By Eric Ruthford 
Ending homelessness in King County is a goal that government and community leaders have wanted for a long time -- both to save people the punishing consequences of being homeless, and to save the community the cost of running shelters. In 2005, they wrote a plan to end homelessness within 10 years that involved building or converting 9,500 units of housing and getting people into stable housing immediately after they become homeless rather than have them wait months or years in shelters or hotels to find a place to live.
The Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County, created by the Committee to End Homelessness and approved by the King County Council in 2005, is about halfway through its life, and it's time to check in and see whether the county and city governments are going to meet this ambitious goal.
Now we're in a slow recovery from a crippling recession which has drained government resources, making it a tougher sell for government officials to justify building free or subsidized housing for poor people when thousands of middle-class families are losing their homes to foreclosure.
Solving homelessness is one of those abstract accomplishments for a community that can be seen mainly by things that won't happen -- when fewer people experience homelessness, fewer people will end up in emergency shelters, fewer people will go to emergency rooms for the substance-abuse episodes that are associated with homelessness, and fewer people will end up in jail for crimes they commit when desperate for money. These improvements will save the community money, but there's also the added expense of building these housing complexes and starting rental-assistance programs for poor people.
As the county and city governments continue to spend money on ending homelessness, what benefits are evident so far? Are shelter populations dropping? Will the new way of addressing homelessness -- by providing housing first -- actually save money versus the old way -- sheltering people until they can find a market-rate place to live?
Between 2009 and 2010, the annual homelessness count in King County found a 5 percent drop in the number of people who are homeless, an encouraging change, especially considering the high unemployment in the area. Can we reasonably expect the number of people living on the streets to go down? Will the number of street panhandlers go down? Will people continue to live in tent cities?
