State homelessness counts will likely show a 21% reduction

Recent state-by-state reckonings of homelessness differ widely from in-progress Utah counts scheduled to be released later this month.

Even with the 10 percent to 25 percent increases in requests for emergency shelter by families because of evictions from their rented housing or foreclosures on homes they own, state administrators of a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness say the count is likely to show a reduction of about 21 percent — not 3 percent as reported by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the Corporation for Supportive Housing.

The critical difference is in the number of chronically homeless people — those who have been without a permanent place to live for a least a year, said Lloyd Pendleton, director of the state Homeless Task Force.

Utah conducts a homelessness head count each year in January, and this year will track the number monthly through the state's homeless tracking system.

National homeless monitors recently said the small but steady decline in the number of Utahns who don't have a place to live has probably been outpaced by recession-related financial problems that are causing rent and mortgage defaults at near record levels.

A slight decline is shifting in the opposite directions, according to the survey, which is based on counts taken between 2005 and 2007, said alliance director Nan Roman.

"The thing we need to do now is take what we have learned and apply it to the current crisis so that we don't incur a whole new generation of homeless people," Roman said.

Across the country, homelessness decreased by 10 percent to 671,859 per night in January 2007 from 744,313 per night in January 2005, according to the report.

Data in the alliance report was collected in January 2007 and is compared with homeless counts the group collected in January 2005, well before the economy turned sour.

Utah has adopted a "housing first" approach and has vowed to end chronic homelessness by 2014. Homeless people are given permanent or subsidized housing first, then services such as employment assistance, medical care, substance abuse rehabilitation and other basic needs are provided.

According to state figures and records of Salt Lake police and courts with the chronically homeless Utahns, the housing first approach is providing the opportunity for the causes to be addressed while providing a break for tax funds that underwrite the plan.