Family Homelessness – Washington

Posted on August 30, 2010 by townsend

• The fastest-growing group among local homeless: families, By Lornet Turnbull, August 28, 2010, Seattle Times: “On this chilly May night in the parking lot of Southcenter mall, Cherie Moore is growing anxious. She and her 17-year-old son, Cody Barnes, sit almost unmoving in the cab of their old Ford Ranger, all their belongings crammed in the back – their 32-inch flat-screen television, a prized movie collection, Cody’s video games. Moore is down to her last $6. It’s nearing 10 o’clock and it’s been hours since the two have had a meal. Mall security has been circling. Moore knows they can’t spend the night parked here, but the 49-year-old single mother, born and raised in South King County, has no clue where to go. ‘I’m mentally exhausted,’ she says. While overall homelessness in King County has steadied, it appears to be rising among families, a trend playing out across the nation. Parents with children are the fastest-growing yet least-visible segment of the homeless population, far more likely to be doubled up in the homes of friends or living in their cars than to be at a busy intersection asking for help…”
• Refugees face homelessness all over again in U.S., By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “Every few weeks or so, the family of 10 would pack up and move yet again – the father and boys finding a bed or space on the floor with family friends in one part of King County, the mother and girls in another. Somali refugees who were first resettled in upstate New York before relocating here last fall, they shuffled between the homes of friends willing to put them up, sometimes sharing two- or three-bedroom units with the eight or 10 people who lived there. Once, the mother recounts, all 10 shared a single bedroom in a home, using each other as pillows to get through the nights. Refugee families like this one – displaced people from war-torn parts of the world – are confronting homelessness all over again in their new homeland…”
• Gates housing-first plan doesn’t come with housing money, By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “In the late 1990s, as out-of-work Ohio residents flocked to Columbus in search of jobs, many found themselves in a new predicament: They were homeless. The support system meant to help them, much like the one now in King County, was a network of agencies, each with different rules – a labyrinth with no clear way in and no easy way out. Families making repeated calls in search of help overwhelmed the system. And when putting them up in hotels became too costly, shelters started turning families away. In response, officials in Columbus created a more streamlined system – ‘one front door,’ they called it – a one-stop center that parents and children in need could enter day or night. The Columbus approach became a national model for helping families escape homelessness, and key parts of it are being incorporated in what ultimately could be a top-to-bottom overhaul of how homeless families in three Puget Sound counties are helped…”