and drug abuse among some in the community, and the difficulties in getting work, health care, Social Security or other government benefits or aid, and dealing with the stereotypes they all labor under.

“Not all homeless people are drug addicts or alcoholics,” said one man, who called himself Stephen. (Anderson only asked for first names of the men if they were speaking on the record).

Another man, James, warned the crowd that Everett needs to avoid making the same mistakes that Seattle has, essentially criminalizing all aspects of behavior common on the street, ranging from standing on the sidewalk to parking cars longer than 72 hours in some areas, especially when people are sleeping in their vehicles.

Jacques Preston, who has been homeless since he was released from prison in July, said he’d recently found work in a bakery in Seattle. He said he didn’t drink or use drugs and was upfront with his employer about his living situation and his criminal record, and encouraged the others to not give up on getting their lives back together.

Preston feels that more programs, targeting teens living in subsidized housing, for example, could equip at-risk people with life skills that will help prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.

“People may want homes, but they won’t know how to maintain them,” Preston said. Pointing out the door to other men waiting to come into the shelter for the night, or setting up camp on the street outside the mission, he added, “I think they’re not ready yet.”

The final four meetings of the task force will be important, said task force co-chair and planning commission Chairman Chris Adams, because the group will be voting on the list to draw up its recommendations to the city.

And while the task force’s list is only recommendations — it wields no administrative or budgetary power — it will have to think realistically about potential costs, Adams said.

Sylvia Anderson isn’t sure where the money is going to come from either. “The truth is we’re going to have to reallocate or find money from multiple sources,” she said.

“And that’s what we saw from Seattle and Tacoma. They used money from multiple sources,” she said.

What the city does after the task force delivers its recommendations will affect not just the city’s homeless population, but also its residents and visitors, like Tracy Vorderbrueggen, who, after her experience, said she’d think twice before coming into downtown Everett for dinner.

“It’s so sad to see a city like Everett go to waste,” she said.

Chris Winters: 425- 374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.

Streets Initiative meetings

The Everett Community Streets Initiative meets every other Thursday from 3-6 p.m. in the Weyerhaeuser Room of the Everett Transit Center, 3201 Smith Ave. The final four meetings will be held Oct. 2, Oct. 16, Oct. 30 and Nov. 13. The meetings are open to the public.