Shawn Vestal: Caring for city’s homeless is a tall order. It’s also a necessary one.

The man was sitting patiently, draped in a barber’s cape, as Derek Rice trimmed the hair above his ears.

Asked his name, he replied, “My name is No.”

Then he smiled and said, “Freddy.”

Freddy is a homeless man who’s been in Spokane, on and off, for about a decade. He was among the hundreds of people who showed up at Our Lady of the Lourdes Cathedral on Tuesday for the annual Community Meal and Service Fair – where hamburgers and chili were served alongside access to a variety of services and basic supplies in a lot behind the cathedral.

Rice, now working on Freddy’s beard, asked, “You want to keep the goatee or no?”

“Yes,” Freddy said, and then talked about how difficult it is for someone in his shoes to get the most basic of services – like a haircut.

“I’ll tell you one thing: It’s not easy being homeless,” he said. “It’s more work than anything else.”

The Community Meal is one of two annual homeless meals the parish sponsors each year, and organizers expected to serve more than 1,000 meals. It was a lot of people, and it’s just one reflection of what a lot of people are saying this summer – both those who work with the homeless directly and those who simply see them on the streets: the number of people in the city without a place to live seems to be rising.

Some of the homeless themselves sure seem to think so.

“Absolutely,” Freddy said, when asked if more people were in the same kind of plight he was. “Most definitely,” said Jeff Bromley, a 51-year-old homeless man waiting for his turn in the haircut chair.

“It’s rough,” said 71-year-old John Hale. “There are some real tough stories out there, and mine isn’t as tough as some other ones.”

It’s difficult to say for sure whether Spokane is seeing more homeless people, or to say how many. The annual point-in-time count conducted by the city earlier this year showed an 11 percent increase in homeless numbers. At the time, Rob McCann, the head of Catholic Charities, said he thought there were not more actual homeless people in town, but that because the city has been doing a better job of sheltering them – with changes in the management of services at City Hall and expansions of both permanent and temporary housing options – we’re getting a more accurate count.

Over the summer, though, it has seemed to many as if there are more people on the streets. That’s not unusual when the weather turns warmer, but many observers say the change is bigger and more noticeable this year.

The kinds of nuisance problems that draw complaints from businesses around the House of Charity and officials at Lewis and Clark High School have surfaced recently. Residents have complained of more encampments in parks. Shelters report bigger populations than years past. People who provide shelter and other services say they’re seeing a lot more need out there – and the number of people panhandling, sitting or lying on sidewalks has certainly seemed higher this summer to people who spend time downtown.

What should we make of that? It’s common to hear in some quarters that we are attracting homeless people with the abundance of services we offer. Is it possible that as the city improves its services for the homeless that it draws more of them in?

Jonathan Mallahan, the city’s director of neighborhood and community services, doesn’t think that’s it. Mallahan has overseen one of our city government’s most admirable efforts – an aggressive focus on improving homeless services, working in collaboration with the many providers of social services in the city, with the ambitious goal of eliminating homelessness altogether in Spokane.

It’s a tall order, but Spokane has taken big steps. The city has worked to get people into housing more quickly, and there are now several shelter options in a 24/7 system. Hundreds of new permanent housing beds have been built, help for homeless kids in the schools have expanded, and the overall number of unsheltered homeless people in the city is down, according to city statistics.

Mallahan said he recognizes that many people are seeing more indications of homelessness than in past years. He said that as the city has worked to move campers out of the areas under the freeway, and move those people toward using the services available, there has been a rise in encampments in parks and other places that were not typical in years past.

But as for the idea that Spokane is attracting the homeless through its array of lavish services, Mallahan said, “It’s nonsensical, in my mind.”

Homelessness is a terrible experience, he said, and that’s true even when people are getting the help that’s available. They’re suffering, and the city is trying to help them.

“The vast majority of people who are experiencing homelessness in Spokane are from Spokane,” he said. “They’re our neighbors.”

He cited a statistic to support this: Eighty-six percent of those in the city’s homeless-services database had their last permanent address in Spokane.

The homeless people I spoke to at the Community Meal didn’t seem to think Spokane was becoming more of a mecca for services, either. They talked about how they live while carrying everything important in their backpacks. They told stories of how hard it can be to find a bathroom when the need is urgent. They talked about the problems of being homeless when the whether is very hot – and remembered the problems of being homeless when it’s very cold.

And the people who put together the Community Meal on Tuesday – the parishioners and clergy at Our Lady of the Lourdes – had a very simple, very important reason for doing what they did.

As Father Kyle Ratuiste put it, “Service to the poor is an integral part of our mission here and it gets back to the gospel message of Jesus Christ: What you do to the least of our brothers you do to me.”

From haircuts to hamburgers.