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Homeless count volunteers packed and ready By Kaylee Tornay of the Mail Tribune Jan 24, 2020 05:29 PM A A When Joel Setzer heads out with surveys and supplies as a volunteer with the annual Point-In-Time Count of Jackson County’s homeless people next week, he expects to see familiar faces. He’s served Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners to homeless veterans and is training to become a peer mentor at the White City Department of Veterans Affairs clinic. “This is my way to give back, for everybody who helped me back in the day,” he said. Setzer hasn’t only visited with local people experiencing homelessness — years ago, he would have been counted among them. With support from the V.A., he overcame drug addiction, learned to manage his post-traumatic stress disorder, got a job and now lives in his own apartment. Those kinds of addictions, trauma, physical disabilities or other experiences that intersect with people’s lack of housing are all information the annual count aims to document. The county-wide data-gathering effort is the product of collaborative work between agencies and volunteers, headed by Jackson County Continuum of Care, with a goal to better inform solutions to chronic homelessness. “Housing is that stabilizing factor,” said Constance Wilkerson, manager of Jackson County Continuum of Care. Friday morning, she was working alongside volunteers at the ACCESS Olsrud Nutrition Center, filling backpacks of essentials to distribute to people living outside who will be contacted by surveyors. The regional Continuum of Care program comes out of the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency and is designed to muster community efforts to end homelessness. Though the count is required only biennially, for the past several years Jackson County has done it annually. While the “point in time” name can conjure up images of a single night of outreach, in reality the work unfolds over the course of a week, Wilkerson said. Teams will meet with people at ACCESS food pantries, libraries, community meals and social service agencies through next Friday. No matter when it’s administered, though, the survey will focus on people’s housing situations only on the night of Jan. 27. One team will conduct street outreach that night from about 5 to 10 p.m. The interview covers a wide range of information, as Continuum of Care wants not only to count people and hand them a backpack of supplies, but also to learn what led to each person being without shelter. Disabling conditions, which include mental illnesses, substance abuse disorders and physical disabilities, for example, are important to help get a sense of chronic homelessness, Wilkerson said. Chronic homelessness is defined as experiencing homelessness either for 12 consecutive months or experiencing homelessness at least four different times in the past three years, both in the presence of a disabling condition. Last year, the number of chronically homeless people counted dropped to 196 people from 248 in 2018. The overall count was down, too: 712 in 2019 as opposed to 732 a year prior. “I’m hoping that trend will continue,” Wilkerson said. Friday morning, volunteers were performing one of the final preparations in the ACCESS building, busily filling more than 250 colorful backpacks. Boxes of gloves and hats, warm socks and blankets lined the tables, soon to be emptied by whichever volunteer was in their area. Joan Avery had been looking for a low-impact volunteer opportunity as she recovers from hip surgery. “This seemed like a way to get my feet wet, so to speak,” she said as she folded black plastic garbage bags into neat squares for packing. “It’s great. I think this is going to have an impact.” Though it’s too late to be trained as a volunteer with the Point-In-Time Count, Wilkerson said community partners such as ACCESS, local warming shelters and others need help well beyond the week of outreach. “There’s lot of ways for people to plug in,” she said. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected] or 541-776-4497. Follow her on Twitter @ka_tornay. Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune Constance Wilkerson helps a volunteer fill a backpack with essentials at the Access Olsrud Nutrition Center in Medford Friday. 1007616545 PITbackpacks4.JPG