Steve Carrigan: We’re helping the homeless, but more must be done

We can spend the next year arguing over how many homeless people there are in Merced County, or we can spend the time working to put a roof over their heads.

My vote is for the roofs.

Last week the Merced Continuum of Care unveiled the results of the 2016 homeless count, and the results were a sharp decrease from last year – 380 fewer homeless people than in 2015. The service providers in Merced County have put people in shelters and houses, reconnected them with families and helped them get jobs. But no one believes we took 380 people off the streets.

What we do believe is the census figure of 519 homeless people in Merced County that we obtained this year is a good, solid figure, one that we can use to measure our results from today forward.

In previous years, about 50 volunteers went out and visually determined if people were homeless by the way they looked and acted. This year, 169 people fanned out across the county and personally contacted people, asking them if they were homeless, then running through a series of 12 questions.

Last year the city of Merced was divided into 10 areas and 25 people counted the homeless. This year the city was divided into 28 areas and 100 people were counting. We now have better data, a solid baseline.

The Continuum of Care wants to move forward with a solution. Our top priority is to house homeless veterans. The homeless count shows we have 25 homeless veterans in Merced County, and we want to reduce that number to zero. People who put themselves in harm’s way in the service of our country should not be homeless.

Last year federal, county, city and local nonprofit agencies worked together to house veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs has rental assistance programs and permanent housing programs that can help solve the problem. The VA has staff in Fresno willing to work with us to help chronically homeless vets overcome the challenges they face and get them off the streets. We owe it to them to succeed.

We want to adopt a no-tolerance policy for children living on the streets, in vehicles or living in any other places not meant for human habitation. We are not a Third World country. End of discussion.

We want to implement a dedicated street outreach team to target the hard-core homeless people who are the hardest to reach, the most vulnerable and the most likely to die on the streets. The outreach team will provide them with the help and services they need to get off the streets and under roofs. Sometimes help is as simple as getting a birth certificate that gets them a Social Security card or a California ID card. Other times it is helping them arrange medical visits or counseling or working through the bureaucracy.

There are an array of available services that the homeless might not have access to or knowledge about. The outreach team’s job is to connect the homeless to those services, to become a resource.

We want to create a day center for the homeless, a place for them to receive a wide variety of services. This is going to be controversial because no one is going to want it in their backyard. It is a magnet for homeless, because it serves as a central hub for medical services, counseling, job referrals and more. It is intended to attract the homeless so they can take a shower, wash their clothes and receive mail. It is designed as a refuge from the cold and the heat. The biggest problem is going to be finding a location that is close enough to services but not too close to neighbors.

We have other needs. We don’t have enough housing for our homeless, but there are programs that provide funding to put people under roofs. We can use the outreach team to provide the support the newly housed homeless need to stay in their homes.

It isn’t neat and easy – it never is. But the time to argue over numbers is done. We all agree there is a homeless problem. Let’s move on to the solutions.

This story was originally published March 1, 2016 at 9:58 AM with the headline "Steve Carrigan: We’re helping the homeless, but more must be done."