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Trying to get a handle on homelessness A homeless man walks in downtown Ashland. Daily Tidings / Jamie Lusch Tuesday Jan 31, 2017 at 2:00 AM By Julie Akins For the Tidings When 57-year-old Mitchell Brent came back to the Rogue Valley after a three-year stint of teaching English in Thailand, he figured he could get a job and get back to his life. “I thought I’d work it out, no problem. But the longer it went on the more I went through money,” says Brent of his situation, which now lands him on the homeless spectrum. He is living in a motel and working part-time in human resources. He was one of the people being surveyed for a homeless census at the Phoenix Presbyterian Church where a community meal takes place on Saturday mornings. It was the last day of a survey counting homeless people in the area. The Point in Time Count is conducted for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It’s an annual count to discover the number of homeless people in communities across the country. The amount of federal aid for communities to assist the homeless is determined by the numbers of chronically homeless people living there. This year the count was conducted by the Jackson County Homeless Task Force and assisted by Access. “Chronic homelessness is a problem in Jackson County," said George Jarvis of Access, who is in charge of this year’s count for Jackson County. "The numbers are growing and there are more families than we’ve counted before. We have to identify people to get the funding to help. “We have more people. We’re going to get a more accurate count.” Jarvis is referring to last year’s count, which only yielded 679 homeless people in the county out of more than 13,000 counted statewide. He says he knows the number is much greater. “The Jackson County Board of Education identifies 2,300 children alone who are homeless.” One of the difficulties with the Point in Time count ordered by HUD is that it strikes in January, when many homeless people are temporarily sheltering or on the move to warmer climates in the dead of winter, but normally reside in Jackson County. Another issue, according to Jarvis, is finding people because it is not legal to sleep outside. Many homeless people hide from officials. Jarvis says they put more people to work on the count and they didn’t limit their survey to daylight hours, since homeless people are on the move during the day and difficult to identify. Many work, seek work or use libraries and other places to get on line during the day and cannot be easily identified for a count. “This is the first year we’ve done anything after midnight,” Jarvis said. He asked police officers to go along with workers to do the counts at night to ensure the safety of workers and homeless people. No citations were given as part of the agreement. Normally police cite people who are sleeping outside in camps. “The biggest issue in Jackson County is a lack of affordable housing,” said Jarvis as he walked around the church with a stack of surveys, hoping to add to the accuracy of his census. He also says the HUD definition of homelessness is narrow. “It only counts if you’re staying in a place that’s not normally a place to live,” said Jarvis. It fails to count people like Brent who can afford a motel room for awhile but can’t afford to get into a full-time residence. It also doesn’t count people couch surfing, for the most part. “Cars, tents or staying with someone else for less than seven days. It doesn’t really cover all homeless people. It is seeking to identify the chronically homeless but it still doesn’t hit all of them.” Jarvis speculates the survey may be getting at the tip of the iceberg. Even the chronically homeless needed to have a disability to count and many veterans did not count in the census because they may receive some form of housing through the Veterans Administration. But often it is not full-time, stable housing. Veterans comprise roughly 11 percent of the overall homeless population, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Oregon has the highest percentage of homeless families with children not living in a shelter, according to the latest national estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report estimates that 59.1 percent of Oregon's homeless families with children spent the night on the street or in a car, park or another public or private place that is not normally seen as sleeping accommodations. And while the number of people experiencing homelessness as part of a family with children decreased in 41 states from 2015 to 2016, the report says Oregon had a 2.5 percent increase, the fifth highest in the nation. Overall, 60.5 percent of Oregon's estimated 13,238 homeless people were unsheltered, the second highest after California. Almost 84 percent of chronically homeless people, 64.4 percent of unaccompanied homeless youth and 55 percent of homeless veterans live on the streets in Oregon, according to the report. Jarvis expects to have the surveys turned in to him by the end of this week and hopes to publish the results to HUD by April. Meantime, 61-year-old Sunny Wooden who was reluctant to participate in the survey despite her being on the homeless spectrum remains frustrated by what she feels is a punitive system toward the poor and homeless. “All this prejudice is astounding. People don’t understand you can be down on your luck for a variety of reasons. You can have an injury that takes time to heal and be out here. Now I’m older, it’s hard to find work.” Wooden says she’d love to have a job and pay taxes. She’d love to pay rent. “Because I’m poor people make assumptions.” — Email Ashland freelance writer Julie Akins at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/@julieakins.