Advocates for homeless strategize

DES MOINES -- On the day Greater Things Ministries held its first service, a hungry man was outside the Kent church, pawing through a trash bin.

In that instant, "we knew who our ministry was (for)," the Rev. Jimmie James said, recalling that Sunday morning several years ago. More than being an advocate for homeless people, he said, "I have to be an agitator."

Ending homelessness in King County will require more than providing temporary beds, meals and polite advocacy, some participants said Tuesday during a faith-based conference on the enduring social problem.

What's needed, they said, is a comprehensive strategy that holds everyone accountable -- businesses for cutting jobs with little regard for those laid off, cities for wanting the homeless to be another community's problem, governments for permitting the loss of low-cost housing, the public for viewing homeless people as society's refuse.

Faith-based organizations aren't the only ones addressing homelessness, but they can "help show the world that people need to be helped, need to be served," James said during the seventh-annual conference of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness.

The group, a program of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, is engaged in an ambitious 10-year plan to end homelessness in the county. About 100 people attended the gathering at Grace Lutheran Church.

Only 963 units of affordable housing have been created in the past two years, half of what is needed annually to meet the plan's goal, although more housing should be built in the latter part of the decade, said Bill Block, director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County.

Gaining political support is critical, he said, because reducing homelessness is "as much getting the suits to realize these are real people with lives as getting resources to (homeless) people."

Several speakers said many homeless people are the working poor who have been pushed out of Seattle by soaring housing costs. Others have drug or alcohol problems or are suffering from mental illnesses.

"Poverty and homelessness does not enhance a person's physical or mental health," said social worker Joe Martin, co-founder of the Pike Market Medical Clinic.

Some shelter providers expressed frustration at the response by the public. St. Martin de Porres scrapes together resources to shelter more than 200 men a night in Seattle, assistant director Marge Barrett said.

Still, the shelter gets critical letters from people who say "you're not helping -- all you're doing is putting a roof over their head," she said.