Survey Finds Rise in Use Of Shelters, Other Services

The Washington region's homeless population has increased for a sixth straight year and includes growing ranks of single adults, many of them chronically troubled by addiction or mental illness.

This year's regional survey found 16,434 homeless men, women and children, a majority of them sustained by a patchwork of emergency shelters and services and many others in programs designed to address the problems contributing to their living conditions. The findings were included in a report released yesterday by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Overall, the results of the annual count -- compiled from data collected on a single day in January from shelters, rural encampments, soup kitchens and housing programs -- reflect an increase of about 6.4 percent over last year's total.

The sobering findings should be considered along with signs of progress in a regionwide campaign to end homelessness focusing on root causes, particularly the need for more affordable housing and more services for addicts, said Stephen Cleghorn, an author of the report and a member of the council's homelessness committee.

"As large as the number is in this report, it is not so daunting when we consider that it means less than 3 in 1,000 people living in the region are homeless," he said. "This is a problem we can solve."

The homeless population is not growing at the same pace across the region, the survey found. Montgomery, Prince George's and Arlington counties reported increases. Loudoun County's homeless population, while small, almost doubled, from 103 in 2005 to 194 in 2006, according to the survey.

Two jurisdictions, Alexandria and Frederick, reported reductions, while in the District and Fairfax, the jurisdictions with the largest homeless populations, the numbers remained relatively stable.

The high price of housing is seen as a major contributor to the problem, especially in the suburbs, where nearly two-thirds of homeless adults with families have jobs. In Alexandria, for instance, 73 percent of homeless adults with families are working.

In one of the report's "bright spots," however, the number of families in the survey declined somewhat regionwide, said Michael Ferrell, executive director of the District-based Coalition for the Homeless, who worked on this year's survey.

The survey reported 4,948 homeless people living in families, down from 5,098 last year. "A decrease in families means a decrease in children suffering the adverse effects of homelessness," Ferrell said.

The count did not provide the number of children affected this year, but in some past years they constituted more than one-quarter of the homeless population. Studies have shown that homelessness can take a particularly heavy toll on children. Many move from one school to another. They are twice as likely as other students to repeat a grade.

Local efforts to find ways to address the causes of the problem are bearing fruit, Cleghorn and Ferrell said. Over the past two years, the region has added 1,000 beds in housing programs tailored to help homeless people address their problems and rebuild their lives, the survey found. A total of 4,349 people are housed in programs that provide varying degrees of permanency and support.

The needs of the 12,085 homeless people who remain outside support programs continue to present a challenge, advocates say.

That segment of the population includes 3,077 chronically homeless people, many of whom rely heavily on the area's overwhelmed emergency shelter system. Often they suffer from mental illness, addiction and other disabilities but are not receiving services that could help them and free up shelter beds for people facing temporary housing crises, Ferrell said.

"There needs to be a more concerted outreach effort," he said.