Block by block, volunteers work to tally Spokane’s homeless

On a cold January afternoon, Abby Darr, a student at the Washington State University College of Nursing, squatted on the sidewalk just outside of a hospital emergency room while she went through her list of questions.

“Where did you sleep last night?” she asked the man seated in front of her.

“In the forest,” the man replied, almost chuckling.

“Where’s the forest?” asked Noel Pitner, a fellow nursing student.

“By the river,” the man said, pointing.

Isabella Romero, a third nursing student and member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, stood to one side, watching as the man they were surveying reached into a plastic grocery bag carrying some of his belongings.

They’d been warned that volunteers had been assaulted in the past, and that it was possible they would be confronted. They had signed liability waivers.

Earlier that day, while they had gone through their list of questions with a homeless woman, a man walked up to them carrying a large knife. He turned out to be the woman’s boyfriend, returning with the knife to cut off something tied around her finger.

By the next day, Romero would reflect that the precautions and warnings had made her more nervous than the actual work.

Over the course of a few cold days in the past week, volunteers dispersed through Spokane in teams of four or more, hoping to tally all those who do not have homes.

This time each year in communities across the U.S., teams like these take part in the annual point-in-time count, working toward a snapshot of the homeless population in the middle of winter.

It’s not a flawless system – the state Department of Commerce’s Snapshot of Homelessness estimates that Spokane’s homeless population in 2022 is more than eight times larger than the point-in-time’s tally. Cities and counties have to perform the count to receive federal funding for homeless services, and it’s still often considered the gold standard for jurisdictions trying to understand trends in homelessness.

Spokane’s count is organized by the Spokane Regional Continuum of Care board in partnership with the city, and its volunteers led by Kimberly Babb, this year’s point-in-time count coordinator, as well as Daniel Ramos III, a social services data administrator for the city.

The point-in-time count isn’t just a count, Ramos is quick to note. Volunteers ask a long list of questions, such as where a person was living before they were homeless and what caused them to lose housing.

Are they veterans? Are they disabled? Do they suffer from mental illness or addiction? Do they use a shelter, and if not, why?

Not everyone answers questions, and some don’t give their names. To avoid counting the same person twice, volunteers record descriptions of the people who decline to identify themselves.

Preparing all of that data in the way required by the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development – breaking it down by demographics, scrubbing out duplicates and extrapolating to fill the gaps – takes time, Ramos said. Although the count takes place in January, the results won’t be published until April.

Some communities perform their count in a single day, but Spokane’s started Tuesday, when volunteers counted everyone staying in a local shelter, and continues through Sunday, with five days of counting those living outside of the shelter system.

To provide the most accurate count of the unsheltered population, the city was split into a grid, with teams sent to each square, sometimes multiple times over the course of the week. It takes more than 200 volunteers to canvas the entire city.

After a few minutes of chatter and self-sorting into groups, Ramos shouted out which square on the grid each had been assigned. Canvas bags were filled with “incentives” – bottled water, socks, bus passes, snacks – and the building quickly emptied.

Darr, Pitner, Romero and Evan Lien, a fourth nursing student, spent the morning Wednesday wandering under downtown viaducts and overpasses. During the afternoon briefing in a building behind the West Central Abbey, an Episcopal church, they were joined by Lee Taylor, who described himself as a “privileged retired guy looking for good things to do.”

“It’s an important issue with a complicated solution, and this is part of it,” Taylor said, when asked why he volunteered.

Clad in a green vest with “Volunteer” written in bold black letters, the group headed first for the hospital, where they met two homeless people, though one had been counted already. Earlier that morning, the four nursing students talked with a half dozen more. It was a slow day.

Lien and Pitner chatted with a pair of ambulance drivers, who suggested they refocus on the downtown bus depot.

“He said they don’t really go this high (up the hill) unless it’s specifically to go to the hospital,” Pitner relayed.

Not long after they arrived downtown, they had talked with as many people as they had the rest of the day prior.

A lot of what they do is just talking.

Ramos was surprised how many people wanted to not only answer their questions, but share their stories, she said Thursday.

“I thought, especially wearing those vests, people wouldn’t talk to us,” she said. “But a lot of people were talking to us. They were happy that people were out there communicating and advocating for them.”

A lot of the stories were difficult. The first person they had surveyed had recently lost his mother, and the fingers on one of his hands were visibly frostbitten, Lien said. They called an ambulance and waited until the man was being cared for, and they were assured he would be transported to a Union Gospel Mission shelter.

It won’t be the last time they’re worried about the health of someone they talk to. A man at the bus depot, who said he had been struck with a baseball bat, had an open wound on his face that looked infected, Lien said.

“Hearing some of their stories, it’s things you’d never dream of,” Darr said.

One man could not recall what year he was born. A woman told the group that her partner is in jail for stabbing a man who smoked meth near him, and she was panhandling to make bail.

Another man told them about the impact of cheap drugs on the streets of Spokane.

“We talked to a gentleman who opened up and said you can get a fentanyl pill for $5, or some meth for $1,” Lien said. “He said he had used meth to keep warm.”

All the while, they collect important information about the issues bringing people into homelessness and keeping them there.

“I’ve learned that there’s a lot of underlying reasons for these people being homeless,” Pitner said. “And we’ve run the gamut of seeing all of those reasons today.”

Many of the volunteers Tuesday and Wednesday were WSU nursing students set to graduate in May who were earning their community health clinical hours for the day. Masterminded by associate professors Kay Olson and Sarah Griffith, this was the first year such an arrangement had been made in Spokane.

“I teach community health. We look at populations, and the homeless population is hard to ignore right now,” Olson said. “The students graduating in May will be taking care of a lot of these people.”

Seventy-five students and five faculty took part between Tuesday and Wednesday, Olson said. The WSU campus in the Tri-Cities has collaborated similarly in the count in recent years, and she hopes to coordinate with the Yakima campus next year, she added.

“We found it to be such a valuable experience, and we’ve seen a lot of transformation,” Olson said.

In classes Thursday, Darr said she and the other students were asked whether the nursing school should repeat its volunteer outreach next year.

“I know there was a lot of – everybody had been kind of nervous about doing it, but the majority of the class said yes, this should definitely happen again next semester,” she said. “It was an amazing experience.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Jan. 31, 2023 to correct the name of Daniel Ramos III.