Lane County’s homeless includes more than 2,000 school children and 12 percent of veterans, according to the Human Services Commission that presented their 10-year plan to end homelessness to the Eugene Planning Commission on Monday.
“It’s a problem that’s not getting better,” said Urban Services Manager Richie Weinman. “It’s getting worse.”
The plan, presented by commission members Weinman and Pearl Wolfe, was recently approved by Lane County’s Board of Commissioners and aims to establish more permanent housing beds and more support services to help homeless individuals find permanent housing.
“For the price we are spending on crisis services we could actually be getting people to succeed, but we are not dealing with this problem very well,” Weinman said.
He lists $359 Lane County Jail stays and $362 hospital emergency visits as service costs that could be better spent working toward a lasting solution: affordable housing.
Finding affordable housing is a major barrier for many people, Weinman said. While the average person making minimum wage can afford to pay $390 for monthly rent, the average one-bedroom monthly rent costs $501, a price that is driven up by a tight Eugene-Springfield vacancy rate of between 0-2 percent.
The Human Services Commission contends that Housing First is the most effective way to decrease homelessness. Housing First aims to first secure individuals in permanent housing and to then provide social support, using local organizations that follow this model.
“It is a public safety issue. It is a health issue. It is an education issue,” Weinman said.
Other goals of the 10-year plan include increases in employment, project funding, youth outreach and discharge planning, which synchronizes efforts among institutions to avoid homelessness for vulnerable individuals when released from places such as hospitals, mental health facilities, jails and foster care.
“People are willing to work,” Weinman said, “but it’s just very difficult to go from homelessness to employment.”
The Human Services Commission sought to correct the myth that much of the homeless population is drawn to Lane County, pointing out that 94 percent of the homeless in Lane County are from this community.
Many other areas have adopted 10-year plans to end homelessness, including Portland, Ore. and San Francisco.
Portland’s program mission states, “Rather than shuffling homeless people from service to service and back to the street, the aim of all government agencies, nonprofits, and institutions in the homeless system must be to first get homeless people into permanent housing.”
Community members can learn more about opportunities for service by contacting the United Way Volunteer Connection.
“We have to believe that we can change the world,” Wolfe said.