Point-in-Time Count: An Annual Reminder of the Depth of Homelessness in KC

A collection of social workers and homeless advocates gathered recently in a meeting room at the reStart shelter just of east of Kansas City's downtown to train for the annual point-in-time count of homeless individuals. The count is used to identify the need towards matching individuals with services. I joined the evening training session, parking my car on a side street on the cold, windy night. As I walked around the corner of the large men's and women's homeless shelter, I passed one or two people leaning against the building for a cigarette, and noticed a few others scattered around outside.

Inside reStart Executive Director Evie Craig invited people to pizza and lemonade while setting up the slide presentation. After people settled into their chairs we introduced ourselves. The meeting included several clinicians from area agencies and newly-employeed reStart social workers, including a trio of Street Outreach workers sitting in the back. I imagine the young workers are truly on the frontlines of supporting individuals needing help.

Craig mentions the count of homeless individuals is a requirement of the federal government's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program, administered at a state level. Missouri decides to conduct a count on the same day each year -- this year the count takes place on the evening of January 29, 2014.

She runs through her presentation without a script, underscoring both the significant number and needs of homeless individuals and families in the Kansas City area. Craig is clearly hands-on and direct. At one point she mentions a separate "youth count" focuses on individuals up to age 24, then explains that HUD does not define certain youth who "couch surf" as homeless. Nor does HUD count people as homeless staying in hotels, unless an agency pays for the the hotel, Craig adds, suggesting a more accurate count would include these people.

Before the training session a woman working as a full-time case worker in the Raytown school district shares the level of the problem: 265 homeless kids in the Raytown school district, 1000 in the KCMO school district and 800 in Independence. And it's not just high school kids that are homeless, pointing out that much younger kids fall into this condition.

Throughout the presentation Craig connects the efforts and results of the 100,000 Homes campaign. 80,000 "chronically and medically vulnerable people" nationwide have been housed towards their goal of July 2014. She adds that 294 chronically homeless individuals in the KC area have been housed, including 83 military veterans, where "we've seen a reduction in veteran homelessness."

HUD defines chronically homeless based on the duration and number of times a person is homeless. Craig reminds people that chronically homeless individuals "over-use emergency services," and these people would benefit by connecting with social services to help improve their health and well-being.

Two years ago when I participated in the homeless count I was reminded of the difficult task of providing services to homeless people -- their condition is more than purely economic as some have substance abuse problems, mental health issues or are victims of domestic abuse.

My hat is off to those workers in the front lines who provide support and services to these people. I can only count myself as fortunate to listen and learn for a few hours to the stories and situations of homeless people when I conduct surveys during the 2014 point-in-time count of homeless people on January 29.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Community Media: Serving More Than a Geographic Region

Community media outlets like KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City have thrived for decades, maintaining a well-established broadcast model: high-quality studio sound broadcast to a wide geographic area serving the "community." Non-profit community radio station like KKFI, along with college radio and small commercial radio stations keep costs low by renting small studios and operating with few paid employees. These stations attract small audiences but differentiate themselves by focusing on community issues, music and culture. This focus is what defines community media, along with -- in the case of community radio -- maintaining cooperative ownership, not corporate ownership. Community radio operators always knew that "community" was more than a geographic region; it was the various cultural, ethnic, social and artistic communities for which locally-produced radio shows target. KKFI has local radio shows by or directed to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and immigrant
Read more

Lee's Summit Proposes the Sanity Approach to Waste Reduction

Image
Finally! The city of Lee's Summit, Missouri took a responsible approach to trash service by replacing an all-you-can-dump-with-no-free-recycling-option to a "volume-based" approach similar to the successful service used in Kansas City, Missouri. After the service is changed, then those residents who have paid $2.50 per month to trash companies like Deffenbaugh can rely on the new service for free recycling, plus get the satisfaction that waste will be reduced and recycling increased. ...the City Council directed city staff to issue the state-required two-year notice to all solid waste haulers providing services in the City that the City is considering implementation of a comprehensive, citywide, solid waste program.  The program currently proposed by city staff includes volume-based pricing for residential trash service with unlimited, curbside recycling at no additional fee .  Under this proposed program, residents would only pay for the amount of trash they discard ;
Read more

Google Fiber Experiment in KCK: How will the project impact the "digital divide?"

Image
The selection of Kansas City, Kansas as the area to build a high-speed network has been widely celebrated in this area, yet raises questions about how it will address a "digital divide" that limits residents' affordable access to the Internet. photo from the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program site depicting a training class. Several news reports by local and national media outlets reinforced the importance to the local economy and development, like the March 30, 2011 editorial in the Kansas City Star , "Believe it: This is a big deal in an era when Internet speed is key to productivity in business, medicine and education." While the Star cheers the announcement another report a day before and one by Mary Sanchez described the demise of a statewide education network that benefited 400 Kansas schools. These two merging activities show the risk to lack of planning or oversight to technology: the expansion of the digital divide for low-income an
Read more