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Friday, September 23, 2005 Area homeless: What about us? In the days after Hurricane Katrina, Seattle officials and residents rallied to house those left homeless, discovering rental vouchers and apartments among the city's housing stock. Seattle's own homeless, and those who help them, were left to wonder: What about us? The outpouring of local support for evacuees has been astounding. The local American Red Cross already has raised $9.5 million; kids held bake sales; churches collected piles of food, money and clothes; and Seattle-based Amazon.com gathered $12 million. The generosity, though, has left a bittersweet taste in the mouths of King County's own 8,000 homeless, many of whom feel forgotten in the rush to help people 2,700 miles away. "It means really, they don't care," said a man named Dennis as he prepared to sleep under Interstate 5 near downtown. "Clean up your own house before you clean up your neighbor's house." The response to poverty created and uncovered by Hurricane Katrina is raising questions about how federal and local governments and the public respond to the nation's poor, and what kinds of judgments they make about who deserves aid. "There needs to be the same kind of urgency in this community to end homelessness here as there is to contribute to the Red Cross, or to whomever else it is, to house Katrina survivors," said Tom Tierney, executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority. Instead, the disaster is forcing Tierney and other local housing officials to walk a fine line. They want to house evacuees -- 650 have already registered at the Seattle Red Cross offices -- while working with their own homeless. But their budgets were tight before the disaster, and now they are struggling to avoid pitting the poor from the Gulf Coast region against those in Seattle for the same resources. So far, local authorities have identified pockets of housing for hurricane evacuees that would not have been open to Seattle's chronically homeless -- roughly 60 units, for example, designated for lower-wage workers.
The goal is to leave those on the waiting lists alone, according to Adrienne Quinn, the city's housing director. The Seattle Housing Authority closed its waiting list for federal rental vouchers to new applicants in 2003, and the King County Housing Authority purged the names of 4,000 poor residents from its waiting list in May. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering to help by paying for evacuee housing in three basic categories:
Local public housing managers worry about what will happen when that aid, expected to last up to 12 months, runs out and evacuees remain in Seattle. On Thursday afternoon, the King County Housing Authority was still waiting for word of the federal aid. Even if it comes, FEMA should start talking about longer-term assistance to assure the problem doesn't impact the county's own poor residents, said Stephen Norman, executive director of the authority. "I think the public, for better or for worse, is making a distinction (between) Katrina and people who lost homes in their own communities," Norman said, tapping into questions about what kinds of poor citizens deserve help. The difficulty isn't a lack of money, but how local leaders are tackling the problem, said Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The Bush appointee was in Seattle Thursday to address state officials from the Pacific Northwest about lessons from Hurricane Katrina. The Category 4 hurricane showed that the government can house people quickly, Mangano said. What happened with Katrina was a mindset shift, an effort to invest in a result -- ending the Katrina evacuees' homelessness -- as opposed to simply managing the problem. "We're trying to get (city officials) infused with the kind of urgency that there is now with Katrina victims," Mangano said in an interview. Here and around the country, "There hasn't been that kind of political intentionality around chronic homelessness." The Bush administration has spent more money on homeless programs in each of the last four years, Mangano noted, while watching the problem grow. "The resources have increased and homelessness has increased, so resources aren't enough," he said. Those living on the streets of Seattle don't distinguish between housing reserved for them, the working poor, or others. They just know more housing was suddenly available after the hurricane, and it wasn't for them. "Everybody wants to help, which is great," said Allyn Corrothers, a homeless musician in Seattle who is working on releasing his own album. "But what about us?"
HOW TO HELPThose interested in aiding the homeless locally can call the Committee to End Homelessness in King County at 206-296-5251.
P-I reporter Claudia Rowe contributed to this report.
P-I reporter Paul Nyhan can be reached at 206-448-8145 or paulnyhan@seattlepi.com.
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