Homeless Flood North County Shelters

The homeless, especially families and children, are flooding North County shelters and social service programs, a coalition of churches reported.

The 3,771 homeless clients served at the North County Interfaith Council’s five shelters from August to the end of October is nearly three times the number served in the same period last year, the charity reported last week.

The number of homeless children served shot up 448%, and 368% more family members were assisted, the report says.

“We’re in the midst of an incredibly desperate economy, so people who have never had to ask for assistance before are knocking on our door,” said Suzanne Pohlman, the organization’s executive director. “They are rocking and reeling on both the emotional side as well as the fiscal one.”

For the first time, children represented more than half the homeless served, at 55%, topping last year’s record of 47.5%, figures show. Also, 81.5% of the homeless served by the council were part of families, a 73% increase over the rate four years ago.

Other homeless advocates and social service providers in North County reported increases in the number of people seeking help this year, but none as dramatic as the interfaith council.

“Homelessness in our clients is definitely up, almost dramatically,” said Dianne Coolidge, case manager for the Ecumenical Service Center in Oceanside. “There are days where more than half of our clients here are homeless . . . and we are getting a lot more families in with children.”

Coolidge’s center, which provides emergency assistance and conducts screenings for local homeless shelters, saw a 20% rise in the number of families served this quarter, to 427, but it is unclear how many of those were homeless.

San Diego County homeless advocates said the increases reported by the North County church council contrast sharply with what they had estimated.

“Every year, cities have increased in homeless, on the average of at least 10% each year,” said Frank Landerville of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. “In our area (downtown San Diego), it’s reasonable to conclude that our population has increased about 10%.”

The Salvation Army in San Diego said it is unclear how much homelessness has gone up in the downtown area but that there has been a sharp increase.

“All of our shelters are completely full, they all have waiting lists,” said Capt. Don Bell of the Salvation Army in San Diego. “All of our low-income housing have long waiting lists, and it’s difficult to tell how many more homeless are out there.”

Last year, the group housed 400 homeless people a night, and when 100 new beds were added this year, there were 100 people waiting to sleep in them, Bell said. The Salvation Army is also feeding 2,000 people a day in San Diego.

The Salvation Army expects to receive 50,000 requests for assistance this holiday season, Bell said, and he estimates they will be able to meet 37,000 of them. Last year, 35,000 people were given food, shelter and toys for children.

Some suggested that North County’s large homeless migrant population, which is almost exclusively Latino, might be responsible for the increase in the number of homeless served there. But NCIC’s figures showed that the percentage of the homeless served that are Latino actually declined, from 50.7% to 46.6%.

The unexpected rise in the number of homeless arriving at the North County church shelters’ doorsteps has placed a strain on resources, with the center instituting a cap of 55 earlier this year on the number of families served a day.

“We’re desperate for cash to provide services; we are very much in need of blankets and warm jackets and even mufflers,” Pohlman said. “We’d love to have some sleeping bags to distribute.

“We are limiting the numbers that we see and we’re turning them away each and every day.”