Seattle Shelters Turning More Homeless Away

Fewer people are sleeping on downtown streets, though emergency shelters throughout the metropolitan area are turning away more people, judging by a recent survey.

The number of homeless people turned away from shelters in November was 25 percent higher than in he same month a year earlier, according to figures gathered from 51 programs by the Seattle-King County Coalition for the Homeless.

“We saw a very alarming surge in the number of people desperately seeking a very finite resource of emergency shelter beds,” coalition co-chairman Ken Cole said.

In November, seven programs offered 2,000 emergency beds and 530 transitional-housing beds, he said.

The 51 programs participating in the survey reported 13,266 requests in November for 2,000 available beds. They said 3,967 people were accommodated, and 9,299 turned away.

At the same time, the number of people counted sleeping outside in the downtown area declined from 453 in November 1994 to 331 this past November. Cole said there had been a concerted effort to discourage people from sleeping downtown.

“People end up just giving up and going farther out from downtown to find some place to camp or sleep,” he said.

“The shelter system depends on people sleeping out,” Cole added. “If everyone showed up at once and demanded shelter beds, there’d be riots.”