An Account of the Homeless

Army of Volunteers Gathers Data for Detailed Portrait of Area's Population

Mark Schumann, who now stays at the Community Based Shelter in Rockville, was one of thousands of homeless people volunteers hope to interview and count. (Michael Williamson - The Washington Post)

Throughout the District and its suburbs Thursday from morning until night, the homeless, huddled in the rain, seated in soup kitchens and lying in shelter bunks, confronted the form with its short questions, and fit what had gone wrong with their lives into its neat answer boxes.

"Do you have or have you ever had a drug or alcohol problem?"

Sitting in the Community Based Shelter in Rockville, Jay, the 48-year-old technologist in the argyle sweater checked off 'yes,' meaning heroin. Lisa, the 30-year-old former nursing school student with the mane of golden hair also checked off yes. Why are you homeless? She checked a box for the guy who beat her up.

Through the day till long past dusk, an army of caseworkers and volunteers brought the forms to the homeless for the second annual regional count organized by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

For a report to be released in the spring, the count attempts to capture a snapshot of the thousands of elusive, fragile, sometimes mentally ill homeless.

It is a challenge.

Some people hide. Others vanish, like most of the 200 people who were turned away in the past month from the Hilda Barg Homeless Prevention Center in Woodbridge. Still others don't speak English, such as the Hispanic laborers interviewed in cold encampments off Route 1 there. Some are afraid -- such as the Vietnam veteran living in the woods of Prince William County -- or in the throes of addiction.

Last year's count found 12,850 homeless men, women and children across the region, including 1,672 homeless people in need of substance abuse treatment and 2,849 in need of help for mental illness. This year, because of the recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, counters expect a higher tally.

In some ways, the challenges of counting the homeless are the smallest part of the problem, said Gary Givens, a housing planner for COG and a count organizer. "The real issue is what goes on day in and day out."

The council is hoping over time to provide a detailed portrait of the area's homeless population: its size, ages, skills, needs, races, faces.

"The face of homelessness is changing," Givens said.

"It's more families, more children. More young people," he said. While last year there were 200 families on the District's waiting list for emergency shelter, this year there are 580, said Mary Ann Luby, a Dominican nun who is outreach coordinator for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

The rising cost of housing doesn't help, experts said.

In the Washington area, a worker needs to make $18.13 an hour to afford a modest, $940 two-bedroom apartment, a wage amount that from 2000 to 2001 increased 9.27 percent, according to the Washington-based, nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Nationally, homelessness rose last year, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which found in a recent survey of 27 cities, including the District, that requests for emergency shelter had increased by an average of 13 percent during 2001.

In an area of Fairfax County hit hard by layoffs at Reagan National Airport this year, Sharon Kelso, executive director of United Community Ministries, said she found all 39 of her units of transitional housing full.

"We'll see a net gain of 17 to 20 people this year," Kelso said. Need is also up for food, clothing and financial assistance, she said.

"We've got a lot of folks who could become homeless soon."

Meanwhile, enumerator Don Phillips, of the Laurel Area Advocacy and Referral Agency, which serves people from Prince George's County and southern Howard County, counted the people living in transitional sobriety houses in Bowie and Laurel. He found them sleeping in two church shelters, eating at a Laurel soup kitchen and living under the Route 1 bridge.

"Where I can find people, I'll go do it," he said yesterday, still sorting through his surveys.

The count takes place on a single day, and while each form is anonymous, respondents are screened for duplications. It will take a month for COG to gather the data from the various jurisdictions, and another month to analyze the figures.

The need for accurate information goes beyond a local imperative. In the next two years, communities will have to put in place systems for homeless counts to qualify for federal grants.

Over the years, jurisdictions have counted their own homeless populations, but until last year, they had never come together for a regionwide census.

Last year's count located 7,058 homeless people in the District; 1,089 in Montgomery County; 1,218 in Prince George's; 543 in Alexandria; 419 in Arlington; 1,935 in Fairfax and Falls Church; 167 in Loudoun; and 421 in Prince William County.

Out in the woods of Prince William, rain spattering her clipboard, Gayle Sanders filled out a form for the dazed Vietnam veteran who stumbled out of a plastic tent. "Reasons you lost your housing," requested the form, listing options such as mental illness, unemployment, no more time allowed in a shelter.

"Post-traumatic stress," Sanders explained, fitting the man's madness into the form. "He's afraid of people."

She also counted Robert Simmons. "Previous job types," the form asked. "Fast food . . . office work . . . farm labor . . . retail clerk?"

"I wore a shirt and tie and sold candy and Christmas ornaments at Hecht's," said Simmons, 39. He worked the holidays, then he bought a bus ticket to Florida. It was still in his pocket. He couldn't find the words for what kept him in this area, living in the woods, in the rain, a handsome man, a father.

"Are you still bipolar?" Sanders asked him. "I'm doing good, Gayle," he said quietly. They knew each other well. A few months ago, he seemed to be on the mend.

Then he slipped backward. Entering him into the homeless count, Sanders struggled with her disappointment.