Homeless count set for Valley

WASILLA — It might be a phenomenon more readily associated with big cities, but just how big a problem is homelessness in the Valley?

If all goes according to plan, in about 10 days Katherine Foster-Dalmolin will have a reasonable answer for that question.

Foster-Dalmolin is director of the Mat-Su Housing Coalition. The coalition is relatively new, having received its funding this past fall after about a year of effort.

Every year, she said, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development does a one-day count of homelessness nationwide. Homelessness is such a fluid phenomenon — people find or lose lodging multiple times in a year — that a one-day picture is a very useful tool.

This year that day is today. And the coalition hopes to get good numbers. Prior to the coalition’s founding, Foster-Dalmolin said, getting those accurate numbers were a problem.

“I remember looking at them last year and just laughing because they were so inaccurate,” Foster-Dalmolin said. “There were huge agencies that just didn’t respond, had never been asked.”

To rectify that, this year the coalition has been circulating fliers in food banks and various other agencies that might see homeless people tomorrow. It has also been talking to the school district, Head Start programs, public health agencies, mental health agencies, homeless shelters and the hospital.

“Those type of places where they have kind of a standing caseload we like them to do the head count,” Foster-Dalmolin said. “They have better information than we’re going to get talking to the person for three minutes.”

She said they’ve also contacted some hotels, to see if perhaps some of their guests should be counted.

“If someone’s a week or so away from running out of money and they’ve got no more money coming in then they’re going to be homeless,” she said.

Looking at the work done so far, Foster-Dalmolin said she believes the count for the Valley will probably end up somewhere above 100 homeless people.

“Just today I’ve talked to a family that’s in a car and another family that has six kids that’s in a camper,” she said.

And the school district has reported that so far this school year 500 students have been identified, at one point or another, as homeless.

She said the hardest people to find are those that are new to the area who maybe haven’t plugged into the social services network.

The coalition can help those people and urges them to call it at 357-0473.

But they can also call just to say, “Hey, I’m homeless and I don’t think I got counted anywhere else,” Foster-Dalmolin said.