The Issue of Homelessness
How many homeless people are there in our city today?
- King County’s One Night Count held in January 2010 reports that there are at least 8,500 homeless people—individuals and families—without a home on any given night.
- The Seattle/King County Committee to End Homelessness estimates that more than 2,500 of those are homeless single adults. It also estimates that 2,500 homeless adults meet the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Welfare’s definition of chronically-homeless: homeless for more than one year, or homeless more than four times in the previous three years, and suffering from one or more disability.
- It is estimated that 1/3 of all homeless people are Veterans.
While both the region’s Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and the United Way’s Campaign to End Chronic Homelessness have done a great deal to focus our community on this issue, we remain tremendously short of effective housing solutions.
Ironically, the most vulnerable people—the chronically homeless with medical conditions and/or mental illness—fall through the cracks of many housing programs. Lack of appropriate housing for people with disabilities, high housing costs, difficulty transitioning from hospitals, treatment programs or jail, and chemical dependency are just a few of the reasons why homeless adults fail to find adequate housing.
Plymouth is committed to help our community solve the issue of homelessness.
We feel that providing more supportive housing solutions is one of the keys to ending this devastating social issue.
