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Wait, Worry, Wonder...and Strategize
Reflections from the front lines serving people experiencing homelessness, at the start of a new calendar year, feeling a bit of chill in the daytime air, and reeling from HUD whiplash.
While the year-end holidays bring time off and vacation for many of us, they don't pause homelessness.
The shelter spaces on Key Campus remained full through year end, with a total of over 850 people sheltered nightly in three programs. And Tuesday morning the Keys to Change outreach team counted a total of 585 unsheltered individuals near the Campus and in an expanded radius.
If you have been reading and following a long for a while, you may notice that the total number (1,435) does not vary dramatically week to week and month to month.
It's important to note, though this total number may not vary, it does NOT mean that the people don't vary. There are people who end their homelessness every day. And there are people who newly fall into homelessness every day. There is a continuous flow of humans with less than 20% experiencing chronic or long-term homelessness. Some are diverted away from homeless services with funding that reunifies them with family, friends, or another support system. Some 850 people enter a shelter program on Key Campus and hundreds more enter other shelter programs in the Valley.
Every day people end their homelessness by moving into a variety of subsidized and non-subsidized housing. Unfortunately, the inflow of people into homelessness in our Region continues to be double the rate of the outflow of homeless people into housing, because there is not enough housing available...read more here...
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