Maurice Smith <risingrivermedia@gmail.com> sends in:
The rough numbers for the 2024 Point In Time (PIT) Count were announced this week, and sometimes good news is just good news (the City's PDF Summary is attached, and Emry Dinman at the Spokesman has done a very good summary article, too). So, based on the preliminary numbers released this week by the City of Spokane for the 2024 PIT count, here's the good news: overall homelessness in greater Spokane is down by 15%, from 2,390 in 2023 to 2,021 in 2024. Most of that decrease was driven by a dramatic drop in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, down from 955 in 2023 to 443 in 2024, a decrease of 54%. I believe Mayor Brown was correct when she offered that much of the decrease, especially in the unsheltered count, resulted from closing Camp Hope. I would agree. By the time Camp Hope closed (one year ago), around 250 Camp residents had moved from the Camp to a variety of housing options (I would insert this caveat, offered by an experienced outreach worker. We don't know how many individuals have died while homeless between PIT counts, especially when it comes to drug overdose deaths. A sobering thought). Since the closure, an additional 300 unsheltered individuals have been contacted by outreach workers, entered into CMIS, and connected with services, including housing. These ongoing efforts to address unsheltered homelessness appear to be working. At the same time, it appears that the number of those staying in local shelters has risen from 1,435 in 2023 to 1,578 in 2024. I find that curiously interesting since - according to published and publicly available numbers - we don't have that many emergency shelter beds. And that brings me to the not-so-good-news: some of the City's numbers simply don't add up as presented . . . again (For an in-depth critique of the annual PIT Count nationwide, see the attached PDF "HUD-PIT-Report2017")
How Many Beds (and where are they)? I've been tracking shelter bed Capacity in Spokane for several years, frequently arguing that the City's quoted numbers don't add up. Generally speaking, I've been right. According to the City of Spokane's web page announcing the 2024 PIT results, "The number of emergency shelter beds increased from 1,242 in 2023 to 1,381 in 2024" Unfortunately, those numbers and locations have NEVER been published, made publicly available, or reflected in the City's shelter capacity dashboard at ShelterMeSpokane.org. Based on the shelters and bed capacity published on the City of Spokane's dashboard, in 2023 the city-wide shelter system had a capacity of 1,015 beds in June of 2023, not the 1,242 stated on the City's web page. In June of 2024 (as of today), the published shelter capacity stands at 947, not the 1,381 stated on the City's web page. (I've attached a PDF with two charts, one showing shelter capacity for 2023 & 2024 based on ShelterMeSpokane, and the other showing shelter capacity compared with PIT Count Numbers). The City's web page says its shelter capacity numbers are "according to the Housing Inventory Count that was held in conjunction with the PIT Count." Again, where is that information publicly accessible? If the City is going to use these numbers, then the City has an obligation to specify where those emergency shelter beds are located. The same is true of the "the total number of beds for all housing types," which, according to the City website stood at 4,454 in 2024. Where, exactly, are those "beds for all housing types"? How are they accessed? How many of them are actually available for caseworkers to access for clients? Lack of specificity leads inevitably to confusion.
Homelessness: A Pond Or A River?
For more years than I can remember, regional homeless policymakers have unconsciously (but very genuinely) treated homelessness as a pond. Once a year we count all the “fish” in the pond (this year's fish count is down by 369 fish from last year!). We then proceed to build a plan to catch all the fish and drain the pond. We talk about shelter beds and capacity because if we're going to drain the pond we'll need beds for everyone in the pond. After all, if we can do that and squeeze them into enough shelter beds, then we can “solve” homelessness. Right? Every 5-Year or 10-Year plan to end homelessness (and I've seen several) rests on this assumption. But homelessness isn't a pond, in Spokane or anywhere else. Homelessness is a river.
Allow me to illustrate. The current capacity at the TRAC shelter stands at 250, but in January during the PIT count it was temporarily expanded 400, which is probably how many people were counted at TRAC in January of 2024. But, according to CMIS data, so far this fiscal year (from July1, 2023 to date [ending June 30, 2024]) 1,774 unique individuals experiencing homelessness have passed thru TRAC. A count of 400 versus a flow of 1,774 demonstrates the four-fold difference between a pond and a river. And a similar pattern is probably at work in all of the emergency shelters in Spokane. So, how does a January snapshot accurately reflect the status of the sheltered homelessness? It doesn't. Again, the City's PIT summary showed 103 families experiencing homelessness across greater Spokane. But in the same fiscal time frame as we used for the TRAC shelter, the Family Promise Emergency Shelter alone served 708 unique individuals representing 242 families (as opposed to the 103 families counted by the PIT in January). Again, a count of 103 families versus a flow of 242 families illustrates the difference between a pond and a river. And a similar pattern is probably at work at the other family shelters in Spokane. So, how does a January snapshot accurately reflect the status of family homelessness? It doesn't
The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus once observed, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man . . . . everything flows, nothing stands still.” Heraclitus had a way with words, and his insight is relevant to our discussion of homelessness. It's easy to count the fish in a pond, because it's relatively static. But the River of Homelessness is much more dynamic, always flowing, never standing still. You never step into the same River of Homelessness twice, because it isn't the same river the next time you step into it. It's a river fed by families in crisis, losing their housing, staying with friends and relatives until the welcome wears out, then sleeping in their car in a local Walmart parking lot. It's a river fed by tributaries of poverty, often generational and extremely difficult to escape, that leave individuals and families living on a financial bubble, one paycheck or emergency away from losing their housing. It's a river of single moms with kids, a very high-risk group for homelessness. And it's a housing crisis of historically tight supply and rising rents, making even available housing too expensive to be sustainable. Until that reality changes, shelters matter . . . and so do accurate numbers.
3 ATTACHMENTS
Yours for the Shalom of Our Community,
Maurice Smith
Thank you Maurice for the update.