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2008-02-19 issue:

Seattle Mennonite helps count of homeless

by Seattle Times

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SEATTLE—Josie Duby, 46 and homeless, told the six volunteers as they walked along Lake City streets, “Watch for the ice.” In the hours before dawn on Jan. 25, she led the group to a triplex scheduled for demolition. Seven homeless people, including her, had been squatting there. The owner, said Duby, allowed them to stay as long as they paid the utility bills.

Inside one apartment, a man was in a sleeping bag on the carpet; another poked his head out a bedroom door, wondering what was going on.

Duby said not that many street homeless would be spotted: “They’re at the church.”

Being able to count the homeless at Seattle Mennonite Church, where Duby is active, made it easier for the volunteers who joined in the annual One Night Count of the Homeless in King County, Wash. The count showed a 15 percent increase county-wide in street homeless over last year.

The total was 2,631 street homeless, said Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, sponsor of the event.

The count did not include those staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing. Eisinger said it’d take two months to gather those statistics. But when those numbers are included, she said, an estimated 6,000 homeless will be added, for a total of some 8,600.—Seattle Times

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