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By Sue Guinn Legg
Johnson City Press Staff Writer
slegg@johnsoncitypress.com
A 24-hour point-in-time homeless count conducted this week by the Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness found roughly 275 people spending their nights in emergency shelters across the eight-county region and another 125 braving the elements outdoors.
Part of a nationwide count being conducted during January by participants in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program to ease chronic homelessness, the local tally will be key to future HUD funding for the regional coalition’s 65 service agency members, coordinator Joy Drinnon said.
In the past two years, HUD has awarded more than $2 million in Continuum of Care grants to five service agencies providing transitional housing and social services for the homeless in Sullivan and Washington counties.
More than three dozen ARCH volunteers took part in the count, which began Wednesday evening with a tally of occupied beds at emergency shelters in Washington, Sullivan, Carter, Unicoi, Johnson, Greene, Hawkins and Hancock counties. Drinnon said the overnight count also included individuals known to be homeless in area jails, hospitals, detoxification clinics, rehabilitation centers and transitional or supportive housing centers.
The count continued on Thursday with a voluntary survey of homeless people being served at public kitchens, hospitals health clinics and other social service agencies and those living in cars, abandoned buildings, outdoor camps, underpasses and other sites frequented by people living on the streets.
Drinnon said the count included roughly 200 homeless people in Washington County, 125 in Sullivan County, 25 in Carter County and 10 in Unicoi County.
The count did not include homeless people staying outside emergency shelters who declined to take part in the voluntary survey.
Drinnon said survey questions, completed by about half of the roughly 400 homeless counted, will determine how many of those fit HUD’s definition of chronically homeless and if the region has enough shelter beds to accommodate all those counted.
She said the data, to be compiled over the next several weeks and submitted with ARCH’s next Continuum of Care grant application in June, will be critical to future grant funding for ARCH’s member agencies.
The Continuum of Care program encourages alliances like ARCH to establish regional continuums of emergency shelter, transitional housing, case management, permanent housing and permanent support and prevention services for the homeless.
ARCH’s grant-writing alliance includes more than 65 local service agencies and nearly 30 supporting corporations in the eight counties of Northeast Tennessee.